Legalectric

Whew, third Comment filed this week, this was Supplement Completeness Comment on the Maple River to Cuyuna transmission line, a 345kV headed from Fargo area to a substation near Baxter. The application is linked here:

Maple River – Cuyuna 345kV line

As for Supplemental Comments, here we go:

And the Applicants, the Supplemental Comments draw on the new info, different info, in the Reply Comments. They’ve changed their tune and now are wanting this “informal process” that does not exist in statute or rule, a simple round of written comments:

And this one from LIUNA is a hoot — seems to be a problem with a real review process, and seems to be toadying for the utilities. Why? How would a serious review of a Certificate of Need application harm LIUNA? Makes no sense.

Busy day today. We’ve had the final round of Completeness Comments on both the Gopher to Badger and Power on Midwest web of 765kV transmission across southern Minnesota. Really,all the way across southern Minnesota. On the western border, it runs through South Dakota from Big Stone coal plant down to Brookings, near Sioux Falls, and then across through Lakefield Junction over to Pleasant Valley… then for some reason up to North Rochester sub just north of Pine Island (with a 345 kV line also running that way, and up to Hampton, WTAF?) and then from North Rochester substation down to the southeast to Marion, then to the southwest (?) back to Pleasant Valley, and from their straight across following Dairyland’s 161kV line to the Mississippi and beyond to the Columbia substation near Portage, Wisconsin. That’s a LOT of 765kV transmission line:

Filed by North Route Group and NO765MN in both dockets – Gopher to Badger CN-25-121 and Power on Midwest CN-25-117. WHY? Because it’s all connected:

Filed by Applicants in both dockets:

Filed by Commerce-DER in both dockets:

Last and least, filed by Liuna – least because how off can ya get??:

Itasca State Park is looking for comments on two amendments to its Management Plan:

View the current Itasca State Park management plan (PDF)

It’s THE Minnesota State Park, though it’s been a decade since I’ve been there.

Over the years, I’ve stayed in Douglas Lodge, Nicollet Court, the 4-Plex, and both campgrounds, Maple Loop 199, and here’s Bear Paw #38, moving up in the world from tent to pop-up:

What do they want to do? Two areas of change, one, overnight use and winter trails and the other, water access:

• Review the Itasca State Park overnight use and winter trail activities draft plan amendment (PDF).

• Review the Itasca State Park public water access redevelopment draft plan amendment (PDF).

Comment period ends April 10th, send comments to Jade.Templin@state.mn.us or mail to:

Itasca State Park Plan Amendments comments, c/o Jade Templin
Parks and Trails Division, Minnesota DNR
500 Lafayette Road, Box 4039
St. Paul, MN 55155-4039

Is this classic or what? There were several, and they were popping up as if they were diving under the boat and appeared on the other side.

Step by step, MISO is slogging through the Variance Analysis for the Northland Reliability Project as set out in MISO Tariff FF (P. 182-193). This just came through the wire, it’s BIG, but interesting tidbits:

Much of this process is confidential, don’t know if it matters at this point. The parts I care about are the cost questions, and the responses may well be confidential. We’ll see.

Generally, there’s this:

And the specifics are what needs to be produced, p. 6-16 of the first document, above:

I don’t/can’t do math, have grey mush in that part of my brain, but if I think on this a bit, and scan through the 347 pages, the trajectory will become clear!

For your reading enjoyment, here’s the part of MISO’s Tariff FF that covers the Variance Analysis process:

It’s all connected — and here’s the eastern part of the 765kV line across Minnesota, from South Dakota headed east across the Mississippi into Wisconsin — the western web comments were due Monday:

Reply Comments filed – SW MN 765kV lines March 3rd, 2026

Today’s inbasket had good news for us on the eastern end, where they want to follow a 161kV line across SE Minnesota’s Driftless region — the good news is that “Gopher to Badger” backed off of its asinine “informal process” and:

Applicants request that the Commission stay the Certificate of Need Application and process it jointly with the Route Permit Application, which Applicants intend to submit this fall.

Informal process?!?!?! How stupid do they think we are?

Good, they’re being reasonable. Did they really think they could get away with “informal process” that does not exist?

Anyway, Reply Comments were due Wednesday and here is ours, NRG and NO765MN: