In early June, there was a suprise announcement that Excelsior Energy had selected a site on Highway 7, past Bovey for it’s “Two Lobbyists and a Wife” Mesaba power plant. Here’s their blurb, and another one that on file with the EQB (at least this second one doesn’t look like my dog wrote it!). Whatever happened to that selling point of developing on the brownfield site in Hoyt Lakes? Whatever happened to that selling point of providing jobs to all those unemployed after the closing of the Hoyt Lakes plant?

This new site northeast of Bovey in old growth red and white pine bog by pristine Minnesota lakes was disclosed as Itasca County approved support of a bonding bill for Mesaba infrastructure, and around the same time, they hosted tours of the site — why weren’t the landowners included? Here’s a clue for Excelsior Energy — it’s not a good idea to have landowners find out they’re targeted by reading about it in the paper or seeing contractors tromping around the site. Landowners require notice and honesty from project proposers, so they tell me in technicolor.

County seeks state bonding for power plant, MSI

Site list grows for proposed power plant

The STrib did a follow up article a month later:
Coal gas plant may intrude on Minnesota peace, quiet

Here’s the EQB’s main docket site. What I notice is that there are hardly any documents, no site plans, even though the EQB was represented up there on a site tour, and there’s no way to tell where they’re putting it. Well, here they are, and you can see clearly that this is NOT a brownfield site.

MESABA SITE PLANS

Larger site plan – scan of both pages Download file
View image“> Top half of larger site plan
View image“>Bottom half of larger site plan

Close up site plan – scan of both pages View image
Top half of close up site plan View image
Bottom half of close up site plan View image

Here’s where they’re wanting to put this power plant. Does this make any sense? One of the landowners, stunned, says “Is this bizarre?”

But the key to this goes back to the Excelsior Energy blurb above, the one that looks like Kenya wrote it:

Q: Why must Excelsior select its site by mid August?

A: Developing a base load generating plant project is a long and complex task. Excelsior must decide on a location for its first unit by Mid-August to maintain its project development schedule and ensure the Mesaba Energy Project is operational to serve Minnesota?s growing electric energy needs.

Translation by Overland: We need to have this application in to make it look like we’re serious — it’s a hoop to jump through, have an application in, to keep that state and federal grant money rolling in.

Yes. This is BIZARRE. Does anyone else find this a horrifically extreme measure to finance Tom Micheletti’s retirement? Wouldn’t it be more in the public interest, and a hell of a lot cheaper, if the state got Tom and Julie a little get away retreat and a one way plane ticket?

Here’s the contact info for the EQB – get on the mailing list and weigh in:

Environmental Quality Board project docket

Docket No: 05-94-PPS-Excelsior Energy
Project Name: Mesaba Energy Project
Description: Excelsior Energy, Inc. proposes to construct a 531 MW Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) large electric power generating plant (LEPGP) on the Iron Range tax relief area
Subjects: Environmental policy; Power plants
Geographic region: Minnesota; Twin Cities Metropolitan Area; Twin Cities Metropolitan Area
Docket created: March 14, 2005
Contact: Bill Storm, 651-296-9535
Mailing list: register

Here’s the reality of the Mesaba Project — captured by the STrib — a site in the midst of old growth white and red pine between Big Diamond and Dunning Lakes.

Coal plan may intrude on northern Minnesota idyll

Kevin Diaz,Star Tribune Washington Bureau Correspondent

July 5, 2005

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Ron Gustafson’s dream of a placid retirement on Big Diamond Lake in northern Minnesota is caught in a fractious congressional debate over a national energy bill.

Alongside acres of pine and crystalline water, the St. Paul retiree might be getting a new neighbor: the Mesaba Energy Project, a coal gas power plant with smokestacks and coal trains originally destined for an abandoned industrial site 50 miles away.

Billed as environmentally friendly, the project had been planned for a shuttered steel plant in Hoyt Lakes. But that was before the taconite industry began showing signs of resurgence.

That good news for the industry has become looming trouble for cabin owners around Big Diamond and Dunning lakes in Itasca County.

Owners of the proposed power plant have acquired the rights to 1,000 wooded acres there, in a remote part of the Iron Range once owned by U.S. Steel.

“It’s like any Minnesota lake place,” said Gustafson, who built a retirement home on the lake with his wife 10 years ago. “We were hoping to spend a whole lot of time here when we retire.”

Those plans could change with passage of the energy legislation before Congress. The version of the bill the Senate passed late last month contains unspecified loan guarantees for the $1 billion Mesaba Energy Project, a 500-megawatt power plant that supporters say will generate hundreds of jobs.

Those jobs have been the Mesaba’s biggest selling point on the economically depressed Iron Range. But another attraction has been reusing the old steel plant.

“It was going to be wonderful because the company was going defunct, and they were going to reopen the land and put jobs there,” said state Rep. Alice Hausman, DFL-St. Paul, who opposes the plant. “Well, surprise, surprise. The price of steel goes up, the mining company has zero interest in talking to them, and now they have to go to pristine land on scenic Highway 7.”

Community support

The Mesaba Energy Project already has gained more than $55 million in state and federal aid. That funding arrived before the project’s owner, Minnetonka-based Excelsior Energy Inc., announced in June that it had secured the Itasca County site from RGGS, a Texas land and mineral management company.

The project has received strong community support on the range, but there’s not much of a welcome mat now around Big Diamond Lake.

Earl Orf, a wildlife photographer who homesteads a log cabin in the area, calls it “a very nice, quiet and peaceful place.”

The plant’s potential location change is likely to ignite a new debate about the state funding it is receiving.

The Itasca County Board of Commissioners approved a resolution in June seeking $42 million in state bonding money to develop the new site proposal, which will not be completed until August.

The St. Louis County Board approved a similar resolution last month for the same amount of money to support one of three potential sites for the new plant, including the one in Hoyt Lakes, which is still a possibility.

Those requests follow a hotly debated decision this year in the Minnesota Legislature to give Excelsior Energy $10 million for solar, wind and other renewable energy projects.

“The new location is probably something that will add some concern to whether or not we get to where we want to go,” said state Sen. David Tomassoni, DFL-Chisholm, one of the energy project’s leading supporters. “But the fact is, it’s pretty well on its way now.”

The project has already received $9.5 million from the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board and $36 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to pursue new technology that turns coal into gas before burning it to produce electricity. Proponents say it is cleaner than traditional coal-fired plants.

U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., and Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., have been instrumental in pressing for the federal loan guarantees for the new plant, which would help Excelsior Energy line up as much as 80 percent of the start-up capital it needs.

U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., another supporter, said any decision on location should be made “by the company, the communities and the local and state officials involved.”

Local officials are not quibbling much about where the plant goes. “An Iron Range project is an Iron Range project,” said state Rep. David Dill, DFL-Crane Lake. “We need the economic development.”

Until now, opposition to the new plant has come mainly from environmentalists questioning the benefits of the new coal technology and from congressional watchdog groups who say the federal money being devoted to it is excessive and risky for taxpayers.

But the newest player in the debate is resurgent steel economy, which has rekindled interest in new mining and taconite projects at the former plant in Hoyt Lakes. It closed in 2001 and cost the area 1,000 jobs. The steel economy’s improving fortunes have forced Excelsior Energy, led by former Hibbing hockey star Tom Micheletti, to look around Big Diamond Lake.

Eminent domain

“Most of the site is unpopulated,” Micheletti said. “There are only a dozen or so properties that would be affected, and most of them are seasonal cabins.”

Although the Legislature has granted the project powers of eminent domain, Micheletti said he hopes he can come to terms with property owners who want to sell.

Since Congress appears close to approving the loan guarantees for the plant, and since Micheletti has won support in the past in the Minnesota Legislature, Gustafson said he has little hope of keeping the plant far from Big Diamond Lake.

“This whole thing is like a locomotive going down the tracks,” he said.

Kevin Diaz is at kdiaz@mcclatchydc.com.

Pat Tammen died late last month. Bob and Pat Tammen have spent so much time and energy working to keep Minnesota a great place to live, and to leave for the next generations. I met them hen working against Excelsior Energy’s Mesaba Project, and in many different contexts, about many different issues, ran into them so many times at the legislature, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, the Environmental Quality Board, and the Public Utilities Commission, and at the EPA HQ up in Duluth. They’re two of the finest people around, and their efforts have made a difference here in Minnesota. Pat Tammen will be sorely missed.

Soudan Snowbirds – Bob & Pat Tammen

Minnesotans protest planned PolyMet mine at Toronto shareholders meeting

And from the MPCA:

Obituary of Pat Montana Tammen

Pat Montana Tammen was born March 22, 1937 in Missoula, Montana to Victor and Margaret Anderson (Quirk) and passed away May 27, 2024 after years of coping with congestive heart failure. The family returned to High Landing, MN shortly after Pat was born.

Pat’s mother died when Pat was ten and her dysfunctional father was usually absent. Her grandmother raised Pat and her sister but died when Pat was twelve. Another relative who turned out to be abusive stepped into Pat’s life and Pat ended up in Gillette Children’s Hospital for ten months at the age of fifteen with severely damaged hips in the days before hip transplants. The doctors repaired her to the point where she made many trips into the Boundary Waters in her adult years.

Pat worked herself through Mayville State Teachers College and then went to Bemidji State University for her Master’s Degree. She taught for a couple of years in Minnesota and then accepted a teaching position in Nenana, Alaska where she married Dean Larson who was killed in a car accident five weeks after their wedding.

Pat then accepted a teaching position in Ely, MN and in 1974 married Bob Tammen. During the 1980’s the Iron Range economy was in bad shape so Pat took a leave of absence and went along wherever Bob found work and taught in the local schools. She taught the children of the Mormons in Utah, miners in upper Michigan, loggers in Wisconsin and farmers in South Dakota.

She tried to help students understand, as we all should, that failed families do not have to produce failed children. We can all make a difference.

Pat returned to the Ely school system and retired in 1997. In retirement, Pat enjoyed the lakeshore on the South Kawishiwi River and worked tirelessly to defend her lakeshore and all of Minnesota’s natural resources.

Pat is survived by husband Bob, sister Therese, nephews Paul and Joe, great nieces Vanessa and Rachel, and great nephew Dalton.

Please send any memorials to your favorite environmental organization.

No public service is planned.

A visitation will take place on Thursday April 4 from 4-6 p.m. at David Lee Funeral Home, 1220 Wayzata Blvd., Wayzata. A memorial service will be held on Friday April 5 at 10 a.m. at Wayzata Community Church, 125 Wayzata Blvd., Wayzata 952-473-8877. All are welcome to attend.

In the STrib:

Thomas Andrew Micheletti

January 28, 1947 March 15, 2024

Micheletti will not be forgotten.

Per his obituary, a PR campaign in its own right, he shares a military avoidance scheme on a level with Captain Bonespurs:

Tom broke his ankle his senior year playing football. He cut the cast off himself, long before it had healed, so that he didn’t miss the opening hockey game. This messed his ankle up just enough to eventually keep him out of the Vietnam War, but not so much that he couldn’t keep playing.

And “Tom’s career became another arena for his love of the game.” Yup, gaming the system, he was certainly an expert. Here’s the legislation he got through, by hook or by crook, paired with Xcel’s bid for more dry casks for nuclear waste — a deal with the devil, or between the devils:

Micheletti was a/the primary architect of one of the most costly boondoggles on the Range and in Minnesota, history, the “Excelsior Energy Mesaba Project.”

It was introduced in 2002 at an energy committee hearing, I was there — cost said to be $800 million. HA! By the time it got to the Public Utilities Commission, the cost was over $TWO BILLION!

$2,155,680,763

“… capable of offering a long-term supply contract at a hedged, predictable cost.” NOPE The PUC did catch it, was NOT a reasonable cost, was not in the public interest, and the PUC denied approval of the Power Purchase Agreement.

Throughout this, we faced bizarre, and yes, I’m using that term a lot here, and it’s fitting. The things they claimed were pulled out of some nether orifice, put in writing, and entered, under oath. The sums of money they took from so many agencies, the way they steamrolled local governments, legislative committees, throughout I was wondering what he had on so many, kompromant? Why would people would jump on his bandwagon, it made no sense. Did people think it was too much work to look at the facts? Was it a personal thing? Was it “debt,” and for what and why? Still don’t understand. I do know that so much that was said was not true. So much that was put in writing was not true. So much was made up, tossed at a wall, and why did it stick? Ultimately, it did not, but it took YEARS and hundreds of hours.

About that Mesaba Project, Micheletti’s obit says:

For a decade, he and his wife, Julie, combined their talents and built a company that partnered with the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a large- scale clean-tech power plant to be constructed on the Iron Range. He holds dear the many individuals who dedicated themselves to that effort, taking on the special interests that block innovation and progress. He was proud the team conceived and enacted significant state and federal policy legislation that removed significant barriers to innovation in the power industry.

“… partnered with the U.S. Department of Energy…” Nope, more like scammed the DOE, also the Minnesota legislature, Renewable Energy Development Fund, and of course the IRRB. How much of that IRRB “loan” has been paid back?

Here’s where some of the money went — somewhere in my Mesaba Project files we’ve got documentation of their using taxpayer funds for a Christmas trip to Italy! I’m looking, and in the meantime:

And spreadsheets for 2004, 2005, a tiny bit of 2006:

Here’s a review from Citizens Against the Mesaba Project (CAMP),:

“… special interests that block innovation and progress…” Special interest!?!?! Right… Here’s a wayback link to Citizens Against the Mesaba Project (CAMP), and my clients mncoalgasplant.com, grassroots “special interest” groups addressing community concerns, groups which did the most amazing organizing, and the drudgery of detailed work and digging about coal gasification, the financing of this mess, and documentation of much of the federal and state dollars; federal, state, and local perks, given to this vaporware “project.” Special interests???

• CLICK HERE for CAMP-SITE
• CLICK HERE for mncoalgasplant.com

That’s a CAMP meeting, above, a room packed with regular folks. The special interests? Well, “they” showed up in force at the hearings. There were 300+ filling the Taconite Community Center, so if you’re classifying all these regular folks as “special interest,” people who got up, one by one over HOURS of the hearings testifying about seriously technical issues and considerations in their own backyards that were being ignored in Micheletti’s Mesaba Project plans… special interests? well… that’s a bit misguided.

Here’s Micheletti at a Mesaba Project meeting in Trout Lake Township before the Town Board:

And he instructed his new hired hand, Xcel’s recently retired Michael Wadley, not to let me speak because I didn’t live in the area — nevermind that I was representing mncoalgasplant.com, a group of local residents! Oh, and I was living in Red Wing right across the street from Wadley’s parents! Why Wadley got involved in the Mesaba Project mess I’ll never know, had to be money, but it sure couldn’t have been worth it to wade in that cesspool.

And here’s a wayback link to excelsiorenergy.com

Leadership team of seasoned power industry executives? Seasoned? Right — stick a fork in, they are DONE!

Micheletti was an extreme example of using connections and knowledge and influence to cobble together many moving pieces into a phenomenally orchestrated steamrolling line of bullshit that was the Mesaba Project, taking advantage of public and governmental ignorance and apathy, dragging those of us who opposed it on a decade of intense work — successfully stopped — but what a grind that was.

Micheletti & Overland near fisticuffs in the Hoyt Lakes Arena October 27th, 2005

The legislation promoting the project required that it was to be built on a site with available infrastructure, and here what it looked like – see above, Minn. Stat. 216A.1694, Subd. 1(3), “adequate infrastructure to support new or expanded development,” so it says, but here’s the reality. They were discovered trespassing in the woods by hunters:

Here’s a photo from a DOE site visit — dig that utility infrastructure:

Tom was not at all happy to find our “boys in the woods” and the press there too. From an MPR site visit:

The only way to get to the site was on ATVs using a transmission easement over land that wasn’t theirs, not theirs via easement or in fee — yes, they were trespassing:

Here’s an example of the bizarre filings from Micheletti’s “seasoned” experts:

Health Benefits of Coal (ya gotta read this one, HILARIOUS!)

Bizarre? Yes, that’s the operative term here. A bit of Alan Muller’s cross-examination, the question clarified by ALJ Mihalchick:

I’m looking for the map showing their plan for rail access — they wanted to go right THROUGH Diamond Lake! Found it — that’s it, circled in pink, from the DOE’s EIS:

THROUGH DIAMOND LAKE?!?! WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

There was also a bizarre, yes, again, bizarre, “plan” to capture CO2 and store it, BUT the amount that could be captured was not much at all, it severely decreased efficiency of the proposed plant, AND once captured, it took it … really… only to the PLANT GATE, no further. Then what? Who knows, they sure didn’t have a clue. Yup! Really… a brilliant plan. And where it possibly could be stored? Another bizarre filing:

Their plan? Read it and guffaw, snort, hoot and holler: Ex_EE1067_Plan for Carbon Capture and Sequestration Download

They got a GRANT for this, our tax dollars thrown away:

Sequestration grant press release June 24 2005 Download

Looking back, it s really uplifting to see what we did accomplish, two rag-tag groups of people on the range who knew a boondoggle when they saw it, and who put in the time and effort to learn about coal gasification, no small feat, enough to make knowledgeable comments on what Micheletti & Co. were proposing, and put on enough pressure to slow it down, and ultimately stop the project. Considering the resources that Micheletti brought to this, with DOE, MN legislature, IRRB, and Renewable Development Fund, plus so much Joyce Foundation funding to enviros to support it:

Joyce Foundation PROMOTES coal September 5th, 2006

Yes, the Mesaba Project did go down in flames. Took a long time, but looking back, we did a good job.

As of last week, Tom Micheletti will not be promoting any more bogus projects and pocketing our taxes to do it.

Apparently, Micheletti resurrected Reddy Kilowatt! That’s something that really ought to be in his obit!

Back to Micheletti’s obituary:

p.s. To access the PUC’s Excelsior Energy’s Mesaba Project Power Purchase Agreement docket, go HERE – eDOCKETS, and then click again on “eDockets” and click on “Search Documents” on Left, and arrive at this screen and add Year “05” and Docket “1993” and then click SEARCH!

For the siting docket, plug in 06-668:

The siting docket was also bizarre. We tried to intervene, but were not allowed, and as “participants” were not allowed to question witnesses. The hearing was a farce, and it was in a gym next to the hockey rink, the heat turned of on a -20F day, because with the blower on we couldn’t hear a thing. Afterwards, Excelsior entered in a LOT if additional exhibits, as the record was flimsy:

Mesaba – Extend the hearing! February 23rd, 2008

That site hearing was such a travesty…

Gotta get out of this rabbit hole.

Spring of 2022, we stopped at Minidoka National Historic Site, a former Japanese internment camp, which opened not that long before we visited.

Hot off the press, in the inbox today:

The Boundary of the Oppressor: Challenging the Use of the Historic Footprint as an Appropriate Property Boundary for the Minidoka TCP

This is the second “internment camp” (prison) we’ve been to, a few years before, Manzanar National Historic Site, near “Independence” (really) California:

Manzanar – Information on Japanese American Internment

posted February 27th, 2017

Both sites obviously prisons:

Back to Minidoka, here’s the layout originally:

Here’s the boundaries of the area declared as a Historical site, maybe a quarter of the prison layout:

From the Addendum Report Defining the Boundary of the TCP (Traditional Cultural Place) Boundary of the Minidoka Concentration Camp:

The viewshed:

Viewshed is an important consideration because of the proposed encroachment of the 1,000MW Lava Ridge Wind Project.

Here’s the BLM Summary of DEIS Comments from August 2023 (EIS is not out yet).

From the BLJ’s Lava Wind Newsletter, September, 2023, here’s the BLM’s project environmental review schedule:

Final EIS a year from now? That’s a LONG wait! Gotta remember what comes after “Record of Decision,” and that goes back over a decade to the Mesaba Project. Seems BLM doesn’t want folks to know what that means.