Legalectric

Monday — Red Wing’s a happening place! The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is coming to Red Wing. Yes, Monday, 5:30 – 6:30 p.m. downstairs in the Foot Room.

Here’s an announcement in the bEagle:

MPCA to host air permit community meeting

Why? For an informal meeting to explain how air permitting works, what it does and doesn’t do, and the status of the renewal process for both Xcel Energy’s Red Wing garbage burner (above) and the USG plant just south on 61 (check that loading dock right off the road — below — not one I’d particularly like to back into!).

MPCA is working on renewal of both of these LONG expired permits, though they just recently started on the Xcel permit renewal (in agency terms, December, fyi), and USG‘s permit renewal has been in the works longer. I’m so glad the MPCA is taking renewal of permits seriously, and I’m particularly grateful that they’re taking the role of the public seriously!

This is an INFORMAL thing. They’ll be going over what it is involved in a permit renewal, what they look at, how they decide when to work on it, what input the permittee has, and what input we the breathers have, rough idea of timelines, etc., and of course, answer questions we may have. When these permits are in “DRAFT” form, they’re released and then there’s a FORMAL MPCA meeting, that is, if we ask for it after the DRAFT is released.

A fundamental question I have is:

• WE HAVE MAJOR POLLUTERS IN RED WING, BUT THERE ARE NO AIR MONITORS IN RED WING – WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO GET AIR MONITORS IN RED WING?

Make that two:

• HOW MANY POUNDS OF MAJOR POLLUTANTS ARE RELEASED ANNUALLY BY EACH OF THESE FACILITIES, i.e., HOW MANY POUNDS OF LEAD; HOW MANY TONS OF CO2; NOW MANY POUNDS OF OXIDES OF NITROGEN…

The list goes on. Here are some estimates of pollutants from an Alan Muller presentation on the permit for the HERC burner in Minneapolis when it was wanting to increase garbage throughput:

How much of each of these and other pollutants are coming out of the Xcel garbage burner and USG stacks into our air?

Alan Muller and I have been pushing the Red Wing City Council to get on the MPCA and Xcel to deal with this permit that expired in 2009. Not long after he learned it had been expired for so long, he filed a Data Practices Act Request for a list of air permits and dates of renewal and/or expiration, and found that most air permits in Minnesota at that time were expired! I’m sure that was at least 8-10 years ago, but the MPCA has been struggling with prior decades of budget cuts and insufficient resources to do the job. Each time this comes up, we advocate for full funding so they CAN do the job. Oh well, it’s better but not sufficient.

Anyway, I got on the MPCA to come down to Red Wing and let us know what to expect. The unfortunate thing is that it’s the same night as the City Council meeting, and there wasn’t wiggle room in the Library’s schedule to change the date. Well drat.

Come on down to the Red Wing Library on Monday night — 5:30- 6:30!

And from U.S. House Reps. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), and John Garamendi (D-CA):

The St. Croix Scenic Coalition has long been working to preserve the St. Croix Wild & Scenic River, a federal and state designation. Just this week, a significant win in Polk County Circuit Court in Wisconsin, land-use, environmental protection, and basic following the rules, Osceola!

In the STrib:

Lawsuit: Planned apartment building along St. Croix River is too tall for protected river

Want to learn more about the Wild & Scenic St. Croix? Videos from the St. Croix Scenic Coalition:

Founding Minnesota –St. Croix Scenic Byway Story:

• Episode 1: Land Euphoria (44 minutes)
• Episode 2: Too Much of a Good Thing (53 minutes)
• Episode 3: Unimagined Wealth (45 minutes)
• Episode 4: River of Pines (60 minutes)
• Episode 5: America Fever (65 minutes) 

And from PBS, The Wild & Scenic St. Croix

And of course, head on up to Wild River State Park and St. Croix State Park on the Minnesota side!!

A comment period has been announced for Minnesota Power & GRE’s “Northern Reliability Project,” which is Public Utilities Commission Docket E015,ET2/CN-22-416 (the Certificate of Need only).

Plenty of time to read and think and write.

This time around, they’re looking for substantive comments regarding whether a Certificate of Need should be granted, so a look at the statutory criteria could be helpful:

CERTIFICATE OF NEED — SEE CRITERIA IN SUBD. 3

What the Public Utilities Commission says it’s looking for is:

As far as the rules are concerned, IF YOU IDENTIFY ANY CONTESTED ISSUES OF FACT, this is the time to request a contested case, essentially a trial, via Office of Administrative Hearings. Any request for a contested case must be made before the end of the comment period.

Here’s the full Notice:

Here we go with yet another transmission line proposed for southern Minnesota — the Wilmarth (Mankato) to North Rochester (N of Pine Island) to Tremval (Wisconsin), featuring another Mississippi River Crossing, but no, they’re using existing towers… so nevermind…

There are now FIVE BIG TRANSMISSION LINES grinding through the permitting process:

• Wilmarth-North Rochester-Tremval – PUC Dockets CN-22-532; TL-23-157 (plus a separate docket for relocation of Dairyland’s Q-3 because they are taking it off the 345 kV towers to double circuit that part).
• Brookings-Lyon County & Helena-Hampton – PUC Dockets CN-23-200; TL-08-1474
• Big Stone-Alexandria-Big Oaks – PUC Dockets C-22-538; TL-23-159
• Itasca County-Big Oaks – Northern Reliability Project – PUC Dockets CN-22-416; TL-22-415
• Lyon County-Sherco – MN Energy CON – PUC Dockets CN-22-131; TL-22-132

I’ve just started downloading and will be posting the balance of the application in a bit, but for now, here’s the application narrative and Appendices A-F… DONE!!!

Well, that was a lot of fun…