Legalectric

Stolen from Rolling Stone 

Earth to Franken – IGCC is a pipedream!

Published today in the Bemidji Pioneer:

Commentary: Franken on guns, coal and forests

Brad Swenson Bemidji Pioneer
Published Sunday, February 17, 2008
The operative word the electorate seems to be embracing this election cycle is “change.”

And, in Minnesota, you probably couldn’t get a more obvious “change” than in Al Franken, a Democrat vying for the party nomination to run against incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman.

Franken has never held an elective office, has never until recently shown an interest in organized party politics (although he hasn’t been shy about which way he leans), he’s not a lawyer or a career politician and while growing up in Minnesota, Franken was born in New York and spent most of his life in New York.

My goodness, the man’s a comedian, a funnyman — a satirist.

Yet the former “Saturday Night Live” writer and actor draws a crowd most places he gathers for meet-and-greets, including 250 people recently in a Wadena café and likewise packed a Park Rapids café.

“Once they hear me speak, they know I speak from the heart, from the head and from the gut,” Franken told me a week ago as he overnighted in Bemidji on the way to a Senate candidate debate in International Falls. He’s on the trail with Twin Cities attorney Mike Ciresi and St. Thomas University Professor Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer.

He’s visiting a lot of rural towns, especially in northern Minnesota, not so much for name recognition — thanks to his “other” career — but to drill in that he understands Minne-sota and lived in Minnesota (St. Louis Park). It’s why he’s run-ning barrage of television ads now, to solidify his Minnesota connection before anyone can tag him a “Hollywood” candidate because of his entertainment friends and their money.

“Going around, I discovered it was important for people to know I grew up in Minnesota,” he said.

Minnesotans do want to know their candidate, want to eyeball him or her in person, and want to know what they say about issues important to them. In our talk at the Green Mill, just a mention of Coleman’s role as chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and the war in Iraq wound Franken up for 15 minutes. And it must be touchy, as Sen. Coleman called me late last week to spend a half hour refuting all that Franken had said, quipping that Franken tells “half-truths and whole lies,” something sounding suspiciously like an Al Franken book title.

But what does candidate Franken know about northern Minnesota? Obviously, as a New Yorker, he hasn’t spent much time in the woods with a deer rifle. In fact, last fall Franken went hunting for the first time and had with him as his guide U.S. Rep. Collin Peterson, DFL-7th District, an avid hunter and founder of the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus.

“My briefing was, ‘Shoot this,’ and a picture of a pheasant rooster, ‘Not this — Collin,’” Franken said of the second picture of Peterson. “Mission accomplished. I shot two roosters and not Collin.”

That episode aside, Franken said people have the right to have guns for collection, protection and hunting, recreation and target shooting. “I don’t think people should have artillery,” he said with a deep chuckle.

More seriously, “I think we should just enforce the laws that we have,” he said.

Franken’s been criticized of being a little light on farm is-sues, but says he’s learning. And he says he knows of the plight of northern Minnesota’s timber industry, and hopes a niche can be found in renewable energy production from the forest.

“Ag is obviously important to this state and it’s important to this country,” he said, adding that “I’ve been consulting with Collin Peterson, as well.” Peterson is chairman of the House Agriculture Committee.

“I do think that the green economy will be very good for rural Minnesota,” he said. “And also we’re talking about renewables and energy efficiency, and creating jobs through both of those.”

He’s been asked about the Iron Range’s current build-up and the need for more energy, with a “clean-coal” coal gasifi-cation plant proposed to gen-erate power. While it seems Franken may oppose the plant, he says he supports the techn-ology but is unsure if it’s appro-priate for that place at this time.

“The idea of coal gasification where you can sequester the CO2 is a technology that we ought to develop,” Franken said. “I’m just not sure at that plant is the best project. We want to get the most bang for the buck, and you want to make sure it’s sequestered properly.”

The technology is needed, he said, as China and India put up a coal-fired plant once a week. It does no good for the United States to seek a zero-carbon footprint when the other two nations continue unabated with carbon emissions.

“We need international agreements,” Franken said, such as a global cap-and-trade program to control carbon dioxide emissions, or the ability to sell U.S. clean-coal technology abroad.

On forestry, Franken says one of his strongest supporters is Sen. Tom Saxhaug, DFL-Grand Rapids, who specializes in forestry issues. “Tom is a big champion of sustainable forests, and I think there’s tremendous possibilities of using forest products for biomass gasification.”

If it’s any indication of his willingness to learn northern issues, Franken has been also been endorsed by Assistant House Majority Leader Frank Moe of Bemidji, Rep. Brita Sailer of Park Rapids and Sen. Rod Skoe of Clearbrook. He also recently won the endorsement of former U.S. Agriculture Secre-tary Bob Bergland of Roseau, who also served as U.S. House member from the 7th District.

Brad Swenson is the Bemidji Pioneer’s Opinion page and political editor.

There’s another Letter to the Editor today in the Grand Rapids Herald Review — the writer doesn’t take into account the pollution and health hazards that the Mesaba Proect presents, nor does he address the extreme burden his proposal would place on Minnesota Power, already distressed about the rate impacts of the transmission cost!

Relocate the Mesaba project

Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 10:52:51 AM

Editor:

The Itasca County Board is supporting the construction of an approximately 600 MW coal gasification plant which so far is apparently publicly funded. Part of this public support is the construction of infrastructure and part is the agreement that the project will not pay taxes back to the county in the near future.

On the other hand, other large companies like Blandin and Minnesota Power do pay taxes that benefit Itasca County as well as providing good jobs.

By locating the Mesaba project on its Highway 7 proposed site, the county must construct a short line rail and accept long wait times at rail crossings, extend a gas pipeline, construct a transmission line, dedicate the waters of the Canisteo pit and convert a greenfield site. Why not locate the project in a more suitable location where most of this infrastructure already exists?

If the project were located at the current Boswell plant site, it would be in an industrial location where gas, rail and transmission corridors exist. With lower emissions (as stated by Excelsior), it could replace Units 1 and 2 to the benefit of the environment. Operating costs would be reduced as the cost of coal delivery would be lowered.

It appears that the main objection to the Mesaba project is the chosen site and the exposure of Itasca County taxpayers to risk from funding and operating infrastructure projects. Relocating the project to the Boswell site would address both of these concerns while still preserving the project and the jobs.

Dean Sedgwick

Delaware has an IRP docket open thanks to a legislative mandate that brought back IRP. Here’s the utility’s site, Delmarva (sounds like laundry detergent). Their site asks “What would you like to do?” but the options suck.

There are three competing projects which, deja vu all over again, probably aren’t even needed. There’s gas, wind and NRG’s coal gasification proposal. But you ought to see their proposal:

ALL THE DELAWARE PROPOSALS

Good Luck! Click on the NRG ones and try to see your way around the cheezy “redaction” job. NRG’s black magic marker crossing out the juicy parts lead to a Motion and more biomass flying around, and that’s at the bottom of the “ALL THE DELAWARE PROPOSALS” link.

A little birdie told me that NRG’s been told they have until Monday at high noon to come up with some better and more specific reasoning for their many redactions of stuff that, given what I know about IGCC now, seems bizarre, overly secretive. Stay tuned, because it’s gonna get interesting. Now I sure hope that the Delaware PSC staff is on this and reading the record for the Excelsior proposal here.

Here’s the word to NRG:

February 20, 2007

Mr. Houghton:

Staff has reviewed your submission dated February 16th, 2007, consisting
of your support for the continued redaction of extensive portions of
your bid.  After considerable thought Staff does not believe that your 4
page “explanation” follows either the spirit or letter of our guidance
with respect to the support requested relative to the scope of claimed
confidential materials.  The use of “broad categories” and the
contention that it would be “impractical and inefficient to draft a
point by point analysis of each redaction made” is unresponsive to our
request.  Because of the nature of the response, Staff is unable to
ascertain what data should retain its confidential protection.

Please be advised that absent a more comprehensive and detailed itemized
analysis, which would allow the Commission to make informed judgments on
the NRG redactions, Staff is prepared to recommend to the Commission
that the entire NRG bid be made public.  Staff is willing to provide you
until noon Monday to comply with its request, consistent with both the
oral and written communications that have occurred on this matter.  We
look forward to a responsive filing no later than Noon, Monday, February
26th, 2007.

Michael Sheehy

==============================

They’re going to hold meetings around the state, maybe it’s window dressing, or maybe it’s a reason to get out into the communities, or maybe it’s a lead-in to a decision that might not please the corporate Dogs, or maybe it’s something to keep us all busy and out of trouble…

Don’t forget that today is the Open House for Excelsior’s new office in Coleraine. It’s from 4-7 p.m. at the Peterson Funeral Home, be sure to stop in and ask when they’re holding the memorial service for Excelsior! With any luck, I should receive some photos from some little birdie or another…

What literally got me thinking about that was that I’d forgotten to feed the birdies and all my birdies were out over the poop deck bitching and kvetching, mad chickadees, junkos, nuthatches, blue jays and cardinals, not safe to let the grrrrrrls out, those little guys would divebomb like the eagles do at Colville Park! So, they’re taken care of, back to business…

Julie Risser, i.e., voterisser4senate.com, was netletted today in the STrib:

Better rethink coal-gasification plans

Regarding the Dec. 3 Business section article “Power-plant plan producing hot debate”: Tom Micheletti and Julie Jorgensen’s vision of six coal-gasification plants springing up over the next 30 years in northern Minnesota is outrageous; Minnesota lacks the geography needed for carbon sequestration and it does not produce coal.

Minnesota is already too dependent on coal to meet its electricity needs — more coal plants will not move us closer to energy independence. The cost of coal will continue to rise — approximately 50 percent of already comes from transporting it.

Finally, the potential pollution problems to Minnesota’s lakes, rivers and streams are enormous. Coal gasification is not a good fit for Minnesota. Team Excelsior should take its plans to Wyoming or Montana — go where the coal is.

JULIE RISSER, EDINA

But “to Wyoming or Montana?” They are clamoring for it, BUT water problems there have the same impact as water problems here, and then there’s… gasp… TRANSMISSION!!!

The Webstermeistress of mncoalgasplant.com and I were on the horn last night organizing the PUC files for the Excelsior Mesaba coal gasification project, and just now, she sent this missive:

Did you know that the combination of words Excesior Energy, Mesaba Project and Boondoggle, Pork are searched for on the internet 10 times a day – every day…

Now that’s a day brightener as I dig through piles and piles of papers looking for documents for our “Exhibit List” to submit tomorrow.

Lots of Mesaba documents are here on Legalectric, and there’s a lot more on the mncoalgasplant.com site. Check it out! Everything you ever wanted to know about coal gasification and lots they don’t want you to know!