Legalectric

The oh-too-cozy connections in Minnesota are pushing my buttons today. Wind on the Wires’ death-of-wind-as-we-know-it comments to the Public Utilities Commission  arguing a “this will affect all of Minnesota” were given way too much weight for an entity that wasn’t even a party, and given their tight and close connections to the Dept. of Commerce Energy Division head, it seemed undue influence.  But it got worse today… and suddenly, HOG PILE, lots of things came to light.

So what else happened?   Well, it’s a full moon.  I was looking for a document in my Goodhue Wind Truth file and my cursor passed over a WOW filing, Comments they’d filed in the record that I’d downloaded and filed with the rest, and as my cursor passed over it it said and I cursed:

Author: Alan Mitchell

Say what?!?!?!  Alan Mitchell, author of Wind on the Wires filings?

So I open it up and check the document properties directly, and sure enough, it says “Author: Alan Mitchell.”  Open it up and see for yourself:

Author: Alan Mitchell – Wind on Wires Comments November 15, 2010

Who is Alan Mitchell and why should anyone care if he authored comments?

Alan Mitchell is an attorney working on energy issues — he worked as the Asst. A.G. on utility siting at the EQB forever, during Nuclear Daze, I almost thumped him on the head when he made a DUH! admission we’d been fighting about for years.  He was there (Dwight Wagenius too) during Arrowhead and Chisago transmission, and retired I think in the Pawlenty administration exodous, around 2006? and went to Lindquist & Vennum, to work on energy issues, and then jumped to Fredrickson & Byron, at the same time Todd Guerrero did.

And there’s the rub.

Todd Guerrero represents AWA Goodhue Wind (community based wind my ass — can anyone spell “T. Boone Pickens” the owner of this project?  Last I checked, Anywhere Texas is NOT in Minnesota)  in the AWA Goodhue Wind fracas at the Public Utilities Commission and Appellate Court.  To check those AWA Goodhue Wind dockets go to www.puc.state.mn.us, click on the blue “Search eDockets” button, and search for dockets 08-1233 (siting), 09-1186 (Certificate of Need) and 09-1349 and 09-1350 (PPAs).

Todd representing AWA Goodhue and Alan for Wind on the Wires.  It’s too close folks — have you checked your “conflicts” file?  Oh, yes, that’s right, it’s not a conflict because their positions are in alignment, AWA Goodhue Wind and Wind on the Wires are both promoting this project, DUH!  So having Alan and Todd working on this together, well, it’s not a conflict, it’s not scumbaggery, it’s economies of scale, eh?  It’s something that we should know when presented with Wind on the Wires filngs, and their failure to disclose is something I’ll be mindful of, it shows their spots, not that the Commission give a rodent’s rump.

Not to worry, WOW has other pigs it’s also rolling around in the mud with.  There’s the matter of Bill Grant, former head of Izaak Walton League, who was appointed by Gov. Dayton to be the Deputy Commissioner of the Dept. of Commerce’s Energy Division and the Facilities Permitting shop.  And after all, Wind on the Wires is separate, eh?  Well, sort of, but wait, take a look at the first IRS 990 filing by WOW:

2009 Wind on the Wires IRS 990

Look closely, and take note that this IRS 990 was filed on November 12, 2010.  REMEMBER THAT DATE!  Just for yucks, let’s take a look.  The IRS 990 claims income of  and assets of:

$   706,500    Contributions and grants

45    Interest

$    201,524     Cash

$    505,000    Pledges and grants receivable

118 Prepaid expense and deferred charge

$1,130,084

And expenses?  Put on your seat belt:

Yes, that says $3. as in THREE DOLLARS.  EEEEHH?

Here is their lobbying report from Wisconsin — and then there’s Minnesota to consider too:

WOW – Lobbying Report – 2009-2010

And here’s the snippet from the Walton’s 990 reporting that expense:

Let’s see if I understand this — Izaak Walton League is reporting it as an expense on their IRS 990 and not registering with the state, and Wind on the Wires is registering their lobbyists with Wisconsin but reports nothing on their IRS 990.  OK, now for a closer look at that below!

Onward with the WOW 2009 IRS 990.  WOW says that 2009 was a “transitional year” and that:

Uh-huh… right.   “Majority of activity” with over $600k in expenses while at the Waltons, and $3 in expenses independently.  Uh-huh… uh-huh… As for $$$$, “The $423,442 capital contribution to Wind on the Wires is the IWLA’s “Project” net assets at the end of 2009.”  $432.442…

Sure, OK, let’s see what the Walton’s IRS 990 says about that.  Hmmmm, nothing about going independent, and this was filed August 27, 2010, almost 9 months after 2009 ended, you’d think they’d know what happened in 2009:

Here’s the full IRS 990 filing, see for yourself.  Wind on the Wires is the biggest program, income and expenses, that they’ve got going:

2009 Izaak Walton League IRS 990

And remember that Wind on the Wires claim of a “contribution of $423,442?  Here’s it’s $431,942:

The Waltons had $8,500 more at year end, and more importantly, as of the Walton’s 8/27/2010 “year end” filing of their 2009 IRS 990, it was owed to WOW, it wasn’t outgoing money — it hadn’t been paid as of their year end…

We’re in a time warp here.

OK, now for Waltons’ lobbying — their 990 reports $102,000 lobbying expenses in Wisconsin, via Lee Cullen of Cullen Weston Pines & Bach:

And who else does Lee Cullen lobby for?  Let’s see… In addition to “Wind on the Wires” (and remember, prior to the 2010 filing, the 2009 501(c)(3) status and independent filing, it was but a program of the Izaak Walton League) Lee Cullen lobbied for Citizens Utility Board in past years, and while representing the Waltons… errrrrr… Wind on the Wires, throughout 2007 to the present session, he also represented RENEW Wisconsin and ATC Management, LLC … ATC Management, LLC?  You mean ATC?  ATC?!?!?!  Yes, that’s right, AMERICAN TRANSMISSION COMPANY.

Oh, it’s getting too cozy in here… but as above, there’s no conflict, nosiree, no conflict at all, because WOW is in bed with American Transmission Company, their interests are the same, there’s no conflict!

Anyway, back to the date of the Wind on the Wires IRS 990 — it was filed November 12, 2010, just a week after the election, the election where a governor was just elected who shortly thereafter appointed the Walton’s Bill Grant, head of the Midwest Izaak Walton League, to be the Deputy Commissioner of Commerce, Energy Division, in charge of energy facility permitting.  Uh-huh…

And then there’s that WOW  Board of Directors.  More on that tomorrow or Tuesday, but for sure before November 17, 2011,  when Howard “The Slow” of ELPC hosts another bogus “Transmission Strategy” meeting.  I wonder who’s paying for that?!?!

This Thursday, the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission takes up our many Motions for Reconsideration.

PUC Notice of November 10, 2011 Meeting

Thursday, November 10, 2011

(not to be heard before 10:00 a.m.)

Minnesota Public Utilities Commission

3rd Floor Large Hearing Room

121 – 7th Place East

St. Paul, Minnesota

Here are the ones that I filed for Goodhue Wind Truth:

GWT – Reconsideration – Certificate of Need

GWT – Reconsideration – Site Permit

Just out are the:

Staff Briefing Papers

YES!  The Appellate Court agreed with us in the AWA Goodhue (T. Boone Pickens) appeal!  The appeals have been dismissed as premature, that we can/should file AFTER the Public Utilities Commission decides on the several pending Motions for Reconsideration.  We have been invited to file again, with no additional filing fees. GOOD.  That’s a reasonable decision and we’re not out the filing fees (I’d asked the Court for costs, out of the PUC’s hide, but this is sufficient).

Reconsideration Motions will be heard on November 10, 2011, not before 10:00 a.m. at the Public Utilities Commission, 121 – 7th Place East (3rd Floor Large Hearing Room), St. Paul, MN  55101.

This Appellate Court Order is a good outcome, the court agreeing that the PUC’s position that we had to appeal by September 22, 2011 or lose our opportunity to appeal was not grounded in law.

Here’s the choice nugget:

The general provisions of chapter 14 do not supersede more specific provisions governing appeals from the public utilities commission. In re Complaint Against N. States Power Co., 447 N.W.2d 614, 615 (Minn. App. 1989), review denied (Minn. Dec. 15, 1989). The more specific provision controls. Id.

DUH!!!  SNORT!!!!  And the entire Order, hot off the press:

Appellate Court Order to Dismiss – November 1, 2011

It all stemmed from this MemoranDUMB issued by the PUC that was something I’ve never seen the likes of:

PUC Memorandum saying FILE APPEAL OR ELSE!

Guess they won’t be doing that again, will they!!!

Anyone who is alert and oriented knows Scott Olson was seriously wounded by Oakland Police last week.  Scott Olson is a common name here in the Midwest, I’ve been working with a Scott Olson on the Susquehanna-Roseland transmission line.  But no, this is a different Scott Olson.

Turns out Occupy Oakland’s Scott Olson is the nephew of George Nygaard, a Viet Nam veteran, long-time energy activist and the transmission cohort who is handling the CETF intervention against CapX 2020’s Hampton to Rochester to LaCrosse line.  Scott had been in Madison weighing in on the Walker regime, got active with Iraq Veterans Against the War and Veterans for Peace, and got involved with the Occupy movement in San Francisco and then Oakland.

The Nation: How the Wounding of a Vet Who Dared to Dissent Stirred a New Wave of Dissent

George has been interviewed a few times about this:

Olsen’s uncle George Nygaard, reached by telephone in Chaseburg, Wis., expressed disgust at the police handling of the situation.

“There had to be a more civil way of meeting the challenge of dealing with these people who wanted to occupy that space than to kick people’s heads around when they have valid concerns about society, what we’re doing and where we’re going,” he said.

And from CNN:

Injured Iraq veteran is face of Occupy movement

October 28, 2011|By Moni Basu, CNN

A vigil is held for Marine Lance Cpl. Scott Olsen, who was injured during an Occupy movement protest in California.

The chaotic scene unfolded with flash-bang grenades, rubber bullets and clouds of smoke. Canisters whizzed through the air amid deafening booms.

Marine Lance Cpl. Scott Olsen went down.

“Medic! Medic!” someone yelled.

Olsen, 24, had seen his share of war in two tours of Iraq as a Marine. He was lucky, returning home physically unscathed.

But Tuesday evening, near the corner of 14th Avenue and Broadway in Oakland, California, Olsen went down.

The video images went viral: streams of crimson flowing down Olsen’s head, his black T-shirt adorned with a white dove of peace, the war veteran carried to a hospital.

And with that, the Occupy movement had a face.

“We are all Scott Olsen,” declared its website.

“It’s ironic,” said his uncle George Nygaard, that Olsen should be the poster child for this movement.

Ironic, said Olsen’s Marine buddy and current roommate Keith Shannon, that a young man who fought for American freedoms should be injured exercising those same freedoms at home.

He was 14 at the time of the September 11 attacks and graduated in 2005 from Onalaska High School with the same sense of patriotism that drove so many young men and women to join the military.

He was working at Lindy’s Subs and Salads when he decided to enlist. Soon, he was in Twentynine Palms in the Mojave Desert for training and the next year on his way to war.

Olsen deployed twice with the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment to Iraq’s Anbar province, site of some the war’s fiercest battles.

Shannon said they often encountered makeshift bombs in their 2006 tour during which 15 of their fellow Marines died.

Nygaard said Olsen told him about a couple of close calls, one in which he rolled over a roadside bomb that somehow failed to detonate.

Olsen had always been a quiet, shy kid, Nygaard said. A computer whiz, not a jock. And not the type of young man his friends had expected to become an activist.

But war touched Olsen as it does almost everyone who comes that close.

After his last tour of Iraq, he returned home with serious misgivings and gravitated to Nygaard, a former Marine himself who had returned from Vietnam feeling similarly.

In small-town Wisconsin, uncle and nephew talked to each other about the larger issues of war.

“He came back thinking there were better ways to deal with things than war,” Nygaard said.

Olsen’s parents, Nygaard said, didn’t always understand the change in their son. But Nygaard felt an affinity for the young man.

“I am so much more proud of him now than when he was in (the Marine Corps), because he followed through on his convictions,” Nygaard said.

Those convictions led Olsen to Madison this year to join protests of a bill by Gov. Scott Walker to weaken organized labor in Wisconsin.

“Scott thought the workers were getting screwed,” said Nygaard, who was on the streets with his nephew.

This summer, Olsen’s friend Shannon helped him get a job at OPSWAT, a technology firm in San Francisco.

By then, Olsen had become deeply involved with Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War. At one event, he stood with a poster that read: “32 veterans will try to commit suicide every day and 18 will succeed.”

“He worried deeply about his fellow brothers and sisters who are veterans,” Nygaard said.

That’s what prompted him to join the Occupy movement, first in San Francisco and then across the bay in Oakland, Nygaard said. Olsen knew there were many veterans among America’s down and out.

For the past three weeks, he was working during the day and out all night at the Occupy protests, Shannon said. He came home only three or four times to the Daly City apartment the two shared — mainly to do laundry.

Still, the laid-back Olsen was never a screamer. He felt strongly about economic injustice and wanted to add his voice quietly to the fight.

And so, Tuesday night, he was standing there, almost at parade rest, when he went down, witnesses said.

He suffered a skull fracture and was in fair condition in the intensive care unit at Highland Hospital, a hospital spokesman said.

Shannon and Nygaard said Olsen was conscious and communicating by writing on a notepad. Shannon said he has been told Olsen has asked to see him, but doctors have limited visitors. Olsen’s parents were with him at the hospital.

Meanwhile, Oakland police are investigating how Olsen was hurt. Protesters gathered for a vigil in his name.

National outcry over police treatment of the protesters — many others were injured or sickened by tear gas — prompted Oakland Mayor Jean Quan to take responsibility for those who were hurt.

And Scott Olsen became a household name.

But back in Chaseburg, Wisconsin, Nygaard worried for his nephew.

Concussions, he said, can come back to haunt you, even after you get over the bruises. A lot of veterans know that from Iraq and Afghanistan, where head injuries have been common. Only Olsen’s luck ran out here, in America. Nygaard just hopes his nephew will recover to tell his own story.

(above – Overland’s take on what’s really happening here, that Hiawatha is “B to C” of a much larger project, one that’s been in progress for years, check the upgrades at that 280 and East Hennepin substation, and at the Wilson sub at 494 and Nicollet, if you want some concrete and steel proof)

Comments are due tomorrow by 4:30 on Xcel Energy’s Hiawatha Project.  Send to:

Beverly Jones Heydinger, ALJ

Office of Administrative Hearings

P.O. Box 64620

St. Paul, MN  55164-0620

or email:

beverly.heydinger@state.mn.us

Some documents you might want to check out are:

Xcel’s filing today – Substation location maps

For an even better showing of substations and which serve what area, where you can see that the Southtown Sub stretches to the southwest beyond the study zone, and that Aldrich serves a significant part of the study zone, and St. Louis Park a little bit.  Check the Application, Appendix A, p. 24 of 102 (click for larger version):

And be sure to take a look at the Zima Schedule 2 and 3, I particularly like Sched. 3, that shows that there is a lot of wiggle room there for the transformers, look at Aldrich, even Elliot Park with the smaller transformers.  Here’s Schedule 3 — click for a larger view.

Here are the exhibits that I entered at the public hearing:

10-694 – Ex. 27 – South Mpls Electric Reliability Study

10-694 – Ex. 28 – South Mpls Electric Distribution Delivery System Plan

10-694 Ex. 29 – pages from 2007 Transmission Plan

10-694 Ex 30-MAPP NM-SPG Meeting Minutes 7/24/2008

10-694 Ex 31 From SW MN 345kv Application, Appendix 7 Conductor Specs

Two things to check out to compare with their “forecasting” for this project:

MISO’s Futures Matrix for MTEP 12

MISO Peak Forecasting Metholodogy Review Whitepaper 2011