Legalectric

“We make things work for you.”  Oh, ja,  sure, you betcha…

And then there’s Obama’s “fast tracking” and PSEG’s Susquehanna-Roseland transmission line is one of the seven transmission lines Obama picked to ram through.  Northwestern New Jersey is beautiful, a lot like the Minnesota “Range,” lots of rugged terrain, granite, and pine trees.  My clients, Stop the Lines, are based in Newton, NJ, and Fredon Township, which are just west of the New Jersey Highlands, and just east of the Delaware Water Gap.  It’s is such beautiful country.  Not for long if PSEG has anything to say about it.

Guess what they’re doing at 7 a.m. on a beautiful fall morning?  THEY’RE MOWING TREES DOWN:

This is a view off Verdona Road, a cul de sac off of Stillwater Road in Fredon Township.  They started on Tuesday, and were out there today at 7:00 a.m. mowing down everything down to dirt.  There was no notice to landowners and neighbors, just equipment out there clearcutting everything.

I’ve asked neighbors for more photos, will post if they arrive in the inbox.

Jeff Broberg, of McGhie & Betts, is at it again, trying so hard to out do his past antics!

Thanks to Darrel Gerber and Sally Jo Sorensen for this – it is SO Broberg, who said, speaking at a meeting in Winona County:

Broberg’s time at the podium eventually caused contention, and after he was challenged to stick to the recommended two-minute time limit, he responded:

“As the applicant’s representative, I have a higher level of rights on these issues,” Broberg said.

The crowd booed.

Still, Broberg expresses guarded optimism for Oronoco Township’s chances for success — chances bolstered, he says by a bugus route alternative he introduced as a gambit at the most recent project hearing, held before an administrative law judge.

“We didn’t do that for a minute thinking that was a viable option — we knew it wasn’t,” he said. “We needed to have decision-makers really focus on Oronoco Township and really spend m0re time looking at the maps, so we were confident that the judge understood what our issues were.  There wasn’t another subject we spent 45 minutes on in that meeting.”

Oronoco’s Mother of All Reply Briefs

Xcel’s Letter re: Oronoco’s Reply Brief

It just goes on and on and on and on…

Before, and then after:

And the not yet done “after” of floors, walls and woodwork:

Soon… but not soon enough!!

Farmageddon: The Unseen War on American Family Farm has 2 Minneapolis screenings this weekend.

Sat, Oct 15, 1pm at St. Anthony Main
and
Sun, Oct 16, 3pm at Bryant Lake Bowl

The Saturday showing will be followed by a special panel discussion and Q & A.

Panelists include:

• Sarah Anderson, Minnesota State Representative – 43A, author of the Minnesota Raw Milk Access Bill .
• Kathryn Niflis Johnson, BSN, RN, natural health educator, Optimal Health Connection
• Diane Miller, Minnesota attorney, co-founder National Health Freedom Coalition/Action
• Paul Reese, Minnesota grass-based dairy farmer
• Tracy Singleton, owner of Birchwood Cafe

In a large part, this is about raw milk, and what agencies are doing in their “regulation.”

From the Press Kit, here’s her SYNOPSIS:

Americans’ right to access fresh, healthy foods of their choice is
under attack. Farmageddon tells the story of small, family farms
that were providing safe, healthy foods to their communities and
were forced to stop, sometimes through violent action, by agents of
misguided government bureaucracies, and seeks to figure out why.

Filmmaker Kristin Canty’s quest to find healthy food for her four
children turned into an educational journey to discover why access
to these foods was being threatened. What she found were policies
that favor agribusiness and factory farms over small familyoperated
farms selling fresh foods to their communities. Instead of
focusing on the source of food safety problems — most often the
industrial food chain — policymakers and regulators implement and
enforce solutions that target and often drive out of business small
farms that have proven themselves more than capable of producing
safe, healthy food, but buckle under the crushing weight of
government regulations and excessive enforcement actions.

Farmageddon highlights the urgency of food freedom,
encouraging farmers and consumers alike to take action to preserve
individuals’ rights to access food of their choice and farmers’
rights to produce these foods safely and free from unreasonably
burdensome regulations. The film serves to put policymakers and
regulators on notice that there is a growing movement of people
aware that their freedom to choose the foods they want is in
danger, a movement that is taking action with its dollars and its
voting power to protect and preserve the dwindling number of
family farms that are struggling to survive.

Today are the public hearings for the Xcel Energy Hiawatha Project Certificate of Need for a transmission line through the Phillips Neighborhood.

Testimony filed by Xcel

Read the testimony, and check out Appendix A of the Application!  To look at everything that’s been filed in this docket, go to www.puc.state.mn.us and then click the blue “Search eDockets” button and search for docket 10-694.

The Routing docket Intervenors fought hard to get legislation passed to require a Certificate of Need for this project and they got it.  But here we are at the end of the Certificate of Need proceeding,  and not a single one of them intervened in this Certificate of Need docket.  THERE ARE NO INTERVENORS!  So it’s up to the public to ask the questions and demand the answers.

Monday, October 10, 2011

2:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.

Plaza Verde, 1516 East Lake Street

Minneapolis, MN  55407

Be there or be square!