Xcel’s Mankato-Mississippi transmission line, a/k/a Wilmarth-North Rochester-Tremval, is moving forward, so it was time for planning and strategizing and yes, we’re MOVING FORWARD too!

I’m working with the Prehn Family, they’ve joined NoCapX 2020 in commenting on this project. They live smack dab in the middle of the underground natural gas storage dome south of Hwy 60 and along/under Hwy 13, and have substantive, real, concerns about the potential for this project to traverse the gas dome.

Xcel did not even mention the natural gas dome in its application, applied for April 2, 2024, and didn’t bother to chat with CenterPoint until May 2 — how can that be?

Having a meeting with the Prehns is a good excuse for camping at Sakatah Lake State Park — the dome extends under Hwy 60 and encroaches on the park – there’s a monitoring station on park land north of Hwy 60! It’s a good opportunity to test out my solo camping set-up, with a smaller tent, smaller than the Wawona 6 and much easier to set up and tear down. PLUS the Prius isn’t stuffed to the gills.

Sakatah is an OK park, the sites are GREAT, but it’s so noisy, between the trucks and their jake brakes coming “down the mountain,” and airplanes headed to MSP. Only one startling owl catch, likely a screaming chipmunk. Anyway, will do a State Park review for my camper group.

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We’ve been working on this project. Here’s the map we put together a couple months ago through hours of reconnaissance (for the record, somehow we missed some transmission that goes from east to west from Hwy 13 north of the CenterPoint pumping station heading west to Co. Rd. 73, so I need to update the map):

We had a good couple of hours to hash things over and get ready to dive in.

Speaking of hash, I had a new camp cooking experience, cooking over an apple wood fire. It’s been decades, and back then it was hot dogs/hamburgers at Camp Tonadoona or church retreats — YUCK! This was a good first attempt with salmon rubbed with pepper/lime, and rice and veggies too. Yeah, I’m bragging:

Stay tuned and we’ll have more on this transmission project. Until then, here’s a cicada fresh into the world:

UPDATE: Short-sighted? Well, it’s not so simple. There’s a lot of history, and a lot of attempts to deal with the conundrum of state School Trust land in this wilderness area. Needed more info, so I went directly to the source! Had a good lengthy with DNR rep, and I’ll be updating this. The fed’s page is missing crucial info – see “Press Release” below. Until I get to a thorough review and update, check that out, it answers most of my questions:

The DNR has proposed a sale of our School Trust Lands to the feds The School Trust Lands, and it’s a mess, has been for decades. A major aspect of this is that the state cannot lease or sell off timber or mineral rights within the national park, so it is NOT generating revenue. It’s a quite literal stranded asset, it’s the state’s but the state can’t do anything with it to generate revenue for the trust!

COMMENTS DUE SEPTEMBER 3, 2024 11:59:59 PM (Central Standard Time).

Per the DNR’s site, are “2.5 million surface acres and 1 million additional acres of mineral rights included in the School Trust Land portfolio.” “Funds that are distributed from the Permanent School Fund are determined by student enrollment on a per pupil basis rather than by the concentration of School Trust Lands in a given school district.” However, as above, those parcels within the Boundary Waters wilderness aren’t generating a dime.

There has been an attempt to exchange, through a number of parties, for Potlach landwhere trees just weren’t growing fast enough and Potlatch wants out. Sounds reasonable, but…

In addition to the DNR and the School Trust folks, there’s the feds owning and operating the Boundary Waters Wilderness, and there’s also the tribes’ jurisdiction over 1854 Ceded Territory, which covers most of the area where the School Trust land is. A letter was sent by area tribal governments notifying the DNR that there would be no expansion of School Trust lands within Ceded Territory, no partial or full land exchange in that area.

Ceded Territory covers almost all of the Superior National Forest, plus pretty much doubling the area heading south to Pine County. What’s left? Perhaps there’s that area outside the Ceded Territory to the northwest of St. Louis County into Koochiching County, but … So now what? It seems that outright sale of the land is the only option.

This difficult position is probably why the fed’s page doesn’t make sense, it’s not explained.

From the fed’s page, here’s Phase One of the Plan of DNR and the Minnesota Office of School Trust Lands, CHECK IT OUT:

Phase One of the Plan

The federal Draft Environmental Impact Statement was withdrawn on July 3 2024:

Superior National Forest; Minnesota; Superior National Forest School Trust Land Exchange Project; Withdrawal of Draft Environmental Impact Statement

Huh??? It was completed a long time ago and has sat there moldering. Now it’s history. So what does that mean?

A little birdie told me about this Comment page, and from there I started digging:

COMMENTS DUE SEPTEMBER 3, 2024 11:59:59 PM (Central Standard Time).

From there, there’s a link back to this project page to see what it’s all about (clear as mud), what’s proposed, what land is affected:

School Trust, St. Louis County, and TCF Land Purchase

According to the Press Release, “The SNF anticipates analyzing the comments and environmental effects of the proposed project and making a decision using a categorical exclusion under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).” That means NEPA will not apply, an Environmental Impact Statement is not necessary, the end. So will comments have any impact? And given no expansion of School Trust land in Ceded Territory, what options are left?

????????????

HERE’S THE PRIMARY DOCUMENTATION

On that project page, you can find these documents – BUT NOT THIS PRESS RELEASE. AGAIN, IT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT BECAUSE IT EXPLAINS PROCESS AND LACK THEREOF, i.e. use of CATEGORICAL EXCLUSION:

… Press Release is the best place to start, and do review the links below. Yeah, it’s a lot, but at least skim, so you can make an informed comment:

School Trust, St Louis County, and TCF Land Purchase (66600)

School Trust, St. Louis County, and TCF Land Purchase Scoping Cover Letter.pdf

School Trust, St. Louis County, and TCF Land Purchase Scoping Package.pdf

Attachment A_School Trust Candidate Parcel Overview Map and Land List.pdf

Attachment B_St. Louis County Candidate Parcel Overview Map and Land List.pdf

Attachment C_TCF Candidate Parcel Overview Map, Index Map, Area Maps, and Land List.pdf

Attachment D_School Trust, St. Louis County, TCF Overview Map.pdf

Attachment E_Minnesota DNR BWCAW Withdraw Letter.pdf

Attachment F_St. Louis County Consideration Letter.pdf

I’ve not seen anything about the Boswell “discharge” lately (that term “discharge” is an improvement over “leak” or “spill,” those sound too dainty!). It seems KAXE is reporting, but STrib and MPR? Concerned, I fired off a missive to the MPCA to get the latest, and turns out, it’s a federal issue, and it’s the EPA in charge:

EPA page – Minnesota Power Discharge

The July 19 update was jawdropping — the first sentence, confirming the July 20th KAXE report:

MN Power updated the estimated release volume from approximately 1 million gallons of coal residual slurry water to approximately 5.4 million gallons.

5.4 million gallons…

Color me skeptical, but can that be cleaned up? How? What comes to mind is the bogus “Dilution is the solution to pollution.”

Here’s the EPA’s latest update:

July 22 – August 8, 2024: Site Update

Soil excavation in the source area is complete. EPA and MPCA continue to monitor and sample water quality in Blackwater Creek and larger Blackwater Lake area.

The sediment sampling plan for Blackwater Creek has been approved with expected sampling on Friday. EPA, MPCA and LLBO discussed and approved preliminary ground water/geoprobe investigations. To date, more than one million gallons of water from Blackwater Creek has been recovered from three sumps along the shoreline. A plan has been finalized and approved to increase water pumping/recovery to add an additional 500 gpm.

EPA met with Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe (LLBO) natural resources and wetlands staff, MPCA, MN Power and Barr Engineering to tour the impacted area and focus on Tribal natural resource protection and further defining the nature and extent of the release.

It’s been about a month an a half…

The EPA page bears watching. Once more with feeling:

EPA page – Minnesota Power Discharge

Kamala Harris has picked Tim Walz, yes, our Gov. Tim Walz, as her choice for Vice President. I’m heartened and looking forward to the next 90some days.

The clips, stories, videos turning up are perfect. You betcha there are some things he’s done, some of his policies, that I’ve fought, objected to, grimaced, but for this ticket, at this point in time, what a great choice. And he got to this point so quickly, though from a look at his life, his career(s), he’s been preparing carefully, one step at a time. Exceedingly well rounded background, with no scandals, no felonies much less 34, no platoon of ex-wives, no grifting.

Harris and Walz — Looks like a winning combo to me. “Let’s Make America Not Too Bad Again” How Minnesotan can ya get?

Meanwhile, I’m rather down for the count, a cracked tooth yesterday morning on peanut butter toast(!), spent yesterday and today at dentist, and it’s not salvageable (I’d TOLD them it was cracked, and it is, top to bottom), so next week, I get to lose another tooth. Meanwhile, I am a CRABBY-PANTS! Look out!

The Trump administration “policy” was just plain WRONG!

I’ve been wondering if it’s dawned on the Repblicans and MAGAs yet that Trump’s absurd positions and bizarre statements about COVID matter, and that his phenomenal policy failure has an impact in the context of elections. It’s such a DUH! But that would require looking at the facts, so hard to ignore, but facts, who cares about facts, eh?

As of June 14, 2023, 1,134,641 people in the U.S. died of COVID:

And voter demographics:

But yes, let’s look at the facts. 858,323 voters over 65. If ~53% of the voters 65+ are R voters, roughly 454,911 of those voters died of COVID. (Recognizing that there is a distinction between R voters and MAGA voters, also recognizing that many R voters are fed up with MAGA, and even some MAGAs are fed up, add them to defecting or dropping out voters.) Has it occurred to the Rs that the anti-vax and anti-mask and “OPEN UP” and denial of COVID had an impact on their base?

Oh my… let’s dig a little deeper than COVID!

There’s race to consider:

Check this out, Monday, July 29th at 8:00 p.m. ET — preregister:

WHITE DUDES FOR HARRIS

And then if you look at the chasm between old fart men and women:

So with a little triangulation, it’s clear that white men 50 and up need work. Well, we all know this, but there it is.

Oh, but income… interesting that the middle and upper-middle income are more R than D, and then the highest income voters swing back to blue.

Now’s the time for this old fart demographic to get to work. Never ever take any election for granted, and don’t mistake blabbering on the internet for WORK. Words of wisdom from Robert Reich (mindful that Biden is no longer an issue):

How to prevent America and the world from falling into fascism

And as Heather Cox Richardson recommends, focus on what you do best, and do that in the political realm, i.e. this writer needs to WRITE! This was July 19, so about 3 weeks until the next one:

Letter: Manifestation of MAGA’s dangerous rhetoric