Legalectric

Pat Tammen died late last month. Bob and Pat Tammen have spent so much time and energy working to keep Minnesota a great place to live, and to leave for the next generations. I met them hen working against Excelsior Energy’s Mesaba Project, and in many different contexts, about many different issues, ran into them so many times at the legislature, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, the Environmental Quality Board, and the Public Utilities Commission, and at the EPA HQ up in Duluth. They’re two of the finest people around, and their efforts have made a difference here in Minnesota. Pat Tammen will be sorely missed.

Soudan Snowbirds – Bob & Pat Tammen

Minnesotans protest planned PolyMet mine at Toronto shareholders meeting

And from the MPCA:

Obituary of Pat Montana Tammen

Pat Montana Tammen was born March 22, 1937 in Missoula, Montana to Victor and Margaret Anderson (Quirk) and passed away May 27, 2024 after years of coping with congestive heart failure. The family returned to High Landing, MN shortly after Pat was born.

Pat’s mother died when Pat was ten and her dysfunctional father was usually absent. Her grandmother raised Pat and her sister but died when Pat was twelve. Another relative who turned out to be abusive stepped into Pat’s life and Pat ended up in Gillette Children’s Hospital for ten months at the age of fifteen with severely damaged hips in the days before hip transplants. The doctors repaired her to the point where she made many trips into the Boundary Waters in her adult years.

Pat worked herself through Mayville State Teachers College and then went to Bemidji State University for her Master’s Degree. She taught for a couple of years in Minnesota and then accepted a teaching position in Nenana, Alaska where she married Dean Larson who was killed in a car accident five weeks after their wedding.

Pat then accepted a teaching position in Ely, MN and in 1974 married Bob Tammen. During the 1980’s the Iron Range economy was in bad shape so Pat took a leave of absence and went along wherever Bob found work and taught in the local schools. She taught the children of the Mormons in Utah, miners in upper Michigan, loggers in Wisconsin and farmers in South Dakota.

She tried to help students understand, as we all should, that failed families do not have to produce failed children. We can all make a difference.

Pat returned to the Ely school system and retired in 1997. In retirement, Pat enjoyed the lakeshore on the South Kawishiwi River and worked tirelessly to defend her lakeshore and all of Minnesota’s natural resources.

Pat is survived by husband Bob, sister Therese, nephews Paul and Joe, great nieces Vanessa and Rachel, and great nephew Dalton.

Please send any memorials to your favorite environmental organization.

No public service is planned.

Today the ALJ’s Prehearing Order hit the inbox, and here it is:

I’ve incorporated the dates in the narrative, and the Environmental Impact Statement guesstimates into the chart on p. 3 and here’s how it lands:

Plenty of time to review everything filed so far, and decide whether or not to intervene! Mark your calendars, folks!

To look up the docket, go HERE TO PUC eDockets, scroll down and redundantly click on “Go to eDockets” and enter docket 24-68! Voila!

Tomorrow the Wilmarth/North Mankato to North Rochester to Mississippi/Tremval WI transmission line is before the Commission to address completeness of the application, and a lot more:

This is the project that, as an alternate route, proposes to go over the HUGE 13.25 (at least) underground natural gas storage dome. And the Prehn Family live right on top of that dome!

Nowhere in the application did Xcel mention the dome, and in response to comments, said they’re used to dealing with pipelines, interactions are comment. But Xcel, this ain’t no pipeline. They did finally admit that, and got some info from CenterPoint, including that their proposed route did go over 4 of their gas wells.

Xcel Supplemental Comments, p. 3-4 (won’t upload here at the park, hmmmm…).

Yet another “interesting” transmission docket racing through the Commission… we’ll see how this goes.

To look at the filings in this docket, go to the eDockets (LINK) and then click on “Go to eDockets” on that page, and search for 22-538:

Note who all is challenging the assumptions, the ASSumptions, in this project, and others too.

Here’s what MISO filed today:

And here’s what they’re commenting on, what I filed on behalf of NoCapX 2020 a while back:

Looks like Mr. Small, attorney for MISO isn’t too happy — note he’s MISO’s attorney filing this!

Bitch & kvetch, whine whine… clearly hit a sensitive spot.

Supplemental comments are due June 4th. No problem… that’s days away, and a few days AFTER camp-hosting ends.

In the last 26 days, I’ve experienced weather extremes that may be the “new normal.” Camp-hosting at Frontenac was a way to catch up, to make up for all the trips I’ve planned, paid for, and then had to cancel last year after Alan was diagnosed with Acute Promyelocitic Leukemia (APL), that was May 19, and things changed drastically. Five weeks of hospitalization, followed by 8 months of daily treatment, which is OVER and some time for his immune system to recover, and here we are.

Moving in, there were fresh burns so little growth, and leaves were not out yet, and what a difference 26 days makes:

Camp-hosting has its moments. Some folks need help getting registered; another directions to the metro for family gathering; one woman wanted to complain in technicolor about the mosquitos that she’d never experienced here in 20 years of coming to the park; wonderful food smells; odd things found in fire pits; and neighbor barfing up a distillery (eeeeeuw, good grief, how junior high!); and lots of great dogs to meet, most every campsite has a dog.

Two days into May, the huge storm pictured above came in, and the screen tent, which as guyed down well, went flying into the car when the poles broke and it took off sailing, and of course at 3 a.m. taking it all apart in the fierce wind and getting everything that had been stored inside gathered and covered up. What fun… ahem…

After that, put up a tarp over the picnic table and got the storage “sherpa” with shower curtain raincoat. Whatever works.

The Wawona 6 tent was fine, though the vestibule flooded because there is no floor. OK, fine, dug ditches.

The next rain, the ditches overflowed, wet again, so dug the ditches deeper and longer with little ponds but that wasn’t enough for the next rain, 4″ or so, EXTREME wind and a tornado warning in Red Wing. The tarp, which was seriously anchored, went down… sigh… but neatly, so it could sit like that for a while.

It’s been almost impossible to get any work done. For the first two weeks, the hotspot just wasn’t doing it, access was rare and oh-so-slow, which is really unusual. Forget webex and zoom, it was agonizing. But suddenly it’s working consistently.

Meanwhile, when all this is happening, poor Sadie is freaking — drooling, shaking, so she’s been on a diet of gummies to calm her down, at times, going back to Red Wing with Alan who’s working there.

Yesterday was beautiful, and a couple days without rain everything dried out. And today, only a sprinkle of rain so far, and the wind disappeared! The tarp is back up and I can cook again! That’s the big part of camping for me — thankfully there’s a great breakfast place in Lake City, Heidi’s Huggamug (yeah, that’s the name), and closer is the “Gristle Stop” in Frontenac. But I want to cook!!

Camp-hosting is something we’ve done before, in September, 2019 at Myre-Big Island State Park, and that was in the hybrid.

One horrible storm there, 60+mph winds and we almost lost the awning (weren’t paying attention, and didn’t get it rolled up) and the screen tent went flying then, but was intact. But bottom line, it really makes a difference having hard walls out of the elements if the elements suck, and being able to office at a real table, inside, room for files and to spread out, and enough space inside for dog assistant.

After these 26 days of weather, camp-hosting? YES! Just do it! But… I really can’t recommend camp-hosting in a tent. Packing for a month in a tent is weird, and life in a tent for a month is weirder! The camp-host tasks are no big deal, but with the storms and the changes and workarounds due to weather and too frequent loss of sleep, AAACK, life is a lot more difficult than in a hard-side trailer or even a pop-up.

So on that happy note, there are bathrooms needing attention…