Legalectric

There’s a water theme this week, two open houses at water treatment plants!

First was the CenterPoint water treatment plant at the underground gas storage facility in Waseca. Nancy Prehn, my Waseca client, invited me down — doesn’t she look viscious, like Dick Day says?

They had a great crowd, a packed room on a rainy night. Not long after I got there, they wanted to quick pack everything up and head out the door! Here’s CenterPoint hiding the evidence!  But great cookies and bars!  And coffee to fuel the drive back home!

They have a treatment facility to handle the waste water that comes up with the gas as they pump it out of the underground storage. They used to dump it on the ground, and in 1998, after 30 years of dumping contaminated water on the ground, they now collect it in underground tanks and then suck it out with a big tank truck called the “gator.”  Why?  Because Nancy Prehn petitioned for an EAW and that started the ball rolling, resulting in this water treatment facility.  Without Nancy, it wouldn’t have happened, and they’d still be dumping out out all over the fields throughout the ~10 square mile area covering the 7 billion cubic foot natural gas storage dome.

Then they dump it in a reservoir and run it through their filtering machines.

And remember, this is the site where Simon Industries wanted to build first a 46MW gas peaking plant, which was permitted, and then a 325MW gas plant, which seems to be stalled. WHEW! There’s been no application, no PPA, nothing other than a legislative exemption from Personal Property Tax.