Legalectric

Well, between the poison ivy and the wobbly front end of the car, I felt cursed, but forged on ahead. In the morning at the campsite, the low tire light was on AGAIN, I’d just filled yesterday morning, and on loading on the way to Red Wing, then Waterville, I saw a worn through spot and cord of the tire. Oh great… called around and the only place that had the tires and could get me in was… WALMART! Ran over there and they got me in right away, with the caveat that if the front end was screwed up, they wouldn’t put tires on. Thinking it was the front end, like a tie rod end about to fall off, oh, I was freakin’ but as luck would have it, a tire belt had broken and the tire was falling apart!! Haven’t had that happen before, and GOOD, they slapped tires on and off I went. Made it to Waterville only 10 minutes or so late! The poison ivy didn’t go away, but that’s life… whine, whine, whine…

They spent a full HOUR going over the intro powerpoint, and it was really hard to stick with it given the itchies. I’m glad I had Nancy Prehn there to keep me in line (former Sen. Dick Day said, about Prehn, ““I think you’re a very vicious lady. I’ve never had anybody talk to me like this in my 29 years of public service.” He knows a little about Prehn’s ability to keep someone in line!):

What was interesting is that the Xcel handouts identified a “preferred route,” which had been filed with testimony in March 2025 (which landowners would not know about):

It appears that Waseca, the City of, is on that Highway 14 alternate route, and they didn’t get notice, the Mayor said that they’d received notice a couple weeks ago. The City isn’t on Xcel’s list from their January 31, 2025 notice, and of course, Commerce-EERA didn’t send notice. This needs to be checked out, and I understand the City of Zumbrota is also wanting to weigh in.

Notice has been an issue in this project proceeding. Remember, it was Nancy Prehn who notified CenterPoint of the original proposal to run transmission right over the gas dome. BOOM!

Xcel did not even mention the natural gas dome in its application of April 2, 2024, and didn’t bother to chat with CenterPoint until May 2! Here’s the map that we drew up when doing boots-on-the-ground recon, and put in the record in our comments:

And back to notice — it’s a problem, and I’m trying to track down who got notice when, and it’s hard to even how many “original” landowners were affected and who received notice! Hence these two requests:

Frankly, Asst. A.G. Dornfeld, I don’t care what it’s called or what the rules are for IRs or DPA Requests, I just want the info and I want it in the record. We need to establish who got what notice when. If the route selected affects landowners who did not get adequate notice, you’ve got a problem. And then there’s the question if cities along the route got notice, particularly those along Hwy 14. City of Waseca may not have received timely notice. Is that correct? Are there others that did not receive notice?