Legalectric

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Oh, it was one of those days, I forgot my camera, and I decided not to bring the coffee pot on the trek through the snow to St. Paul for the Annual Power Plant Siting Act Hearing.

Here’s the explanation of Power Plant Siting from the agency formerly known as the EQB. Just don’t get hung up on the “Power Plant” part of it, because it’s really the means for siting all large electric facilities, including generation, transmission and even nuclear waste. And the point of the hearing is to provide the public with a regular opportunity to tell the agency how it’s doing.

We were off to a bad start before the meeting even began — notice of the meeting was not sent to at least two energy advocates, Kristen Eide-Tollefson and Bill Neuman. Make that three — Linda Hanson, WOLF, just let me know that she didn’t get notice either, and she’s a formal intervenor and past participant in PPSA hearings… and then I remember that a year ago, the PUC allowed Minnesota Power to file its ATC Petition without even serving the intervenors in the Arrowhead case. Two points makes a line… and as with the last time, I’m so furious I’m almost speechless… and that’s rare!

Here’s my point for the PPSA hearing — the big picture, IT’S ALL CONNECTED! The pink squares are COAL plants, proposed and two or three rumored, totalling about 9,000MW. I’m going to do a little more work on this and submit it for the record in every proceeding I’m involved in, and ideally, with overlays of the WRAO report so we can easily see the origins of the projects — over time, all of those projects are being built. Here’s the map:

Wednesday!!! It’s that time again — time for the Annual Power Plant Siting Act Hearing! The Power Plant Siting Act is Minn. Stat. 116C.51-69. Here are links to all of Chapter 116C.

This year it’s a little “different,” as Minnesotans say, because the folks working on power plant siting have been through a few “changes” and… well, we’ll just call it “the agency formerly known as the EQB.” One of the changes is that the hearing will be on a weekday and only during the day.

Bring treats to share, that part of the Power Plant Siting Act will NOT be disappeared by the Pawlenty administration! I’ll fire up my big coffee pot.

The Power Plant Siting Act covers all large energy infrastructure, from power plants to nuclear dry cask storage to transmission — all those projects that provide me and countless others with unending entertainment.

State of Minnesota

Public Utilities Commission

Public Hearing
Annual Review of Energy Facilities Permitting Programs

121 7th Place East
3rd Floor Large Hearing Room
St. Paul, Minnesota

December 14, 2005 2:00 PM

AGENDA

I. Introductions

II. 2005 Legislative Changes
A. Transfer of authorities to the Commission from the EQB
B. Role of the Department of Commerce

III. Projects Review
A. Discussion of projects completed in the past year
B. Identification of pending and anticipated projects
1. Generating Plants
2. Transmission Lines
3. Wind Projects

IV. Public Questions and Comments – Opportunity for the public to submit oral
comments and ask questions of agency staff

V. Adjourn

What’s the point? The primary point of the hearing is to provide an opportunity for the public to be heard. This is our opportunity to tell them what we think about the shift of the Power Plant Siting group to… to wherever they are now… and what we think of the ways the rules work, what we think of the Biennial Transmission Plan, what we think about the minimalized “Buy the Farm” eminent domain provision, and what technical corrections we want and need to make the Power Plant Siting Act work.

116C.58 Annual hearing

The commission shall hold an annual public hearing at a
time and place prescribed by rule in order to afford interested
persons an opportunity to be heard regarding any matters
relating to the siting of large electric generating power plants
and routing of high-voltage transmission lines. At the meeting,
the commission shall advise the public of the permits issued by
the commission in the past year. The commission shall provide
at least ten days but no more than 45 days’ notice of the annual
meeting by mailing notice to those persons who have requested
notice and by publication in the EQB Monitor and the
commission’s weekly calendar.

Lately, I’ve been thinking of deals and lies and extortion and greed and deals and lies and scams and blackmail and deals and lies in the public arena, supposedly for the public good. Yeah, right… And I was also thinking of the former Mayor of St. Croix Falls, and Loren Jennings, formerly Representative and now felon, as I blew past Harris, the Chisago area, on the way up North this week, wondering in the very, very large sense what all we don’t know about what goes on in the name of “public interest,” what goofy schemes are called “public policy” and where that leaves us… My guess is that most of us would be suprised at what all is for sale and how low the price.

Stolen from www.kstp.com

Here’s news in the St.PPP of another corrupt official, former Wisconsin state Senator Chuck Chvala, another one with utility ties:

Prosecutors seek jail time for Chvala

Stolen from Milwaukee Journal Sentinal Online

Here’s some context from Milwaukee’s Journal Sentinal:

After delay, hearing to go ahead for Burke
Caucus scandal cases are still winding through the court system

One of my favorite books is Sissela Bok‘s “Lying,” and of course “Secrets.” Lying has a powerful section on instutional lying, the kind of things people tell themselves when they’re involved in utterly immoral activity, palliatives for politicians’ guilty conscience. And the impacts are broad:

… citizens the world over have less confidence that they can influence what governments do.

The loss in confidence benefits individuals to an externt. Those in a position to resist oppression by bureaucracies will do so, and fewer can be talked into fighting senseless wars. But the major effects are surely negative. For insofar as problems have to be met jointly — problems, for example of disarmament, energy, or population — the fact that government information cannot be trusted is crippling. Bona fide efforts in the joint interest are thus undercut by the cynicism and sense of powerlessness which result from the knowledge of large-scale decpetion.

If we assume the perspective of the deceived — those who experience the consequences of government deception — such arguments are not pursuasive. We cannot take for granted either the altruism or the good judgment of those who lie to us, no matter how much they intend to benefit us. We have learned that much deceit for private gain masquerades as being in the public interest. We know how deception, even for the most unselfish motive, corrupts and spreads. And we have lived through the consequences of lies told for what were believed to be noble purposes.

Lying, p. 144,169 (emphasis added)

Tonight was another of the Bull Renewable Energy shows, this time up on Eveleth, which works out well because I’ve got to be in Grand Marais tomorrow. BUT, much as I enjoy my role of advocating for a different reality, I’m having trouble seeing the point of the Pawlenty administration’s belief that we’re doing just great in renewable energy — how can that be when you consider the big picture? We have plenty of generation and we can CHOOSE our sources of generation – “need” of 6,300MW in region by 2020, 16,712 in MISO queue as of the CapX2020 report, p. 7, and here’s that great little map that shows it all:

If I accomplish anything in this lifetime, I want to have this map imbedded in everyone’s eyelids long enough to understand — it’s not that difficult, but there’s way too much resistence. It’s simple, once more with feeling:

16,712 – 6,300 = 10,412 MW of wiggle room.

How can anything renewable be “progress” and what difference does it make when right now we’re “choosing” other noxious options? Right now, in this binary moment where we’re putting in billions of dollars of infrastructure, we’re faced with about 12-14 new transmission lines, new construction of many old-style coal plants, corporate welfare Mesaba at our expense, and the big money on central station wind and hundreds of miles of transmission with 30-40% line loss, yeah, so what if “we’re #1,” it has nominal impact at best. WE’RE MAKING THE WRONG “CHOICES.”

If we’re building billions of infrastructure that lasts 50-80 years, so what! There’s not much room for renewables when we’re already overloaded with electricity, evidenced in the push for an RES that creates a market! How much well-sited wind does it take to overcome hundreds of MW sited a long way from load? It takes at least three turbines in SW Minnesota to equal two turbines sited near load. How much “clean coal” to offset the “dirty” coal and who is going to make sure the water isn’t contaminated as it is near every other coal gasification project? And again, don’t forget that with the line loss, they must produce an extra 30-40% to make up for that, roll in an extra 30-40% more coal trains, use an extra 30-40% more water. What good is any of this “clean coal” and renewable development when they’re building the old style unsustainable plants and infrastructure and we’re paying for it? Why pretend that carbon sequestration is any solution? It’s nuts, ain’t gonna happen, and it’s not the way to deal with CO2 emissions because it’s very costly, can’t be done here, and it leaks and escapes — it’s false hope and wasted grant money. Why pretend that old style coal plants won’t be built, that renewables will replace noxious generation — it’s false. Color me tired — tired of project announcements that keep coming by every possible means of projects that should constitute “our worst nightmare.” Where’s the outrage?

Sen. Tomassoni did claim Mesaba as “his” and wants me to join in support of it, after all, it’s better than the old ones, but this presumes that if Mesaba is built the others won’t be and that’s just not the way it works. They ARE building the new coal plants. Someday I do hope we can talk about the water problem, little things like selenium, cyanide and arsenic, and I’ll keep forwarding info as I get it, but right now, my focus is on the bigger picture, the hallucination of improvement, that we’re in the lead, when from what I can see, which in energy is a lot, we’re right down the crapper. “We’re” making policy choices that put us solidly down the “been there-done that” path of more central-station coal, and that’s not where I want to be. The commitments, though not made yet, don’t have much of a chance of derailment, though I, the eternal optimist, will keep looking for a way. In simple logistical and financial terms, who can afford to challenge these plants and transmission lines? Those with the resources aren’t about to put up a meangingful challenge and those with these noxious facilities in their communities cannot afford the fight. So where’s the good news? Where’s the outrage?

Enough — off to Grand Marais!

I read Ray Cox’s blog today and it had a familiar ring to it. Ray’s blog post at 6:49 a.m. says:

Earlier this week at the UofMN’s Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment’s Second Annual Research Symposium, Governor Pawlenty reiterated his goal to have Minnesota utilities install 800 MW of community-based wind energy projects by 2010. The Governor first announced this goal in a speech to the Agri-Growth Council on November 8th. That would result in over a billion dollars of wind energy investment in Minnesota’s rural communities and farm economies in the next five years. Iâ??m very pleased that Governor Pawlenty has a solid commitment to wind energy.

That IREE conference was yesterday, and he missed Pawlenty’s speech and Steven Taff’s presentation of Transition Roadmap Toward a Carbon-neutral Energy System for the Upper-Midwest Region, a project he said was funded by the Waltons and ME3.

Anyway, back to business, Ray’s post sounded familiar, and sure enough, here’s an email Mikey Bull sent yesterday at 5:36 p.m.:

FYI — Today at the UofMN’s Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment’s Second Annual Research Symposium, Governor Pawlenty reiterated his goal to have Minnesota utilities install 800 MW of community-based wind energy projects by 2010. The Governor first announced this goal in a speech to the Agri-Growth Council on November 8. That would result in over a billion dollars of wind energy investment in Minnesota’s rural communities and farm economies in the next five years.

As Ray said in an interview with Jeffrey Hill:

RC You can’t be boring….short, to-the-point blogs work best. And you absolutely cannot have someone else write for you…that is always “outed” and people feel very betrayed.

Ray, you be outed — you can’t steal from others! Last time I caught him, and I confess I’ve not been watching closely, he cut and pasted from the Gov’s website and some other site, and it was published as his work in a “Guest Column” in the Northfield News, the majority was taken verbatim and there was no attribution. People get booted out of college, denied admittance to the bar for this. I guess it’s different in construction… and the legislature…

STOP CUTTING AND PASTING AND START CITING YOUR SOURCES!