Legalectric

25 days in to this May round of camp-hosting, and kinks have been mostly worked out.

For short term, no way, but for a month in one place, it’s all about comfort and function.

We’ve had a lot of rain, lot of cold. The tarp blew down, and has had some pooling since, but no disasters. The wind has blown away chairs, the mat in front of the tent, so the chairs are collapsed in the wind to hold the mat down. In a storm, wind blew a branch down which went right into the tent — thank Dog for Gorilla tape:

For the most part, it’s been too cold to cook outside. I just can’t get interested with the wind and rain, it too literally puts a damper on everything. Maisy is undaunted, tenting is great for her, she’s tent trained!!! She’s also cool in storms, however, one night in the super high winds and rain she did choose to take a time out:

The last few days have been ideal, warm, NOT HOT, and sun, so welcome:

Hosting is cool. There’s not a lot to do, and so much easier than last year when I was gimping around after a snapped hamstring. Have to balance that with a tendency to my not really wanting to deal with people — everyone’s dogs are another matter. We had a run on standard poodles for the first week, apricot (like my Elka), black, and white, and right now, a “parti poodle.” One family on the loop right now has 4 dogs, maybe one for each kid, and they’re all beautifully behaved, the dogs, though one is a bit territorial, oh, the kids too!

Other than a small fire, it’s been pretty… YAWN.

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Minor issues like too many hammocks, or hung on too small trees, NOISY kids at too-early-o’clock. This year, though, it’s been family oriented, and none of the loud drunks from last year — maybe they were too embarrassed and found another park?!?!

It’s been very dry, though the park was all greened up this year, last year it was brown. The first day here there were 5 deer in the field across the way, since then, none until after all the rain, and now they are back — maybe there was no available water up here. And this cutie, he was chasing a female across the road, couldn’t capture them both. It’s bunny season too, they are all over the roads.

I’ve been taking a lot of time off, getting to meetings in Cannon Falls; candidate meet & greet at Hok-Si-La park; Keith Ellison in Red Wing; and protests in Red Wing, Lake City, soon, Wabasha; and a couple zooms and filings; and of course Sam Miletich and his Clearwater Hot Club at the WideSpot:

Officing here isn’t ideal, the signal won’t let me download or upload the larger files, and that’s a PROBLEM. Oh well… And I’m just not in the mood to work.

Work is possible, though, and it’s not a technology hangup! Have pretty decent phone signal, but not quite enough. I have a small battery/charger to keep the phone, tablet, and lights charged up, and because the fridge is only 42 watts, that’d be workable too. But it’s an electric site, so that’s covered, though I sometimes forget to unplug the fridge and drive off… oops…

Speaking of charging, first weekend there was a Rivian pulling a Bambi, and the next week, a Tesla pulling a Scamp. There also seems to be more tenters this year. Oh, and can’t forget the big honkin’ trailer I had to remove from a tree and back into the campsite!!

Oh, there’s the Aurora Borealis — time to dig into the DEIS for Mankato – Mississippi transmission.

I’m attached to Farmington — when I first opened my office and started practicing (practice makes perfect, will I ever get it right???) 30 years ago, my office was in downtown Farmington, next to the bakery (pro tip — never ever work next to a bakery!), and before that, I drove for Bongard Trucking, also in Farmington. I put my office there just in case I ever needed to jump in a truck to make some money, fortunately, that wasn’t needed.

Anyway, there’s a data center bru-ha-ha in Farmington, and I’ve been downloading the filings in the Coalition for Responsible Data Center Development v. City of Farmington to figure out what’s going on. And it’s not just “Farmington,” there’s land in Castle Rock township that Farmington and TRACT want to annex, so Castle Rock is suing too. It’ll take a while for me to load these, and some documents refuse to download. I’ll publish as I go, and I’ll try to put the more important filings up first, so keep in mind this is NOT complete, there will be updates.

There’s an AUAR in the works for Cannon Falls, but I’m in the park and can’t get this uploaded. The AUAR Scoping document is 70mb and I can’t shrink it or upload it. Here’s the City’s page with a link, but that isn’t working … sigh…

Cannon Falls AUAR page

I sent this Data Practices Act Request, and was asked to fill out this form, which doesn’t seem to be the right form, but oh well, here ’tis:

UPDATE:

City Council Planning Commission Work Session

Tuesday, May 20, 2025 – 5:00pm

UPDATE: The form the City Administrator wanted filled out:

UPDATE: Here’s the “ambitious” rough schedule:

UPDATE: Here’s the list of the 1,341 landowners — PUC mailed notice to them May 15:

Here’s Part 1:

Public Hearings & NO NOTICE to 1,341 newly affected landowners May 11th, 2025

And the saga continues, first from Xcel. Xcel DID send notice out to all the landowners, that was on January 31, two weeks after the deadline for intervention:

And then I filed this, and had a short chat with Xcel’s attorney about their notice and the numbers, with more info forthcoming:

Prehearing Conference at 1p on Friday. We’ll see how this goes.

The DEIS has been released for Xcel’s Mankato-Mississippi 345kV transmission line project. Comments are due on June 10th. Send to:

Online: https://mn.gov/puc/consumers/public-comments
Email: consumer.puc@state.mn.us

U.S. Mail: Consumer Affairs Office

Minnesota Public Utilities Commission

121 7th Place East, Suite 350

St. Paul, MN 55101

What to comment about? See all the links below to the DEIS, and consider:

Here’s the hearing schedule, but don’t be surprised if this changes after the Prehearing Conference on Friday:

Here are the piles and piles of the DEIS — it’s in a pdf and the links should work. The narrative, “Draft EIS” #2 on the list below, is probably the most important, and that alone is 872 pages. SOOOO, get to work!