Legalectric

Doug Jones, in his editorial yesterday in the Northfield News, says I ought to participate! What a novel concept! If only he’d participate, he’d know that I am… sigh… there he goes again, shooting himself in the foot because he can’t be bothered with obvious facts.

Who is this guy and what’s his interest? Doug Jones came here from somewhere else, bought a chunk of Wheeling Township, built a house that has people gawking, was instrumental in the Valley Grove Church restoration, but isn’t overt or visible in his political activity. I can’t tell if he’s a “legend in his own mind” or a close personal friend of Karl Rove’s who is pulling strings and getting folks to toe the party line. He’s got money, no doubt about it, and I’ve heard rumors of a connection to Enron — maybe… he knows a few things about transmission regulation and understands the importance of state, not FERC, control — he looks and carries himself like an absent-minded professor or electrical engineer — so maybe he’s from the electric industry. Jones contributes to many political candidates (do a search), hosts political fundraising and civic shindigs, and when Rep. Ray Cox performs he quietly watches from the sidelines. Now and then comes out with truly bizarre ideas that make it seem he doesn’t care about his credibility — I guess I won’t complain! Anyway, here’s his latest:

Don’t sue; do participate

To the editor:

Rice County needs a director of planning and zoning with the depth of experience and professionalism of Arlyn Grussing.

Unfortunately, the woman who is again suing Rice County because she thinks the Rice County Board of Planning and Zoning staff should be sentenced to “remedial training â?¦ regarding environmental review,” (Northfield News Nov. 19) is at it again!

Something called Rice County Land Use Accountability Inc. has already cost Rice County taxpayers over $10,000 to defend against her suit, which was dismissed by District Judge Bernard Borene. Perhaps her on-going lawsuits contributed to Rice County losing its highly experienced chief civil servant for planning and zoning.

In her insinuation that Rice County should appoint someone acceptable to her personal environmental philosophy, she leaps over to a Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) criticism of the Interstate 35 “rezoning scheme” because the infrastructure is not already planned or implemented. Question: Shouldn’t zoning planning come before infrastructure?

Why doesn’t Carol Overland help by participating on one of the county’s land use committees? Instead, we have continuing lawsuits by Carol Overland’s Rice County Land Use Accountability Inc., which does not have one single known Rice County land owner on its board of directors or among its officers, including Carol Overland, a resident of Goodhue County.

Doug Jones
Nerstrand

Here’s the DOT comment on the AUAR. Download file What do you think???

Here’s the membership of Committee 1

I’ll upload my comments after the paper publishes it. Stay tuned…

Decades ago, when Willie & the Bees were coming back across the U.S. border after a tour of Canada, they had to unload all their gear and were strip searched. Here we are, 25-30 years later, and we’re throwing Canadians out unreasonably … when nothing changes, nothing changes…

Thanks to Doug Grow for this report in today’s STrib:

Septuagenarian Canadian snowbirds can’t evade vigilant U.S. border cops
A septuagenarian Canadian couple is refused entry by U.S. border guards because it looks like they might do some work.

The Hawleys were — gasp! — attempting to transport a small yellow box of tools across the border. Agents spotted the toolbox and told the couple they were not welcome to enter the United States.

“They said we must be going to Florida to do work,” Diana Hawley said. “We tried to tell them that we always carry the toolbox in the car. If there’s a breakdown, we might need it. And once we get to Panama City we might want to hang a picture or change a light bulb.”

For the first hour of the interrogation, the Hawleys kept thinking this was just a misunderstanding. They have a hard time seeing how they can be confused with construction workers. He’s 71, she’s 70. He wears a knee brace and doesn’t get around so easily.

By the second hour, they knew it was serious.

“And we knew we were in real trouble when they photographed us and fingerprinted us,” she said.

Then U.S. officials shipped the Hawleys back to Canada. When they stopped at the customs office on the Canadian side of the border, Diana Hawley got emotional. “The girl at Canadian customs said, ‘Why were you refused?’ I just started to cry.”

We should be glad their tools weren’t declared weapons?

And on that note I’ll try to collect my thoughts on Bush and wiretapping… and synthesize all this coal, CO2, and sequestration research.

Things that go boom — and things that make you go hmmmmmmmmm…

There’s natural gas geysering up in Oklahoma.

A dam gave way in Missouri.

But first a little history…

Hutchinson gas geyser near trailer park explosion site

Nancy Prehn, my client in Waseca, the one who Sen. Dick Day says is “the most viscious woman I’ve met in 29 years in office,” the one who lives on top of the dome, on top of 7 billion c.f. of natural gas, has wondered about the safety of underground natural gas storage. She found that not too long ago, downtown Hutchinson, Kansas blew up, lit up, when gas came up through abandoned wells downtown and in a trailer park. See the Kansas Geological Survey site for details.

Explosion and fire in downtown Hutchinson

A housing development was proposed above gas storage in Playa del Ray, California, and in a press release experts warned against combining the two:

In their recently published book titled, “Gas Migration” (Butterworth-Heinemann Publishers), George V. Chilingar, PhD, (Professor of Petroleum and Environmental Engineering, University of Southern California), John O. Robertson, Jr., PhD (Registered Petroleum Engineer), and Bernard Endres, PhD, (Oil and Gas Environmental Consultant), warn that housing should never be built over these high-pressure sites because of the problem of uncontrolled gas migration through the geological substrata.

So what’s happening now???

OKLAHOMA GAS ERUPTION