December 10, 2024 was the Power Plant Siting Act Annual Hearing. It was before ALJ Christa Moseng, and there were very few commenters. I’m not seeing any minutes, and don’t know if they’ll ever be posted. There were only two of us commenting, myself, and Dan Wanbeke, who has a CapX 2020 line on his land. If the proposed MN Energy CON line is built, he could be surrounded by transmission.

Wanbeke gave a detailed description of his experience and takeaways, one of the most important was a comment of the PUC’s Bob Cupit (since retired):

There are winners, and there are losers.

A very interesting part of Wambeke’s testimony was regarding the stray voltage problem, all the water in their farm was energized, and the shower tested at 15 VOLTS! The local utility has been out many times, and when Capx 2020 was down for a brief time, no stray voltage, and when it was again energized, the stray voltage was back. He testified about induction current, that when there’s a distribution line running parallel to a massive transmission line, there can be induction current (this also happens with pipelines), and the distribution lines are indeed parallel with CapX transmission. This is NOT rocket science, and the CapX utilities better deal with this. If meeting minutes come out, I’ll post, though the thought occurs to me that this was a “hearing,” so it will probably be a top secret transcript. Will keep an eye out.

These next two tidbits were handouts at the hearing:

And now on to comments filed since:

FYI, the DOT “Policy of Accommodation” that should be entered in every docket, because it sets out how utilities can interact when projects are proposed near roads — I’ve observed cases where the utility paid no attention to DOT comments and landowners nearby were screwed with little notice because utility had to quickly alter plans because DOT would not allow planned placement:

On to the regular folks, so far just two of us!

I’d made oral comments at the hearing (via web), but had to put it in writing to be more specific, because the changes are immense, and there needs to be a record. As I said in my Comment, not for the first time, “I’m disgusted, frustrated, incensed, and committed to showing up before the Public Utilities Commission until I drop dead someday in the large hearing room.” I had to file a corrected version, was bleary-eyed and found typos, missing words and punctuation, and FYI, the first one below has been corrected:

This one, from Kristen Eide-Tollefson for CURE, Communities United for Responsible Energy, is important because she’s seen the changes over the decades, THREE decades, of dealing with the Power Plant Siting Act. Now it no longer exists, hence Eulogy for the PPSA:

Let’s trot out this one again, we’re overdue for a Transmission Transition:

Couldn’t he have at least been sentenced for 4 years of (White) House arrest, ankle monitor, and be required to turn in his passport?

I can’t imagine how this can work.

And then there’s security clearance — what’s required for a guy who hides boxes with classified material in a bathroom, on a stage in ballroom, whisks many file boxes of them out of White House to airplane — and it’s disturbing news — per Uniform Code of Military Justice page:

So he’s given free rein, and he, with the Supreme Court’s backing, can do anything as long as it’s “official business.” Great, just great… everyone on 5th Avenue best be wearing bullet-proof vests.

Who’s he, who’s his administration coming after?

And now, need to shut off internet — too much already today.

Impact of coffee intake on human aging: Epidemiology and cellular mechanisms

Potential 17% impact!

CHEERS!

In the StarTribune today:

Soaring CWD numbers in southeastern Minnesota prompt DNR to stop culling deer

Here’s the STrib’s map below — this map might be from just this year’s testing?

I’ve been tracking chronic wasting disease in deer for a while, right up there with bovine spungiform encephalophy (BSE, “mad cow”) sheep scrapie, even in pigs, and of course Creutzfeld-Jakob in humans (ages ago, it was also Jakob-Creutzfeld). This came to my attention in the late 1990s, when a swimming coach at Northfield high school died of Jakob-Creutzfeld.

• Of mad cows and pissy deer… September 15, 2005
• Downer cows = Mad Cow disease? February 11th, 2008
• Mad Cow Beef & MN Dept of Education February 11th, 2008
• They’re actually saying “MAD COW” February 19th, 2008
• Creutzfeld-Jakob variant – 4th declared case June 6th, 2014
• More CWD (chronically wasted deer) in MN December 30th, 2016

And then there’s all the elk at Elk Run:

Sharpshooters begin destroying elk herd

What does CWD mean to Elk Run development?

From CWD-INFO.org, a detailed source of info which seems up to date:

Preliminary Test Identifies CWD-Positive Wild Deer in Southeast Minnesota

MN – News release: CWD confirmed in a wild deer near Wheaton in western Minnesota

Here’s the CWD-INFO.org map:

And reason for concern among hunters:

2 hunters may have died of prion disease from eating contaminated deer meat, researchers say

Deaths of three men prompt Wisconsin to look for connection to fatal brain disease in deer