AFCL appeals PUC denial of EAW Petition
March 20th, 2020
On Wednesday, Association of Freeborn County Landowners filed an appeal of the Public Utilities Commission’s denial of AFCL’s Petition for and Environmental Assessment Worksheet. It was mailed Certified Mail yesterday, as required by statute, and today, filed on the PUC’s eDockets:
The PUC really screwed this up, in so many ways. Granted there are few Petitions for EAW to the Commission, and Commission staff may not be familiar with EQB rules and process. However, in the only other Petition for Environmental Assessment Worksheet/EIS, they denied a Motion and then a Petition for EAW forwarded by the EQB, and it was sent back to the Commission by the Appellate Court:
In the Matter of Minnesota Power’s Petition for Approval of the EnergyForward Resource Package
Lesson not learned. We’ve been trying to get environmental review of wind projects for how long now, particularly given the demonstrable impacts, actual and constructive notice, beyond the “potential” for environmental impacts. Bent Tree noise excedences and landowner settlements? What more is needed?
Bent Tree Order filed by PUC
In the Staff Briefing Papers, which is staff’s recommendation to the Commission, over and over it was said that the Petition was insufficient because there were not 100 signatures, but there were 380+ signatures! In the Staff Briefing Papers, over and over it was said that the Commission could declare the Petition insufficient, when it is NOT the Commission’s job to address sufficiency, that was already determined by the Environmental Quality Board, which validated the Petition and forwarded it to the Commission for action! Read the Briefing Papers… really, it’s that absurd:
I fired off a letter requesting correction, which never happened:
And even after denying AFCL’s Petition, they went further, and provided “notice” in an email to the EQB that the Board had made its decision:
And that “notice” was published in the EQB Monitor on February 18, 2020:
And yet to this date, they’ve not filed an Order or the Record of Decision on this decision! WHAT?!?! Yes, really!!
I’d sent a letter to the EQB about the Commission’s failure to file the Order and Record of Decision nearly a month ago:
STILL NO ORDER OR RECORD OF DECISION. There are no Findings of Facts to explain, to support, the Commission’s decision. I guess it’s harder to make them up than staff thought?!?!
Meanwhile, the appeal deadline of a decision on an EAW Petition is 30 days after the notice is published in the EQB Monitor. Minn. Stat. 116D.04, Subd. 10. It’s kind of hard to Appeal a decision without the necessary documents, so I can guess that’s one more reason the Commission has chosen not to file! Oh well… ONWARD!
Prior posts on AFCL’s Petition for Environmental Assessment Worksheet:
Freeborn EAW – more time!
EQB forwards EAW Petition to PUC
Petition for EAW – Freeborn Wind
9th Anniversary of Fukushima Daiichi meltdown
March 11th, 2020
Nine years ago, when this happened, I posted as much as I could find about it, and it was hard to nail info down, but this photo above pretty much said it all, massive explosion.
Today, the release of SimplyInfo.org’s 9th Anniversary report:
View The 9th Anniversary Annual Report Here
SimplyInfo.org, a group of talented volunteers deep-researching this issue, has been tracking this for 9 years now. From their site’s “about us” page:
Back when it happened, I put these up on my Legalectricsite, and shortly after it happened, Day 3 I believe, I had over 4,000 hits in ONE DAY! People were hungry, desperate, for information. When I’d reported the explosion, the first one, someone commented that “no way was it melting down,” and that made no sense, even given what little objective information we had. And in fact, it was a lot worse than those folks thought. I knew it was a disaster, but as it kept getting worse, well, stunning… and the impacts are still affecting us, will be for thousands of years. Right now, they’re on the verge of dumping radioactive water into the ocean!
These Legalectric posts below were no real scoop, “just information lite,” a compilation of public info, news reports, but its information that we in Minnesota should take into account because our Monticello nuclear plant is the same design as Fukushima Diiachi:
The “peaceful atom” strikes Japan March 12th, 2011
Fukushima Reactor 3 blows… March 13th, 2011
Nuclear saga continues in Japan March 21st, 2011
Fukushima Daiichi update March 26th, 2011
Another Fukushima Daiichi update March 30th, 2011
More on Fukushima nuclear disaster April 8th, 2011
Fukushima can’t happen here? Uh-huh… right… June 6th, 2011
Fukushima admittedly a mess… August 9th, 2011
One year after Fukushima Daiichi meltdown March 10th, 2012
Fukushima Daiichi — 4 years ago today March 11th, 2015
Alan Muller on Fox and Friends
March 3rd, 2020
From their main page, with… ALAN!! Linked below:
Breakfast with ‘Friends’: Who will Minnesota voters choose on Super Tuesday?
Here’s another clip:
Breakfast with Friends – longer clip
The guy asked Alan what broadcast media he relied on, and Alan told him we don’t have a TV and that he’s never seen their show before. Yeah, that says it all!
Where were you the night of June 25, 1998?
January 13th, 2020
The June 25, 1998 blackout report needs to be on the interwebs available to the world.
June 25, 1998? That’s the night of the transmission fail that disconnected the Midwest from the Eastern Interconnect. That question was asked by Minnesota Power’s attorney of each and every witness, I think other than MP, but maybe MP witnesses too, in the Arrowhead transmission project hearing, circa 1999-2000. There were cries of “Hospitals will go dark without the Arrowhead project,” “We’re going to freeze in the dark in an incubator” which became “We’re going to freeze in the dark on a respirator without a job” — it was so histrionic.
The Arrowhead transmission project was project 13J of the WRAO Report, and the WIREs Report, which presented many transmission lines, but chose the Arrowhead transmission project as the “be all and end all” of transmission in the Midwest, that it would fix all the transmission problems:
The hearing went forward, 2 weeks in Minnesota, where MP got an exemption from Minnesota Power Plant siting law, and for TWO MONTHS in Wisconsin, for Round 1, then 2 weeks after the cost went way up, and another 3-5 days of hearing later when cost went up again. They got their permit, it’s up…
But in that first hearing, I did get to introduce the report that showed that the June 25, 1998, blackout was NOT caused by too little capacity, it was not caused by an unreliable transmission system. It was caused by corporate greed, transmission operators running the Prairie Island-Byron 345kV’s TCEX flow over the limit, disregarding operating guides, and disregarding requests and demands to ramp the power down, violating MAPP Operating Standards and NERC Operating Policies. SHAME, NSP, SHAME!!! And MP was so tacky, trying to attribute their desire for bulk power transfer to the blackout, that the Arrowhead project would save us. Yeah, right…
Here’s the report, below, it’s a gem, I’m posting this today because I’m shoveling off my desk and there are a lot of gems here, so posting them will get them out into the world in perpetuity — can’t disappear something from the internet! Scanning them in is taking a while, a royal and dusty pain in the patoot, but just for you inquiring minds, HERE IT IS:
Here are a couple snippets, starting with p. 2:
Bottom line?
OPERATE WITHIN OPERATING GUIDE LIMITS!!
DOH!
The report goes on and on with stupid human tricks – the flow was NOT reduced by NSP System Operators:
From pps 10-11:
So if the operators had been doing the job, not focused on keeping that line operating with all that power flowing through it, selling that power, the blackout may not have happened. Great…
And for some reason, NSP operators were not communicating:
300 MW above the operating guide limits:
OPERATE WITHIN OPERATING GUIDE LIMITS!! DOH!
Operator error is a too-generous way to put it — but for the efforts to NOT reduce power flows, the inadequate response of system operators and their failure to communicate the degree of the problem, the blackout may not have happened. And then utilities have the nerve to say that because of the June 25, 1998 blackout, we need the 13j Arrowhead transmission project?
Xcel wants to sell coal on market… DOH!
January 10th, 2020
How many years have I been saying that the purpose of this massive transmission build-out is to market coal elsewhere? Decades, folks, it’s been decades… And this latest from Xcel Energy, Notice of Comment period just out today, is demonstration that they plan to keep running those coal plants and selling it. Will the Public Utilities Commission care?
Here’s the newly released Xcel Energy plan, and a comment period:
The plan?
Here’s the Notice:
What to comment about? From the Commission’s Notice:
Bulk power transfer was the whole point of the transmission build-out, to be able to sell anything generated at any Point A to any Point B. And then coal generated here could be sold elsewhere, eastward via transmission, while we use generation that isn’t quite so dirty (but that’s dirty in its own way). We’re so clean here in Minnesota… NOT! We’ve been a pass through for Dakotas’ coal for a while, and now, they’re asking permission to keep burning coal here and send that energy eastward.
They built all that transmission, no Commission I’ve seen has ever found a transmission plan they didn’t like and roll over for, and now we’re paying for it. Rate increases anyone? Are you paying attention to what’s pushing those rates up?
Why ever would I say that it’s all about selling coal? Well… there’s a bit of a pattern going here. There was the Chisago project, starting in 1996 and three iterations in Minnesota and Wisconsin, not to mention the WRAO report:
WRAO laid out many transmission lines and the Arrowhead transmission project, circa 1999, was selected as the be all and end all of transmission after many hearings were held, one hearing in Minnesota and THREE before Wisconsin PSC, the price kept going UP, UP, UP!
But then on September 8, 2001, a meeting with likely intervenors to see if they could be convinced to “approve” of the SW Minnesota 345kV line, remember that, Commissioner Matt Schuerger? I pointed out all that coal lined up in the SW MN 345kV study… and from there on to the SW MN 345kV line, part of ABB plan for coal:
Don’t ya just love that name? It says it all. Why the ABB Lignite Vision 21 Transmission Study? The opening paragraph, linked above, DOH! says:
The SW MN 345kV line was the part that’s running east to west on the lower part of that yellow map, from Split Rock sub to Lakefield Junction. Some claimed it was an “It’s for WIND!” line, but that’s a lie, just read that ABB study again. The powerflows showed that it wasn’t to carry energy off of Buffalo Ridge, there was just 213-302 MVA coming off Buffalo Ridge into the over 2,000 MVA capacity line:
How stupid do they think we are? Well, money talked, and that money ruled the day. That SW MN 345kV line and the TRANSLink Settlement Agreement and 2005 Transmission Omnibus Bill from Hell (and changes to Minn. Stat. 117.189) laid the groundwork to bring us $2+ BILLION of CapX 2020:
And then the MISO MVP 17 project portfolio, now over $6 BILLION:
And then they have the audacity to suggest we need MORE transmission?
Upper Midwest utilities to study transmission grid in light of ambitious carbon reduction goals
So please explain how selling coal generated electricity on the MISO market is consistent with carbon reduction goals?
What a crock…
