More Good News Fighting Power Lines on the Midtown Greenway
The Midtown Greenway Coalition and many community groups and citizens opposing Xcel Energy’s proposal to put high voltage power lines on the Midtown Greenway have just achieved another incremental victory. Check out the Coalition web site for more details. (http://www.midtowngreenway.org/XcelEnergyGridExpansion.html)
Last month, the Administrative Law Judge (“ALJ”) supported the Midtown Greenway Coalition and the neighborhoods recommending that the Hiawatha Project power lines be routed underground on 28th Street and that community groups be consulted on reducing the harm — noise, aesthetics, impacts on homes and the Greenway — of substations for the Project. The 100 single-spaced pages of the Administrative Law Judge Report – Hiawatha Project is attached here. The Public Utilities Commission makes a final decision, usually relying heavily on the ALJ’s Report.
Xcel Energy filed a series of exceptions to the ALJ Report, challenging findings about health risks, adverse impacts to property values and impacts to the Midtown Greenway bike ridership if overhead high voltage lines were built. Xcel also tried to exclude the community from playing a role in the design of substations along the Midtown Greenway.
On behalf of the Midtown Greenway Coalition, we filed a Request for Variance seeking permission to comment on the exceptions (the rules don’t usually allow this step) and Reply Comments challenging Xcel’s views. Midtown Greenway Coalition Reply to Xcel Exceptions. The Public Utilities Commission received letters of support for our Variance from the City of Minneapolis, Hennepin County, many neighborhood groups and many individual citizens (68 pages of public comments!)
In such a way, after you have taken Kamagra oral jelly, Kamagra click address cheapest levitra pills soft and similar other products of Kamagra, Forzest, and Silagra etc. you can get cheapest kamagra at online drug store then why to face this embracement of not performing well. Vacuum aids offer the best treatment for Premature Ejaculation In viagra online canadian India If you are going through any of online pharmacies. Though it is order viagra no prescription unfortunate to live with these side effects. Infertility in men can be caused by respitecaresa.org buy cialis online diabetes so it is very important to keep diabetes under control.
Today, Xcel told the Commission they did not object to considering the Midtown Greenway Coalition’s Reply Comments. Xcel also emphasized that “it did not take exception to the ALJ’s recommendation that the Public Utilities Commission (“Commission”) approve Route D (underground along 28th Street) for the proposed 115 kV transmission lines.” This is progress.
The Commission will decide whether the power lines are needed before considering the Hiawatha Project route and substations, so no further action is likely to take place for at least a year on these issues.
But today is one more step bringing us closer to keeping overhead high voltage lines off the Greenway and keeping the Midtown Greenway Coalition and the Phillips, Seward and Longfellow neighborhoods involved in reducing impacts from Xcel’s power line infrastructure.
Landowners’ Rights, Power Lines and Pipelines
Question for today: Will landowners whose property is subject to eminent domain learn about their rights before the utility land acquisition folks come with their small checkbooks and large vats of snake oil to make a first offer?
The good news is that, this fall, in the CapX2020 Brookings high voltage power line case ,the Public Utilities Commission ordered that the utilities provide each landowner with a Fact Sheet explaining their rights at the time of the utilities’ first contact with the land owner. This is the first such notice ever required by the Commission and is particularly valuable because the Minnesota Legislature in the 2010 session just adopted laws requiring utilities to negotiate in good faith, provide appraisals and provide fair compensation when they take property rights for power lines and pipelines.
But, nothing is ever simple. The Commission ordered staff at the Office of Energy Security (OES) to prepare the fact sheet. Their draft, however well-intentioned it might have been, was six very confusing pages. You can see it here if you would like. OES Landowner Fact Sheet. Or you can take my word that it was impenetrable.
The efficacy of spinal manipulation, amitriptyline and the combination of medication such as sildenafil 50mg price and change in lifestyle as a cause of erectile dysfunction. That’s why pharmaceutical company has one set of price for drugs in the U.S. wouroud.com levitra 20 mg and another, cheaper set of prices for medicines in other countries. The great news is that there are now some excellent alternatives to this medicine and they can be bought online. cialis prescription prices In fact many women may feel more overwhelmed than the man as they must cope with his embarrassment and feelings of inadequacy as well as their own feelings viagra canada mastercard wouroud.com of disappointment.
I drafted and submitted a revised Landowner Fact Sheet, trying to keep as much of the tone and text from the OES as I could while simplifying and clarifying what landowners could expect and what their rights might be. My alternative proposal is attached here. .
If you care about making sure that landowners can actually understand their rights when they receive notice, feel free to join the conversation and send the Commission a letter or email asking that they adopt my revised 11/5/10 version of the Landowners Rights Fact Sheet in order to provide more effective notice to the farmers and home owners along power lines and pipelines. The address is Dr. Burl W. Haar, Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, 350 Metro Square Building, 121 Seventh Place East, St. Paul, MN 55101, email: burl haar@state. mn.us. Make sure to say that your comment refers to Landowner Rights Notice and that it is for Docket 08-1474. Feel free to add your own thoughts and perspectives as well.
Minnesota Wild Rice Standard to Make Way for Mining?
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is preparing later this month (November 2010) to propose a rule change to increase the amount of sulfate pollution allowed in Minnesota waters where wild rice grows to 500% of the current limit. The MPCA is relying on a technical report having to do with paddy rice, seemingly without regard to the fact that there is no evidence that this standard would protect naturally-growing wild rice, which only thrives in low-sulfate waters of 10 mg/L or less.
Mining companies have been asking for this change for months, since mining in sulfide-containing rock results in huge volumes of sulfate pollution. The PolyMet NorthMet open pit mine proposal is upstream of wild rice waters in the Partridge River and the St. Louis River and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently cautioned that the proposed PolyMet mine may not comply with Minnesota’s 10 mg/L sulfate standard for wild rice waters.
Last Thursday, about 40 ricers, environmentalist and tribal elders met in St. Paul and Duluth to ask the MPCA not to weaken wild rice sulfate standards and to enforce the rules fairly to protect wild rice from year-round seeps and discharge from sulfide mining. Our briefing materials are included with this post: Preserve Wild Rice Standard .
Call me old-fashioned, but I still believe that mining and other industrial projects should be designed to meet water quality standards. Too often, these days, it seems that the corporations propose a project and then try to weaken, bend and manipulate the standards and the mathematical models so that they can keep cutting corners instead of preventing pollution.
It has also been cialis overnight online launched in many fruity flavors just alike jellies. Study skills courses can teach you valuable lessons towards academic viagra online cheap success. That means you order generic levitra http://www.donssite.com/OPTICALIILLUSIONS/optical_effects.htm save a good amount of dollars on your ED pills get treated in cheaper. Hence this are the only stairs of the success of the online pharmacy and by this it has created a huge platform with the help of which a huge relief is felt in the minds of the viagra viagra persons who are suffering from erectile dysfunction.