CapX 2020 in the R-W Beagle
We’ve just finished the CapX 2020 transmission project road show of MOES scoping meetings for the Hampton-Alma transmission line (remember, this is just one part of CapX). The last meeting was covered in the Red Wing Republican Beagle, below.
Here’s a simple form to help trigger ideas for what should be included in the environmental review:
You’ve all got until May 20 to send comments on scoping to:
The OES will accept written comments on the scope of the EIS until May 20, 2010.  Please include PUC Docket No. TL-09-1448 on your comments. Comments should be mailed, emailed, or faxed to:
Matthew Langan
State Permit Manager
Minnesota Office of Energy Security
85 7th Place East, Suite 500
St. Paul, Minnesota, 55101-2198Fax: 651-297-7891
matthew.langan@state.mn.us
Comments may also be submitted on the Commission’s energy facility permitting website:
http://www.energyfacilities.puc.state.mn.us
And from the Beagle:
Residents raise concerns about power line proposal
By: Mike Longaecker, The Republican Eagle
CANNON FALLS – If the route of a massive transmission line project ends up crossing Joe Lopez’ property, he wants to know what’s in store.
Will there be a constant buzzing? How about health issues? Safety?
“This a concern to me and everyone in my neighborhood,” the Cannon Falls resident said Thursday at a public meeting to discuss the CapX2020 project.
Officials for the project – driven by a consortium of utility companies – hope to construct new high-voltage power lines between Hampton, Minn., and La Crosse, Wis.
The preferred route would cut diagonally across western Goodhue County, including Cannon Falls, before banking east near Pine Island on its way toward Alma, Wis.
The project is in its routing process, which included a full week of meetings this week along the proposed route.
Several area residents came forward at Thursday’s meeting to register concerns with project officials and the Minnesota Department of Commerce’s Office of Energy Security, the agency that is reviewing the CapX proposal.
Richard Busiahan, who represented St. Paul’s Church and school in Cannon Falls, told project officials that they may need to update their maps. The proposed route could cross the school, which he said houses more than 50 students.
“I am concerned that you didn’t consider that property in your planning up to now,” Busiahan said.
State and project officials received numerous complaints and questions, including one from an Oronoco, Minn., man who wondered why the proposed route doesn’t pass directly through Rochester and follow Interstate 90 east into La Crosse.
Xcel Energy official Tom Hillstrom said that possibility was studied in the project’s early stages, but was ditched after discovering “very little available space” through Rochester.
Hillstrom said the transmission line towers would be sunk up to 50 feet deep in an 8-foot-wide hole. They are secured in a concrete foundation, where the 4-foot-wide poles are bolted on.
Energy security officials will include this week’s feedback in compiling an environmental impact statement. An administrative law judge will hear the proposal later this year.
The project, which received its certificate of need in May 2009, is at least a year away from possible approval by the Public Utilities Commission, the agency that would issue a permit.
Since more and more people are conserving energy, why the need for more and bigger lines? We already have a line behind our house and am afraid that if the existing lines are used, our house will be gone. One of the comments that was given to me at one of the meetings was, “We found it just too expensive if we had to use existing lines where we would have to buy land that already has residential development on it.” So what they are saying is they will take whatever land they can at the least amount of cost to them. Whatever the route, it will not be good for some people involved. Sorry to say.