Here are a few updates, it’s been a busy couple of days!

First, from the Fargo Forum:

Planned power line path outside diversion

Project to connect Fargo to Twin Cities

By: Patrick Springer, INFORUM

A planned transmission power line to connect Fargo to the Twin Cities now is slated to follow a path outside a possible flood-control diversion channel.

Xcel Energy, the lead utility of the CapX2020 project, said the new transmission project must be in service by 2015.

Because the controversial diversion alignment still has not been determined and the project’s construction would take eight years or more, the utilities behind the transmission project now are returning to their original corridor.

“We never took the original plan off the table,” said Darrin Lahr, a supervisor who handles site selection and land rights for Xcel Energy.

That path would connect to a power substation west of Mapleton, N.D., and extend south of Horace and then jut east to cross the Red River north of Oxbow, N.D., to follow the Interstate 94 corridor.

The North Dakota Public Service Commission, which must approve the project, will have a public hearing on the corridor June 23 at 8 a.m., at a place yet to be determined in Fargo or West Fargo.

Because diversion details still are being worked out, Public Service Commissioners agreed to delay the corridor hearing, originally set for May 3.

“The uncertainty of the diversion project becomes somewhat of a problem for them,” Commissioner Kevin Cramer said.

Officials in Fargo and elsewhere were concerned the transmission line could interfere with growth paths if it fell within the protected area of a diversion.

“We understood that and were able to accommodate that,” Lahr said.

The corridor is a three-mile swath. The actual route for the transmission line will be determined later, with the utilities yet to file their proposed route within the proposed corridor.

The 345-kilovolt line will be suspended from single poles 150 feet tall, said Tim Carlsgaard, a CapX2020 spokesman.

Construction has started on the first leg of the

$575 million project, a 30-mile stretch from Monticello to St. Cloud, and should be in service by the end of the year, he said. The next segment will be from St. Cloud to Alexandria.

And in the Rochester Post Bulletin:

Residents have plenty to say about proposed transmission line – Rochester Post Bulletin April 14 2011

And the abbreviated version available online:

Rural residents elbow power-line route

Posted: Apr 14, 2011, 9:15 am
By Ken Hanson
The Post-Bulletin, Rochester MN

PINE ISLAND — Penny Robinson tried to steady her emotions before a microphone at the American Legion Hall in Pine Island on Wednesday night.

In retirement at her rural Oronoco home “I was looking forward to sitting by the pond and reading some good books. What I wasn’t planning on was CapX2020 smashing my dream to bits, and destroying the quality and safety of my existence,” she said.

Robinson was among about 200 people who packed the Legion hall to register comments and questions about the routing of the massive CapX2020 power transmission line that has been cleared to run through the Rochester area en route to the Kellogg area and Wisconsin. Read about it in Thursday’s print edition.

… sigh… that’s all that’s there… will have a paper copy later today.