Now’s the time to tell your friends,

At our favorite agency…

It’s the Power Plant Siting Act Annual Hearing!

PPSA Annual Hearing Notice – 2012

This is the annual time to tell the agency what does work and what does not work with the Power Plant Siting Act.  After the hearing, now officiated by an Administrative Law Judge (new as of a few years ago), a report is issued to the PUC and then ???  It used to go to the legislature, guess I have to find out what happens now.

December 21, 2012 beginning at 1:00 p.m.

Public Utilities Commission

3rd Floor Large Hearing Room

121 – 7th Place East

St. Paul, MN  55101

Each of you who have experience siting and routing of large electric energy facilities — this is the time to weigh in.  You can do it in person, and you can do it by filing comments.

Here is the Power Plant Siting Act, which governs the siting and routing of large energy facilities:

Power Plant Siting Act – 216E

Here are some prior dockets (to access the entire docket, individual comments, etc., go to :

2000 Summary of Proceedings

2000 Report EQB

2001 Summary of Proceedings

2001 Report EQB

2002 Summary of Proceedings

2002 Report to EQB

2003 Summary of Proceedings

2003 Report to EQB

2004 Summary of Proceedings

2004 Report to EQB

2005 Report to PUC

2006 Report to PUC – Docket 06-1733

2007 Report to PUC – Docket 07-1579

2008 Report to PUC – Docket 08-1426

2009 Report to PUC – Docket 09-1351

2010 Report to PUC – Docket 10-222

2011 Report to PUC – Docket 11-324

The Rulemaking Petition I’d filed in 2010 to address some of these problems has moved into the preliminary stage of a proposal, and the proposal is dreadful, pulling back and lessening opportunities for the public to participate, removing the “participant” option from ways to participate in the actual PPSA evidentiary hearings, where members of the public could question witnesses, VERY distressing:

OAH Rulemaking Request for Comments

OAH Rulemaking Draft Changes

Judge Lipman is in charge of this thus far, and he has said he is not publishing the comments received on the OAH website, so ??? Who knows.  Anyway, some time in the future there will be a formal rulemaking proposal published and we can formally comment again.  NOW is the time to register comments on their Draft Changes before they announce what changes they really want to make.

It’s long overdue to file rulemaking petitions for other aspects of PPSA or siting/routing.  Two weeks to get that ready!

At times it’s shouting in the wilderness, but we’ve got to weigh in or they think everything is hunky-dory and we all know it isn’t.