Today’s meetings:

Tuesday, December 18

12:00 p.m.-2:00 p.m.
Arlington Community Center
204 Shamrock Drive
Arlington, MN 55307

6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m.
Grandpa’s Event Center
31846 65th Ave. Way
Cannon Falls, MN 55019

And don’t forget the Prehearing Conference, today at 2:00 p.m.,  before ALJ Beverly Heydinger, at the PUC, in the Large Hearing Room, 3rd Floor, 121 – 7th Place East, St. Paul.

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Notes from last night’s meeting in… where was it… in Olivia:

In every big utility proceeding, there are these choice tidbits, in Arrowhead, it was “It’s all connected” from Don Jones’ testimony (Will Trevor noticed these too, I’d often see him snickering and writing, let’s face it, you have to do something to keep sane in a two month long hearing!); in Mesaba, “We are not liars” (nothing more need be said about that one).

So, here’s the first one for CapX, you heard it here, and I heard it straight from the horse’s … errrrrr… mouth during a discussion of siting criteria:

“A river is not a corridor.”

Now, I know that a river WAS a corridor for a GRE 69kV line, near Longville, where they mowed down trees along the riverbank and put in a transmission line. That was under county jurisdiction, and not state, and the county didn’t see any problem with it, the DNR got feisty in their initial comments, but then backed off and let it go… it’s good to know that won’t happen here.

Tim Carlsgaard blew it yesterday trying to keep the aura that this is a “Minnesota” project. People were asking about the endpoints of the line, questions unprovoked by anyone I know, and I got tired of it, and raised the issue of the maps they had in front of the room, which showed only Minnesota. I asked whether it’s correct that they’d just applied for the North Dakota CapX and whether it goes into WI from LaCrosse, and he pointed to the map and said that “It’s in our Application, it starts at a substation in Fargo…” and then went on to describe the Minnesota starting and ending points, diverting from the bigger picture. GRRRRRRRRRRRRR….

Here’s the bigger picture:

Obviously it’s only about transmission in Minnesota… they wouldn’t be claiming local Minnesota need and running a bunch of lines from the Dakota fields for export, would they????