Xcel Hiawatha Project Powerlines and Substations
Status as of June 2011: We are playing a waiting game until the MN Public Utilities Commission (PUC) provides (or doesn't provide) to Xcel a Certificate of Need for their proposed Hiawatha Project calling for high voltage transmission lines along the Midtown Greenway or nearby. After the Certificate of Need is awarded (and likely it will be), the PUC will dust off the files from the Route Permit case and determine the route for the lines and the substation locations. This could be as early as fall 2011, or some time in 2012. The Midtown Greenway Coalition is hopeful that at that time the PUC will concur with the Administrative Law Judge's recommendation to bury the lines below East 28th Street. The law judge's recommendation is based on a one-year legal struggle in which the Midtown Greenway Coalition played the leading role representing community interests, working with the City of Minneapolis, Hennepin County, and the organizations representing the following neighborhoods in the impacted area: Corcoran, East Phillips, greater Longfellow, Midtown Phillips, and Seward.
Quick links to locations farther down on this page:
Update on the Certificate of Need Proceedings
The Coalition Successfully Challenges Xcel's attempt to gut routing Recomendations
Law Judge Makes Recommendation
Background
Concerns About the Project
Midtown Greenway Coalition's Position
More About the Proces and a separate effort to avoid the lines altogether
Video
Actions by the PUC to Date
Stay Informed, Be Active
____________________________________________________________________
February 7, 2011
Update on the Certificate of Need Proceedings
On January 27 the PUC ruled that Xcel Energy’s previously submitted application for a Certificate of Need (CON) was complete and that this will not be a contest case.
The Coalition is not involved in the CON portion of this case and no community groups stepped forward to be interveners (as the Coalition and others did in the route proceedings) so it will not be a contested case. Without outside testimony on alternatives to the lines/substations, the likelihood of them being stopped because alternatives are found, has diminished. The CON proceedings could take the rest of 2011, with a ruling by the PUC on both the route and the CON coming in 2012.
December 3rd, 2010
Public Utillities Commission Accepts into Evidence the Coalition's "Reply" thereby increasing the likelihood key arguments in favor of Underground Lines will be considered by the PUC, and this in turn increases the likelihood that the PUC will concur with the law judge's recommendation to bury the lines below East 28th Street.
The Coalition Successfully Challenges Xcel's Attempt to Gut Arguments Supporting Favorable Routing Recomendations
On December 2, 2010 the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) granted a variance to its normal procedures in order to accept into the Hiawatha Project case record the Midtown Greenway Coalition's "Reply" document. This is great news. This "Reply" document is the latest in a string of legal documents created by the Coalition's lawyer, Paula Maccabee, to pursue a favorable ruling on where the high voltage lines will go. The "Reply" is in response to Xcel's "Exceptions" document in which Xcel attempted to have stricken from the record key arguments brought forth by the law judge in favor of underground lines routed below East 28th Street--an outcome that the neighborhoods, the Coalition, the City, and others all want. (You can call up this Reply and Xcel's "Exceptions" document from the green column to the left.) The PUC variance to accept our Reply means that in late 2011 (or perhaps even later) when the PUC makes its final ruling on the route of the proposed high voltage transmission lines, there will be a very strong rebuttal to Xcel's comments on the judge's recommendations. Acceptance of the Coalition's "Reply" document makes it more likely that the judge's key arguments will remain as evidence for the PUC's consideration. Thank you very much to Hennepin County, the City of Minneapolis, four neighborhood organizations, and many members of the public who formally supported the Coalition's "Reply" and the effort to have it accepted into evidence. Click here to read comments submitted by the public that assisted us in this latest victory.
Law Judge Makes Recommendation
On Friday, October 8, 2010, Administrative Law Judge Beverly Heydinger made her recommendation to the Minnnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) regarding the route for Xcel's proposed high voltage transmission lines along the Midtown Greenway. Consistent with recommendations from the Midtown Greenway Coalition, she recommended that the high voltage lines:
- Go underground (yeah!)
- Be buried below east 28th Street instead of below the Greenway's bike trail (yeah!)
- Be located as close to the center of the roadway as possible to minimize impacts on adjacent residents and boulevard trees (yeah again!)
The Midtown Greenway Coalition wishes to thank Paula Maccabee of Just Change Law for being a rockstar lawyer representing the Coalition and leading the charge. In representing the Coalition, Ms. Maccabee also coached five neighborhood organizations as additional intervening parties, and had a perfect command of the law and thousands of pages of evidence when writing the compelling Findings and Brief documents that guided the judge's decision. Hopefully the PUC will agree with the law judge's recommendations when they take up the matter likely in late 2011 (assuming the PUC grants a Certificate of Need in the meantime).
Regarding substations, the judge recommended that the Midtown North and Hiawatha West sites (Xcel's favored sites) be used for the two new substations, and that the substation design process involve the City and County. Concerns remain regarding exactly where a substation will be located in the greenspace south of the Greenway on the east side of Hiawatha Avenue--we hope to protect as much of the greenspace as possible and allow for a future trail connection to Lake Street. Concerns also remain over the Midtown substation encroaching into the Greenway and taking up land on the Greenway's norh embankment between Portland and Oakland Avenues, thereby scuttling a community-proposed street-level walkway.
Photo rendering provided by Faith Cable for the Midtown Community Works Partnership. The Midtown Greenway Coalition has been hard at work protecting your Greenway, spending over $73,000 on legal fees and staff time so far in this power line struggle. Please support our work, join/donate now.
Background
In September 2008 Xcel Energy announced plans for high voltage transmission lines along the Midtown Greenway on towers 75 feet to 115 feet tall. Xcel's preferred route for the high voltage transmission lines is along the Midtown Greenway and its preferred locations for its two substations are (1) the new greenspace just east of Hiawatha Avenue where about 400 trees and shrubs were planted on May 2, 2009 and (2) on the north rim of the Greenway between Oakland and Portland Avenues, an area for which Phillips West and the Midtown Greenway Coalition just completed concept drawings for a proposed new public walkway. What’s more, Xcel has not installed high voltage transmission lines on overhead towers through a similarly densely populated area since the 1950s!
Xcel's continuing preferred transmission line route along the south edge of the Midtown Greenway currently includes two possible construction types for the high voltage transmission lines: (1) on towers overhead with footings along 29th Street, or (2) buried about 30 inches below the Greenway cycling and walking trails. The added cost of burying the lines means that XCEL WILL PUT THE LINES OVERHEAD unless some party agrees to pay the added cost for putting them underground, or the MN Public Utilities Commission finds that there is support in state law given the local circumstances to require putting the lines underground.
Concerns About the Project
The concerns of the Midtown Greenway Coalition and its constituent communities include:
-
Negative aesthetic impacts along what is now a pleasant green corridor (many recreational trail users tell us they would use the trail less, and many commuters say that they would enjoy the trail much less and it would make them sad or angry)
-
Potential electric shocks to trail users and adjacent residents
-
Potential negative health impacts from elevated electric and magnetic fields such as an increased risk of childhood leukemia (see 'expert opinion' pdf in sidebar);
-
Squashing development potential--the door slammed shut on the Greenway’s potential to serve as a spine for smart growth (developers say they wouldn’t build under these lines).
-
A large electric substation in place of an important public greenspace at the confluence of Greenway, the Hiawatha LRT bikeway, the new Sabo Bridge, and our region’s only LRT line.
-
Encroachment onto the Greenway's north slope of a retaining wall between Oakland and Portland Avenues to expand the street level surface area Xcel says it needs for their propsed Midtown Substation, and the resulting lost opportunity for a public walking there that has long been proposed by the Coalition and the Phillips West Neighborhood Organization.
-
Overlaid on all these concerns is one of environmental justice, as all of these negative impacts would be borne disproportionately by low-income communities of color where there are already cumulative negative environmental impacts of lead poisoning, asthma, and arsenic contamination in the soil.
Midtown Greenway Coalition's Position
The Midtown Greenway Coalition believes that the first choice response is to avoid Xcel Energy’s Hiawatha Project through conservation, local power generation such as with solar panels, off-peak storage, and smart grid. And, if the lines must go in, they should be underground. More specifically, the lines should be buried below 28th Street as close to the middle of the roadway as possible to minimize magnetic field impacts to adjacent residents. Similar resolutions have been passed by the Minneapolis City Council, the neighborhood organizations in the East Phillips, Midtown Phillips, Corcoran, Longfellow, and Seward neighborhoods, and also by additional Greenway neighborhoods as a show of solidarity.
The Coalition's stance is in a policy resolution (PDF) adopted 1/22/09 expanding its previous 12/3/08 resolution.
More About the Process
The Midtown Greenway Coalition has been leading the fight to pursue alternatives to the lines, such as energy conservation and local power generation, and if the lines must still be installed, to put them underground. This struggle entails a legal battle before an administrative law judge assigned to the case by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC). Steps involved in the struggle so far have included a Task Force that made recommendations to the state regarding what to address in an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and comments on the Draft EIS.
There were formal information requests between intervening parties and Xcel Energy to build the record of evidence for a route decision, then pre-filed testimony followed by rebuttals, and a series of public hearings before the judge. Then in April 2010 there was a month of evidentiary hearings involving Xcel and about eleven intervening parties, including the Midtown Greenway Coalition. Following evidentiary hearings the lawyers for Xcel and the intervening parties submitted Findings and Brief documents.
In October 2010 the Law Judge made her recommendation consistent with the Coalition's interests regarding the routing of the lines, although challenges remain regarding substations. Hopefully the PUC will concurr with her recommendation on the route when they take the matter up likely in late 2011.
In addition to the legal struggle, there was a legislative effort that was victorious. Thanks to Representative Karen Clark, the Midtown Greenway Coalition, and others, state law was changed to require a “certificate of need” for Xcel’s proposed Hiawatha Project. This will require Xcel to prove that they cannot serve local electricity demand through alternative means, such as conservation and locally produced power.
Video
In order to more effectively share information and receive feedback, the Midtown Greenway Coalition and the Phillips West Neighborhood Organization have created a video with the assistance of the Community Design Group to rally the public around the cause.
Actions by the PUC To Date
On May 21, 2009 the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) determined that Xcel Energy’s route permit application for the Hiawatha Project was complete and a process at least a year long began related to deciding the route. The PUC also established an Advisory Task Force to recommend route alternatives and issues to be looked at in the environmental review process. The Advisory Task Force did its work during the summer of 2009 and the recommendations from the Task Force can be viewed following the link in the green column to the left. Finally, the PUC determined that this route permit evaluation would be defined as a "contested case," meaning that an administrative law judge would be assigned to the case to oversee public hearings as well as evidentiary hearings where additional evidence could be introduced and challenged by Xcel and approved intervening parties. The PUC's final action on the route permit is yet to come..
Stay Informed, Be Active.
If you haven’t already, sign up for updates and action alerts from the Midtown Greenway Coalition. Email Soren@midtowngreenway.org to be on our Hiawatha Project email list
Enlist for updates.
To view the Public Utilities Commission web page for this project, visit
http://energyfacilities.puc.state.mn.us/Docket.html?Id=19981
For a good overview of important issues surrounding the Xcel Project, read Executive Director Tim Springer's pre-filed public hearing testimony.
Persons interested in a separate struggle to avoid the high voltage lines altogether should contact Angelina Matias.
This issue is consuming a considerable amount of the Coalition’s organizational resources—if you agree with how the Coalition is approaching this issue and want to support this work, please join/donate now. |
