By Rick Fuentes, senior media relations specialist, Fresh Energy

I’ve always liked roller coasters. Especially the ones with big drops or loop-d-loops. And if they creak a little when you take a sharp corner, so much the better. That added sound effect just makes me doubt my faith in the professionals who run those contraptions a little bit. “Did I just see a guy with a wrench? Why is the guy holding that wrench? Didn’t he tighten this thing already? Why DOES THIS GUY HAVE A WRENCH?”

Standing next to Cesia Kearns of the Sierra Club at the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission meeting last week reminded me of that.

“My heart’s in my throat,” she said.

Mine was in my ankles.

I sunk pretty low when I heard the new PUC Commissioner J.Dennis O’Brien say, “I was impressed with the South Dakota Commissioner” who spoke at the PUC meeting asking Minnesotans to approve the Big Stone II project. Why was a South Dakota regulatory official in Minnesota on behalf of a company he oversees? Got me. But that’s another blog.

After that I scored my notebook as 3 for the coal plant’s transmission lines and 2 against. We lose. They’re gonna okay the building of this global warming polluting behemoth after all, darn it. Then I heard O’Brien say, “The company has their models, and their assumptions influence the outcome. So where can we get figures we can trust?”

All of a sudden, that roller coaster was on its way back up. Other commissioners agreed that Otter Tail Power, the applicant, hadn’t shown the need for the plant with their numbers.

Now my heart had returned to its rightful abdomen.

Then the chair, who is clearly in favor of this plant, said we’re not going to get better data than this. O’Brien disagreed. And I thought, “We’re gonna win this thing.”

And then the chair broke the commission for lunch, and we went into a downward spiral for about an hour. Try going out for a sub sandwich while doing that. When we returned, the commissioners voted to study the coal plant transmission lines further and find an independent analyst to do new models for need for capacity of the plant as well as the best way to generate that power.

Needless to say, we’re not getting off this thing yet. The cotton candy will have to wait. To make matters even loopier, the commission chair is retiring. LeRoy Koppendrayer steps down on June 30. Governor Tim Pawlenty must now appoint a new PUC member and chair. Who will it be? Will that person favor old-fashioned, dirty coal power or clean renewable energy?

Don’t forget to get your fridge magnet picture on the way out.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 12th, 2008 at 2:13 pm by Fresh Energy and is filed under Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.