Transcript

A transcript of the episode as it aired. Lightly edited for clarity: filler words and false starts are trimmed, and nothing that was cut from the audio appears here. Speakers appear with their permission.

Cold open

SUE STACKMANThe best thing that we can do, the best thing, is everybody unite on this. Don't say it's not in my backyard, because it's going to cost us all. It's going to cost us all.

Sue Stackman, Rock Springs

MICHAEL BROWNEAll right, this is Michael Browne with no765line.org. I'm standing outside the Baraboo Public Library. It is August 20th, and the meeting for public information around the 765 line has just concluded. And I'm standing here with a woman named Sue. Sue, can you introduce yourself to the audience, please?

SUE STACKMANCertainly. I'm Sue Stackman, and I live in Rock Springs, Wisconsin. I own a farm, and it looks, according to the maps, that it's going to destroy the whole farm. It's going to take it all. I only own 60 acres, and it's a small farm, but it's a farm that's been in the generations, for four generations. I went to the state fair; I've got the century farm award. And to see this happen is just terrible. It's just terrible.

MICHAEL BROWNESo how did you learn that this was happening?

SUE STACKMANI learned from my neighbor, and he gave me the news, because it's also going to cut across into his property as well, into his agricultural property. And he told me about it, and it's the first time I heard of it. And I just was blown away. I cannot believe we have no property rights. I can't even fathom this. This is just over the top.

MICHAEL BROWNEAnd the group that assembled here tonight, it packed the library, and it was standing room only outside. I know you were inside; I was outside with others. Is there anything that you learned as a takeaway that you'd like to share with others who were unable to attend tonight?

SUE STACKMANWhat I found very, very important was to reach out, contact the government, your legislatures, get out there, get the word out. The best thing that we can do, the best thing, is everybody unite on this. Don't say it's not in my backyard, because it's going to cost us all. It's going to cost us all. So I just strongly, strongly ask you to get out there and just start putting up a stink on this.

MICHAEL BROWNEAnd back to the personal farm, if the project were to come through as proposed, what would that mean to you and your family?

SUE STACKMANI would not have a farm. It's going to cut through the fields, both fields that I have, and it's going to be so close to the house that I won't even be able to live there. And my cows, my cows won't be able to tolerate that. This is just overwhelming. It just makes me sick. Just makes me sick.

MICHAEL BROWNEThe timeline that we're looking at right now is a compressed timeline over other developments like this that we've seen in the past. If there were representatives standing here today from the developer, is there anything you'd share with them about that compressed timeline?

SUE STACKMANWell, I believe that with it being this compressed and pushing it through like this, they're doing this just to get the advantage. And I'm so glad that we had meetings like this and people are getting out. Like you say, it was standing room only. It was a beautiful turnout. And I hope more are going to be jumping on the bandwagon, saying this isn't going to go away. It's not going to go away. And we need everybody, everybody, out there to fight this. It's going to take Wisconsin its beauty. It's going to just take the beauty out of this whole state.

MICHAEL BROWNEI can see the fight in your eye right now. And I think together we got this.

SUE STACKMANThank you. Thank you so much.

Chris and Dawn Speerings, North Freedom

MICHAEL BROWNEWe're just learning from various folks about the impact that this development is having on them and their lives. So I'm standing here with Chris and Dawn, Speerings?

CHRIS SPEERINGSSpeerings, yeah.

MICHAEL BROWNEWould you mind introducing yourselves and sharing a little bit about your property? And we'll go from there.

CHRIS SPEERINGSSure. Chris Speerings. We live on County Road W, North Freedom, Wisconsin, which is directly under Route 9. The route comes onto one of our parcels, crosses into our second parcel, where it takes a turn, which I am concluding means there will be a tower there for the line to change direction. That tower is less than a hundred yards from the bedroom of our house, and the power line runs directly over our home until it crosses out of our property. The land that we have there, it's a gem that we found about four or five years ago, and we built our new house. If you're familiar with Devil's Lake State Park, it pretty much looks like that. We have the bluffs and the creeks, and it's 85 percent forested, I believe.

DAWN SPEERINGSAbout that, yeah.

CHRIS SPEERINGSWith a couple of farm fields. Me just doing back-of-a-notepad math, and assuming the easement is 250 feet wide for the towers that would be put across our property, they will be destroying 13 acres of forest. And then there's additional impact to the farmland. Our plans for the spring are to do some pollinator work. We've done work already to control erosion, there's a lot of incline here. Any construction there, we're going to lose topsoil. So it's going to run down into Seeley Creek, and who knows what damage that's going to do to Seeley Creek. And we're less than a mile to the Baraboo River from where this is happening.

MICHAEL BROWNEAnd so how did you learn about what was happening here?

DAWN SPEERINGSIt was really interesting. It was two weeks today, I think. I was working, we both work from home, out of our house, and I got a knock on the door about three o'clock in the afternoon, and it was a neighbor from down in the valley. He said, "Hey, have you heard about this? I saw this thing on Skillet Creek Media on Facebook." So that was on Thursday, and I believe we received our official letter from MGS the following Monday. So we did find out on the Thursday, and we started looking.

MICHAEL BROWNEAnd what was your immediate reaction? I'm so curious.

DAWN SPEERINGSI walked down to his office and said, "Oh, you aren't going to believe this." And it was shock.

MICHAEL BROWNEAnd Chris, how did you feel?

CHRIS SPEERINGSWell, I feel like as a property owner, my rights have been extinguished. I don't have any say in what's going to happen to my home.

MICHAEL BROWNEAnd during this past two weeks of your learning journey, what's been the most surprising information that you've acquired?

CHRIS SPEERINGSI would say how totally disinterested nearly all of our legislators are, our state senators, our state representatives. Actually, one of our county commissioners has been very good. Our town board was caught just as off guard. We did attend the town board meeting, this was the topic that filled the house. But all of the politicians are throwing their hands in the air and saying, "We can't do anything." The second thing is the timelines, when we finally figured out that we don't have much time to respond to this. And finally, I would add: yesterday I got a call. It was MGS calling me back, because I had left a message with them. Well, I had left questions. So I started with those questions with the gentleman, his name I can't remember right now, but I posted my notes to the No 765 Line website, sharing it. Basically, he was unable to answer any of my questions. My questions were: Why did you choose my property? Why did you put it over my house? Why did you not follow the existing rules about how these things are supposed to be sited? And a couple other questions. Basically, this guy said, "Come to the open house. Maybe we'll have answers for you there."

MICHAEL BROWNEAnd so do you have any power lines on your property at all right now?

CHRIS SPEERINGSJust the line from the road to the house.

MICHAEL BROWNESo there's no transmission whatsoever?

CHRIS SPEERINGSCorrect.

MICHAEL BROWNEDo you feel like you've learned anything that's going to help you by attending this information session tonight?

DAWN SPEERINGSYeah, I do. And it was interesting, I listened to the podcast that Rob did. So some of the points were there. There were other things that I very much liked, pointing out that you need to make sure you're factual in what you're saying. You need to know what you're talking about when you're going to put a fact in front of them. Don't exaggerate. This is the fact; it's there. And the fact that we need to get our disinterested elected officials to really pound on the PSC. That's where the power is going to come from. That's where the voice has got to get to. So we've got to get people to do that, to get them to reach out to the Public Service Commission before it gets out there.

MICHAEL BROWNEAnd just to reiterate to the audience: what Dawn is suggesting is finding as many ways to contact your elected officials so that they can interface with the Public Service Commission right now, so that the PSC is aware of how disruptive this is. And Chris, anything else?

CHRIS SPEERINGSYeah, I would say I think we had a real great example of the true level of engagement that MGS is looking to get on this power line with the phone call that I had with them yesterday. They said they were calling to understand my questions more, and when I asked those questions, they had no answers. We're being given such a short amount of time here to get these answers, while they haven't even given me anything concrete to tell me what the exact easement is going to be, what the impact is going to be on my property, yet it's going to be wrapped up this soon. I really don't feel like this is anything more than a sham effort to get public comment.

MICHAEL BROWNEIt definitely feels that way. Thank you for committing some time to us. Thanks for showing up and staying involved. I'm going to continue talking to a few more folks here, so thank you very much.

Kay Luxdon, Hill Point

MICHAEL BROWNEAll right, we are continuing to make our way through the crowd here at the end of the meeting. I'm here with Kay Luxdon, who has a family farm. Is it nearby? Can you tell us more?

KAY LUXDONIt's the Hill Point area, right close to the Richland County line.

MICHAEL BROWNEOkay. Describe your property, and how long you've been there, and what you're doing.

KAY LUXDONWe have a 250-acre dairy farm. We've been there about 40 years, and it's in the Driftless Area. We have strip crops, Holstein cows, high production. We just hosted the dairy breakfast, so I think people might remember our farm if they were out there. It's a really beautiful place.

MICHAEL BROWNEWhat is a dairy breakfast?

KAY LUXDONA dairy breakfast is where the whole community comes to a dairy farm and has breakfast together. And at our farm we did some fun and games as well.

MICHAEL BROWNESounds delicious. How did you learn about this transmission line project?

KAY LUXDONI learned about it through a paper I got in the mail. I had seen the paper, it said something about transmission lines, and I threw it away. I thought, that's not me. And the neighbor came over and said, "Hey, did you hear?" And I said, "What are you talking about?" And I said, "Oh, I think I did get a paper." And I went and dug it back out of the garbage, and that's how I learned about it.

MICHAEL BROWNEAnd that was probably, what, a week or two weeks ago? What's your journey been like learning about this? How has this impacted you?

KAY LUXDONYeah, that was about two weeks ago. And at first it was disbelief, that doesn't make any sense. And I looked at this paper, and it showed the map, you could click on it from the information that they gave you. And it showed you the map, and I thought, oh, that looks like it's coming pretty close to us. And I zoomed in on it, and, this is right over the top of my farm. And so I thought, well, this is crazy. And so then we started talking to the neighbors and trying to figure out what we could do. And then we got on the no765line.org site and started finding out ways that we could make a difference.

MICHAEL BROWNEAnd do you have any transmission lines on your property right now?

KAY LUXDONNot on the property right now.

MICHAEL BROWNESo what was that like, learning that information, and knowing that you didn't have existing transmission lines?

KAY LUXDONIt was just eye-opening. I didn't know those sorts of things really existed.

MICHAEL BROWNEWas there any information that you learned about tonight that you feel is going to help you along the way?

KAY LUXDONOh, there's lots of information I learned tonight. I learned how it's going to affect not only cattle, but it's going to affect the land. It's going to affect the water. It's going to affect the trout streams. It's going to affect the Driftless Area. It's going to be detrimental to land, and humans as well.

MICHAEL BROWNEAnd so do you think you'll make it out to the open house this next week?

KAY LUXDONDefinitely. I'm already planning on going.

MICHAEL BROWNEI'm sorry this is happening to you, but thank you for sharing your experience and spending some time with us tonight. I appreciate it.

KAY LUXDONOh, yeah. Thank you for doing what you're doing.

MICHAEL BROWNEI think together, with a unified voice, we stand a fighting chance here. So thank you very much.

KAY LUXDONOkay. Thank you.

Joel Johnson and Janet Johnson, the organizers

MICHAEL BROWNEWell, now I'm here with two of the main event organizers here, Joel and Janet. And to our audience, I just want to introduce them, because these are people that you're going to see out in the community. And it's really important to get to know folks, so that when you see them in person for the first time, you can thank them for the hard work they're doing. I am mainly interested in knowing how tonight actually came about, because I knew this was happening, but I was on the periphery; I was doing other stuff. So maybe introduce yourself first, and then whoever's going to take this question, please go.

JOEL JOHNSONJoel Johnson. I live in Vernon County near Viola, not an affected landowner, but I heard of No 765 Line a few months ago, and it sounded interesting, and it seemed like it was connected to the data center fight, which I'd been involved with. And it was in my neighborhood, so I started going to meetings and was looking for things to do, and it seemed like organizing and planning things needed to be done. And then there was a meeting with landowners in Richland County, and I said, "What's next?" And somebody said Sauk County. So I started kind of just farting around and made contact with a guy who lives here, who had been involved in the data center fight and was pivoting over to the power lines. And we started talking. He gave me some suggestions for venues, and so we, being No 765, were going to organize an event to proactively inform Sauk County landowners, and we were going to have it in Sauk City next Monday, on the 24th. And then the earth shifted, and we learned that MGS, did I get that right? yes, had suddenly sent the letters out. So that meant our event was, coincidentally, on the first day of the open houses they were going to hold. So we canceled our event, and then learned shortly thereafter that some people here in Sauk County wanted to put an event together. So we just kind of pivoted over and started supporting them. They booked this venue on their own, and we just connected in with it, learned what they wanted, learned that they were open to our input. So we offered, and they accepted our help, people like Janet, and Robin, and Tennille, and Sarah, all said yes. So here we are.

MICHAEL BROWNEAnd we also have here tonight Janet Johnson, who is the Richland County lead. Janet, how many people do you think were here tonight?

JANET JOHNSONThere were 150 inside, and I'll bet there were 150 outside, at least, more than that.

JOEL JOHNSONAnd somebody counted the sign-in, and I think the number was 342.

MICHAEL BROWNEDid that meet or exceed your expectations? What were you expecting for the evening?

JANET JOHNSONI kind of told them ahead of time that I thought there would be overflow, because we knew there was only room for 150. So I offered to come and just stand outside and talk with people who couldn't fit in the room, I'm doing really well with steps and picnic tables lately. We just fielded questions out here and tried to answer them to the best of our ability, because everybody's very hungry for knowledge. And although I don't consider myself a speaker, I can at least answer some questions and pass on some knowledge to people. I don't know if I'd call it comfort, but knowledge.

MICHAEL BROWNEFor each of you: do you have any major takeaways from the evening, things that feel different now than when you first arrived?

JOEL JOHNSONI like to organize events that happen, and then they're done, and this event is done, so I'm glad. And looking at how this event went: it didn't go the way we planned, but I think it was successful in achieving the goal of bringing in a lot of people unfamiliar with this subject, introducing it to them, bringing them up to speed as much as that's possible in an hour or two. And I think it was successful in the sense that I enjoyed seeing all these other people interested in wanting to learn about this subject. And I saw a lot of that happening here among the attendees, too.

MICHAEL BROWNEJanet, anything you want to add?

JANET JOHNSONIt's, you see the same people, the same thing, in every county. There are different faces, but I see the same hurt. I see the same gut-wrenching kick that they got in the gut. This is my farm. This is my land. This is everything. And they're being violated and threatened by it being taken away from them. And I can so relate to that. And I think that's what brings us all here, to find common ground and figure out a way that we can help each other, to find a strategy to fight this. We need everybody's help. We need every county that's involved. And so I just keep going. I don't know what else to do.

MICHAEL BROWNEI get the sense that this is not the way that we wanted to unify, but it's the unity that we all need at this moment in time. I just want to thank both of you for the work you put into this, because I showed up last minute, and when I saw what was outside, I thought, well, what's going on over here? It's like, oh, that's our meeting.

JOEL JOHNSONThe outside meeting, in contrast to the inside. Exactly. I have no idea what these open houses next week are going to look like, but we'll see.

MICHAEL BROWNEAnd I urge all listeners to show up, get informed, and help initiate some change here. So thank you to you both. I appreciate it.

Tennille Osthoff, vice chair, No 765 Line

MICHAEL BROWNEAnd so now I'm here with Tennille Osthoff. Tennille is the vice chair of No 765 Line, and she was a co-presenter this evening. I didn't get in the room, because it was standing room only, I'm thinking 250 inside, another 150 outside; they came and went. I'm very curious what your experience was like tonight. What was the sentiment, what was the vibe you got from folks?

TENNILLE OSTHOFFPeople are really still trying to wrap this nightmare around their brain. And we hear a lot of questions that are well thought out, but they're also in panic, because of this extremely short notice that this is happening. So trying to relate to them that they're not alone, having Jacob, our Sauk County rep, start the meeting off, and letting people know that, hey, we have a presence here, come into the fold, is, I think, very reassuring for a lot of folks that were here tonight.

MICHAEL BROWNETennille, you interface with a lot of people on a daily basis around this, and I think you can relate a lot to how people are feeling. Was there anything that was different about tonight than past experiences presenting to audiences?

TENNILLE OSTHOFFWell, I feel like with the MariBell project, people were informed by somebody showing up on their property. There was this initial report of it happening, people went to an open house, and then there was this long pause, for people to really look into it, and ask questions of their town boards and their county supervisors, and do research on their own. The folks that live along BECI are still blindsided by all of this. I don't want to say a bomb, but it's like if a tornado happened: there's this immediate response from the community to come together. And that's what I feel is happening. This bomb has been dropped in, and everybody's rushing to the cause, which is great to see, but we don't want to see it under these circumstances, right?

MICHAEL BROWNEThere's a lot of energy in the air tonight. People are still here, the meeting's been over for 30 minutes, and people are still milling about, learning how to help out and be engaged. And if you're listening right now, just understand that Tennille is working night and day, as are our many volunteers, board members, and county leads, as we are evolving and developing this organization to help support the awareness, advocacy, and education around this issue that we're all facing. And we just really appreciate, Tennille, everybody appreciates what you're doing. We just want to say thank you very much for being here and showing up.

TENNILLE OSTHOFFWell, we have to thank Michael, our interviewer here, because Mike, he is such an important piece of our team. He keeps us together. You're a breath of fresh air, and the work that you put into our community and the website and all of us is irreplaceable.

MICHAEL BROWNETennille, you're amazing. Thank you very much. And everybody, we will see you out there in the field. Thank you for listening.

*Music: "Slow Burn" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0.*