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

JIMThe question I ask is, did anybody from Wisconsin ask for this line to be built? Anybody in the state of Wisconsin?

Day two of the open houses

MICHAEL BROWNEHere we are, back in the town of Baraboo. Just a few days ago we were here to drop into the library and meet the hundreds of people who had just recently learned about this project coming through. And now it's August 25th. This is day two of the open houses. These were announced not long ago, mailings were sent, and people just learned about this, and the comment period closes September 7th.

MICHAEL BROWNEI'm back in Baraboo today because I want to meet more people and I want to hear what the reaction is like with everyone. And for those of you who have an open house yet to come, I'd like you to learn a little bit more about what it's like, what it's going to look like, what it's going to sound like. It's going to help prepare you, because a lot of this is coming really fast. Let's go meet some folks.

MICHAEL BROWNEI'm just pulling up on the event here and the parking goes on and on and on. I don't know that I'm going to be able to find a spot. The open house I went to yesterday was pretty packed, but here I see a group of what appear to be protesters. No 765, stand firm, lots of people out here. Where are we? no765line.org. Look at that. Look at all of this. Wow, I don't know that I'm going to find a spot.

MICHAEL BROWNESo we're inside right now. We waited in line, actually; the line kind of self formed and people didn't realize you could just walk in. I met a gentleman named Jim, I'm standing with him right now, and he's had some observations and concerns about what he's seeing happen here. Jim, can you introduce yourself, please?

Jim, inside the open house

JIMSure. My name is Jim and I'm not a property owner, but it goes right next to the school where my neighbor works, and right next to my wife's brother's; it's going to be on his property, and he's in Lodi. So the question I ask is, did anybody from Wisconsin ask for this line to be built? Anybody in the state of Wisconsin?

MICHAEL BROWNETo my knowledge, no. We know that MISO, the regional planning organization, did ask for this to come in, and this company, this developer, won this specific bid. To answer your question directly: no, no specific Wisconsin coalition of landowners or citizens has said yes, we need this for fill in the blank. Not to my knowledge.

JIMAnd it won't really be providing power to anybody in Wisconsin, where this extension is looking.

MICHAEL BROWNEMy understanding is that it's going to move electricity around to various substations, so it's possible to be delivered. But when you look at what the larger plan for the 765 lines is, it's the ability to move it across states, across regions, to make an interconnected and related grid.

JIMAnd if the no vote is successful, who makes the final decision?

MICHAEL BROWNEThe Public Service Commission. The Public Service Commission is who will give them their permit to build. And that Public Service Commission is comprised of three separate commissioners.

JIMThe other rumor amongst my neighbors is, I had solar power put in on my property, and they said the Wisconsin Public Service Commission is like no other. It's stacked with people from utilities. Where the other ones, they put citizens on it and they have larger committees. I'm not sure if that's true, but I just am curious about the makeup of the Public Service Commission in Wisconsin. And if they say yes, is there any appeal to their process?

MICHAEL BROWNEIt would be easy to surmise that a sitting role as a commissioner is effectively a resume builder to go work for a utility. Six of the last 15 commissioners have gone on to join specific utilities. So I think your observation there is spot on. And it does point out the need for some larger reform here. If you have solar, how does that work with the grid? How are we incentivizing these companies? The way our rates are structured, we effectively incentivize them to build. And so no wonder we've attracted Berkshire Hathaway investments to come in and say, we want our 10 percent annual return.

JIMHow confident is your group that this will end up being a no, rather than, we'll pick the people that complain the least on one of the roads?

MICHAEL BROWNEThe way to get to a redirection on what's happening is to sustain this momentum. And I personally have never seen a movement grow this fast and this broad. This issue is bipartisan. One of my good friends now, his statement was, I don't care which side of the sword you fall on. We're all getting cut. And that is true. This issue cuts through all of Wisconsin: red, blue, purple, whatever your person. We're all taking a fall for this.

JIMKeep up the good work. Thank you.

MICHAEL BROWNEThank you, Jim.

Kris Brewer, on how fast this came together

KRIS BREWERWe're a group of five people, and I'm not any more important than the other four people, so I wanted to make sure everybody's voice was heard. But we did do a debrief of our meeting last week, so we kind of know what's important. These people with clipboards, all of you supporting, like Jacob and everyone, this is what we tell people: No 765 Line is all volunteer. It's a nonprofit. We're all volunteers. You need to support that organization. We're supporting that organization because we all can't be doing separate little things. We need to come together, because this is such a massive issue.

MICHAEL BROWNEAnd we didn't expect to have to scale and engage in such a fast fashion. This is absolutely unprecedented to see it happen.

KRIS BREWERIn your years of organizing, have you seen anything like this from the speed? And have you seen such a strong community engagement in the past?

MICHAEL BROWNEProbably this would rival data center opposition. But it's so great, because we have two different groups working, and then people in between on this issue. Even our leadership team, we preface it with, this is nonpartisan, this is an issue we all care about.

KRIS BREWERSome people came wanting to know if there's any protest, and I'm like, we're not protesting. We are here to support landowners and our community. And so I stress that so much, because we don't need to protest. We need to come together and support one another. And that's what we're doing.

MICHAEL BROWNEI remain incredibly impressed when I show up anywhere and I see tables with signs and clipboards and people who know what's going on, and that happening in advance of hitting the doors. That is absolutely huge. This type of organization doesn't happen. It just doesn't happen. It takes people to talk with one another, to plan, to create the plan and then to execute the plan. And I remain impressed and grateful to you and everybody who's doing this, everybody who showed up today, who took time out of their day to fit inside the cattle call in three hours. This is absolutely nuts.

KRIS BREWERI think we had about 14 volunteers helping. Jacob had some others. And I even made a call, because we got some info on the Richland Center one, that people were coming at 9:15. So we actually changed our plan to be here set up at 8:30, and people did come. Because of the communication, I don't know if people didn't know what an open house was or whatever, but they thought they were going to be able to go in and sit down and hear presentations.

MICHAEL BROWNENope. Not happening like that.

KRIS BREWERI know. So we encourage, I know with the volunteers, we share the event calendar and the link to the events, because we want to go and support as many of the open houses as we can, because it affects us all.

MICHAEL BROWNEIt does.

KRIS BREWERMost of us have other really important things. Farmers have crops to take in, we have gardens, and so now we're spending, which you are too, hours and hours and hours on this, which we could be making things better instead of dealing with this. So definitely, we're looking at doing resolutions for townships. So if you have a model, it's on our document list. We did use that. We're coordinated with townships. We want every single township opposition. Well, we're only this area, so we'll work here.

MICHAEL BROWNEWe have the request for information template that was on the website. Last night the opposition template went live. So that's drag and drop. It's based on all the 23 that have been passed so far. [Editor’s note: the count on August 25, 2026. More boards have acted since; the running total is on the resolution tracker.]

KRIS BREWERWe're directing people to your website. So you're going to have a lot to do later. Thank you so much.

MICHAEL BROWNEThank you. Good luck.

Emile Smith with Donna Bell, town of Scott

MICHAEL BROWNEWe've got one more conversation from the open house. This is board member Emile Smith, who spoke with Donna Bell, the clerk of the town of Scott in Crawford County and a landowner herself. Two quick notes before you hear it, though. When Donna mentions Dairyland, she's actually talking about the MariBell line, which is a separate 765 kV project. I know that's confusing. This week's open houses are for MGS's BECI project, which is what we've been focusing on recently. And when she says three lines cross her property, she means three of BECI's proposed route segments, and those are different options for one line.

EMILE SMITHAnd Donna, you're from the town of Scott.

DONNA BELLI am from the town of Scott, yes. I'm the clerk for the town of Scott. And we're also landowners who have at least, well, three of the proposed lines are running through our property.

EMILE SMITHThree different proposed lines are running through your property.

DONNA BELLTwo of the lines are running near where we live, within a 40 of where we live. And our son is hoping to take over the farm someday, and he is planning on building a house here, and therefore mom and dad can continue living here.

EMILE SMITHYou're pointing to a section right in four and five, right by where four and five are proposed. So your existing farm is under four, and your son's considering buying land that would be under five and extend your family farm.

DONNA BELLWell, it's actually, no, we already own all of this under four and five. And when we no longer want to farm it, we're trying to work something out so that when we die, he wants to move back to the home farm.

EMILE SMITHSo it's a legacy farm.

DONNA BELLCorrect. And his hope is to build a house maybe right in here. Right now, line five, four, right in that area, because that's a ridge top and it's a beautiful view. And he's talked for many years. They live in Illinois right now, but his hope is to come back here and continue farming our farm, and bring his family and the next generation.

EMILE SMITHI make little side notes and little observations as I interview people, and one of the observations that I make there is that, all this talk about the negative impacts of putting solar panels on remote pieces of land, and well, now that you've done that, you have to transmit that somewhere. And so this transmission line is adding to the loss of farmland, on top of the already loss of farmland, say in southeast Minnesota.

DONNA BELLRight, right.

EMILE SMITHI see that those two options aren't very far apart in the effect on your land either way. Whether it's four or whether it's five, you're getting hammered.

DONNA BELLCorrect. And like I said, my husband said there's a weather spring down in here, and this is very rough terrain through here. If you ever walk it, it's very rough terrain to bring lines through there. The impact of what it would have to the animals, to the woods that we have. We also raise cattle, we have a beef herd at this point, and my son hopes to continue that, and that would be so negatively impacted.

EMILE SMITHBy these high power lines within a 40 or less. All of your plans would be impacted, whether it has to do with cattle or homeownership or building.

DONNA BELLAnd just, if our son decides, no, I don't want this, mom, I don't want this, dad, what's that going to do to our resale value? And like a lot of farmers, that is our retirement plan. And now you take this and put this through here. What's the value of that land going to be?

EMILE SMITHAnd it's important for you to evaluate the value of that land now, as you propose the future. There's a future accrued value to consider.

DONNA BELLSo those are the kinds of things that we're hoping to have it appraised at this point. It would be interesting to ask an appraiser their opinion on whether or not it affects. We have been told that, oh, this isn't going to affect property values, but already it's affected any prospecting taking place.

EMILE SMITHSo everybody's on guard.

DONNA BELLIf we decided now today, oh, we're going to sell our land, who's going to be purchasing it with that?

EMILE SMITHOne of the things that's come up many times now is that the potential value for your land has gone down just by the idea.

DONNA BELLCorrect. Just by the suggestion. Absolutely.

EMILE SMITHDairyland recently made a statement that they didn't like getting picked on. And these are proposed; the proposed line is what we called it. Since we started this, we've been told we cannot call it proposed until the paperwork's on the table. Then by definition it's a proposal. Until now, it's just a suggestion to me.

DONNA BELLThere's several proposals.

EMILE SMITHThey have a real strategy. Throw as much spaghetti on the wall, so to speak.

DONNA BELLAnd we didn't realize that this wasn't MariBell, that this is just, yeah, exactly.

EMILE SMITHAnd so the discussions now, and the people inside, are all about the BECI line.

DONNA BELLInteresting thing for the town of Scott. Because back when the MariBell lines came out, they asked the townships to approve a resolution and ask them to give us information about the MariBell line. I received a letter back telling us, don't worry, you're not involved.

EMILE SMITHThere's been a lot of that.

DONNA BELLAll of a sudden now, as the town clerk, I receive, at the same time as a landowner I received notification, oh, the BECI line is going through your township. Well, of course the county did not include the town of Scott in their initial resolution. So right now we are asking the county to amend, or do another resolution, and to do it prior to September 7th.

EMILE SMITHThat's really important for us to know.

DONNA BELLWe actually own property then in village of Bell Center, town of Scott, town of Haney and town of Clayton.

EMILE SMITHHighly, highly affected. No matter how you slice it.

DONNA BELLCorrect. And there was a reason that it was called Bell Center Ridge. Our family owned most of the ridge at one point. His dad and two uncles.

EMILE SMITHReal legacy stuff.

DONNA BELLYes, it is. We're well over century farming. What we're farming was his dad's and his uncle's and his grandfather's, and we're now farming it and hope to pass it on to our children. And in the things that Dairyland has written and said over time, of course the goalposts move and the faces change, but the layers and the players are all still kind of getting in there. Anyway, thank you. Nice to see you again.

EMILE SMITHNice to see you.

Before you go

MICHAEL BROWNEWell, that's it for this episode. If this line would cross your land or your community, the most useful thing you can do right now is comment, and show up to an open house to become aware of how this project is being treated. MGS is taking comments on its study segments through September 7th. We have made it simple to figure out how to comment. All you have to do is go to no765line.org, click Take Action, and then find the comment to MGS section. Two more open houses happen, both August 26th and 27th; details are on our events page. And if you serve on a town or village board, there is a model resolution ready to adapt on our officials page. We are all volunteers, and I'll say it time and again: no matter what it feels like when you walk into that room and see dozens of paid project staff standing there, this is not a done deal. Now let's go fight for Wisconsin. Thanks for listening.