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

MICHAEL BROWNEBut you know what it also is? You as a landowner, you actually have a fair amount of power. If you have the capacity to stay on top of this stuff, be vigilant and just keep asking and stay organized. This is the way that these lines are going to be fought back. And I want to make sure that everyone knows that this is not a done deal.

Who Rob Danielson is

MICHAEL BROWNEThis is the first ever No 765 Line podcast where I'm Michael Browne. I'm speaking with Rob Danielson today. It is Sunday, August 9th. And there's been a lot of news in the past few days. And because things kind of came out of the blue, not as anybody was expecting them. We wanted to take a few minutes here to talk with Rob, our resident expert who's been tracking a number of these projects for many, many years. And he has a very clear picture of what's going on and what's happened. And so today we're going to spend some time to get you the listeners oriented and discuss a little bit more about the bigger picture. And then close out with with what's coming next. So Rob, maybe, you know, maybe to people who don't know you, maybe, you know, would you give a little background of who you are? Sure. Thanks, Michael. Well, let's see, I live in LaFarge, Wisconsin in Vernon County.

ROB DANIELSONI am a former potentially impacted landowner for the 765 kV project proposed to span Wisconsin roughly from Genoa and Vernon County to Portage and then down to Beloit, Wisconsin, roughly 230 miles or so. And I got a notice in my co-op newspaper that said, oh, we want to build this big transmission line. That was a year ago this past June. And so I started inquiring and found out about the project. I do track utility planning, oddly enough, since about 2010 when the another 345 kV transmission line was proposed across my property. That was the Badger Coulee project, and I followed through on that working with my colleagues in the town and later with an organization called Soul of Wisconsin. We intervened in the project, and particularly long story short, expansion transmission lines are really not the necessities that utilities profess. There are viable alternatives in many firms, and there are all of them much more cost effective. And if you're into reducing CO2 emissions like I am, far more effective dollar for dollar than building expansion transmission lines, which really don't have any direct impact on CO2 emissions and things like that. So anyway, I stuck with the energy planning, and sure enough, last June I got another such letter and organized with my neighbors in terms of requesting information about the siting that they were considering, and the towns around me adopted similar resolutions, holding the developer to greater accountability. And for Hook or Crook or whatever, we were eventually excluded from the potential corridors that were being considered. But having done this numerous times, my phone still rings, my neighbors are still in need, so I stuck with it and worked with people throughout Vernon County and later in Crawford County and then soon after that in Richland County and helping landowners understand what these utility expansion projects are about, and also things, importantly, that landowners can do, which is now the question that is in a lot of potentially impacted landowners' minds across all of Wisconsin with the recent mailing from Mid-Continental Grid Solutions. What can we do? What's going on? And so that's just the only thing I might elaborate is that in intervening, you look at, you know, you really evaluate the need for the project and the alternatives and become familiar with the review process and the stages that landowners go through. And so this is my third rodeo in that regard. So we can kind of put together clues from the past with what we're presented right now and try to imagine what some of the options we have are as landowners and communities.

What a 765 kV line actually is

MICHAEL BROWNEWhat an unfortunate way to develop a hobby, it sounds like you've got here. Not great, but very fortunate to have you here in this fight. You know, people in Richland Center, in Whitewater, in Poynette, in many towns have not heard of this term, 765 kilovolt. And so for those of us who are just joining in now, when we batter on those terms, 765 kilovolt transmission line, what are we actually talking about? And by whom? Because you've name-dropped a couple people, but I'm hoping to explain what structures we're talking about and what we're actually looking at.

ROB DANIELSONWell, a 765 kV or 765,000 volt transmission line is another item here in Wisconsin, in fact, in all of the upper Midwest. The closest that you might find them are south or southwest of Chicago. If you've ever driven down Interstate 55 through Central Illinois, you've probably come across a cluster of 500 volts and 765 kV transmission lines that usually occur in pairs or triples or whatever.

MICHAEL BROWNEAnd they're basically; So Rob, just to interrupt you for one second, the new development that's out the west of Masson, do you know what size transmission lines those are? Sure.

ROB DANIELSONThe largest transmission lines, and those are examples in Wisconsin, are 345 kV. And in terms of voltage, they're roughly half. In terms of power handling capabilities, they're roughly 1/6. So the 765s are, as I'm starting to say, basically transcontinental transfers of power, not something that would be interconnect with 365 systems and run through with all the substations and so forth. So this is a very, very not only novel transmission line in terms of its scale, but also in terms of the design that's being proposed with this kind of experimental guy wire system that they're looking at. But they're very large. The equivalent version of it for the MariBell project, which is to the west of Bell Center, are calling for a 250-foot wide easement and a 200 feet, roughly 200 feet high. So the 345s would have an easement of 150 feet, so much less skinnier corridor. And the height can range anywhere from around sometimes as low as 150 feet, but basically 170 to about 200 feet, something like that. That's like blinking lights on top territory, isn't it? Yes. And they will do that around airports and other places where it's necessary for aviation purposes. But basically, there's never been a transmission line proposed of this scale in any of our surrounding states, except for a few in Illinois. They are designed primarily for handling bulk power, high amounts of power. And the idea behind this one would be that somehow it's worth of power plants built in the upper Midwest, and that would justify this transmission line exporting power to eastern markets. The United States is divided up into electricity markets. We're in the Midwest, or the BISO, which is the acronym that we'll just call it the Midwest electricity market. And then there's the eastern market as PJM, or the acronym for that. So this would be designed, which is all designed by the utilities. It's the fox running the chicken coop. One of my favorite lawmakers, Wisconsin state lawmakers, once said was that it's equivalent to the Wisconsin Road Builders Association running the Department of Transportation. Oh, I laughed, but that's just sad to hear about.

Two projects, two sets of developers

MICHAEL BROWNEI know you mentioned MGS earlier, and I think that's the Midcontinent Grid Solutions. But I know we're talking about two, they're separate lines, right? Can you explain these two to our listeners?

ROB DANIELSONSo, okay, you mean in terms of the two circuits that are used for MariBell? Yeah, the MariBell line, and we've kind of broken up our efforts to understand those.

MICHAEL BROWNEWell, here's the MariBell line, and then here is the BECI line, but they're effectively extensions of each other, correct? That's correct.

ROB DANIELSONTogether, the MariBell project, which is proposed by Dairyland Power Cooperative, which is my co-op, and many other affected landowners are a wholesale supplier. And then another LLC, GridLiance Heartland, which is basically a subsidiary of Transource. [Editor’s note: GridLiance Heartland is a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Transmission, not of Transource. Rob begins to correct himself in the next sentence, but an edit in the episode cuts the correction short.] Well, I'm sorry, it's easy to get confused on this, it's a subsidiary next in the United States. So, these are very, very big players. Dairyland has somehow, for some reason, offered up our land to use, basically, to use for their project, co-project, co-owned project with NextEra. NextEra is an out-of-state, merchant transmission developer. [Editor’s note: the campaign does not describe these projects as merchant. MariBell and BECI are part of MISO's Long-Range Transmission Plan, publicly planned and cost-allocated; what is private is the developers, which earn a regulated return. See The 765 Line.] They've never built a transmission line in the state of Wisconsin before, and nor has GridLiance. We may as well provide the background for the Midcontinent Grid Solutions. They are, that is an LLC, a limited liability corporation, representing the interest of Transource, which is a subsidiary of American Electric Power, which is the largest transmission builder in the United States. And then another entity that people might recognize here from the Midwest, the Berkshire Hathaway Asset Management Company. They own and build transmission lines, they're based in Iowa. So we have, and behind all of these interests, with the exception of Dairyland, are major, major asset managers scaled. We're talking like the big investment interest in the United States, the largest ones, we're talking like BlackRock, State Street Corp, Vanguard, the ilk of that. So we're talking about major, people who have a lot of money and try to make a lot of money, more money, and they really don't think or care about how that's made. They just like say, turn it over to these other interests and say, go make me some money.

Who pays, and the assured return

MICHAEL BROWNEIt's kind of wild to think about these two projects run by two separate development teams, but it appears that they're kind of working. I remember seeing some initial costs, but then when I read a little bit deeper, I saw that those are just the initial costs and once the project really tallies up, we can expect it to be in multiples of that original amount. The way that, and correct me if I'm wrong, but what I'm seeing is we batter on these terms guaranteed return and so basically these developers get to tally up the cost of the entire project and then get an annual turn of around 10% per year for what was it, 60 years is what I saw, roughly the life of the project. [Editor’s note: Rob corrects the period in his answer: the calculations he knows run over 20 years, against an assumed 75-year line life.]

ROB DANIELSONThe calculations that I'm familiar with are over 20 years, but I think you're also right that there is some extending return over that time period. So the transmission lines, most transmission lines, whether they be wooden poles or steel poles or steel lattice like these are assumed to have about a 75 year lifespan. Yeah.

MICHAEL BROWNEI mean, what investment can you and I enter into where we get a guaranteed 10% return for that duration of time? That's pretty phenomenal.

ROB DANIELSONUtilities, I've used the term guaranteed and been gotten kickback because nothing in life is totally guaranteed, but the term is assured and that's because it's a standard that's set up by the utilities and it's a benefit that they pretty much define themselves. So yeah, but just to kind of wrap a bow around what you were talking about there with the Midwest, I'll call them the regional utilities that own the transmission lines here in the Midwest. There's about 50, roughly over 50 of them, and they created this organization in around 2002, that make of the world, 2005 it was operational, where that they basically have a responsibility assigned by FERC, not by the federal government, by through FERC, which is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which they're delegated by other utilities around the electricity market. When they started running the Midwest electricity market, which was distinct in our area, they took it upon themselves and writing up their charter to say that they would be responsible for conducting annual planning. And so this is the cap, it's really, and they say it's a Midwest expansion transmission line planning. So it's admittedly a capital growth planning process. So it's not like they say, we're going to analyze the state of the system here and try to figure out how to economize and what places need to be that are older, that need modifying earlier and stuff like that. It's just off the top, literally, like I mentioned earlier, build a lot of power plants, encourage a lot of power plants. We're going to give interconnection opportunities all over this 15 state area or 11 state area, and we're going to encourage utility development. And they're not asked by the states to do this. They're not asked by the federal government to do this. They just do it on their own accord. Recently there's a FERC, again, the utilities, they policy and recommends that utilities do this, but ours has been doing it all along since over the last 20 years.

The study segments, and what the blue lines mean

MICHAEL BROWNESo there's a lot of surprised people out there. They're just learning about this for the very first time. This Mid-Continent Grid Solutions just released these new survey lines across 78 study segments with comments due from what I see. It's less than a month, September 7th, is that correct? I think that's what I saw. Yeah. And so what is, let's say a landowner just learned about these things and they see that they're potentially impacted and they start to show up to one of the open houses that's taking place from August 24th to the 27th, also available on our website. If someone's to go to these open houses and file a comment by September 7th, what does that actually do for anybody? Okay. Let's back up a little bit and talk about what you see in your letter and you see online in terms of these blue lines that you referred to as surveying lines.

ROB DANIELSONThe technical term in the industry would be, these would be preliminary or study segments. And that's part of a process that utilities go through in basically coming up with the first set of possible routes. And in this case, you can see how they kind of come and go from each other and they double up on each other and sometimes, but they basically are all headed towards from Bell Center, which is the beginning of this BECI, BECI proposal to Portage and then down to Beloit. But the blue lines are what they're doing somewhat following the procedure in Wisconsin. They're saying, here are the areas that we would like to construct the new transmission line. And we are going to announce this to all of the potentially impacted, hopefully all of the potentially impacted landowners. And we don't know how far from the transmission line they've actually notified. We've heard that people are getting letters, but so far we haven't been able to drill down and say, did they send the letters to people that could see it? That would be like a mile away. Did they send it to people that are like 2000 feet away or a little less than a half a mile? That's what American transmission company has done in the past. We don't know. This is an out-of-state first-time developer. We don't know what practices they're adopting. So some landowners may hear from their neighbor that their neighbor got a letter. And even though they can kind of imagine where the transmission line might be cited based on their description, look at our window and go, oh my God, 200 feet tall. That would be a major, major addition to our landscape here. I may not have had any in May lane. So that's the first thing is the roots themselves have been determined, a guest, if you will, by the developer. They have now started the process of starting to inform potentially impacted landowners. And then the idea is that they will just move this forward. Then the next phase is that they'll get input from that, and then they'll take that input, and then they'll move that forward into refinements of these blue paths. And then the final point that they actually hope to attain by February, which is mind boggling, is to come up with a primary or preferred route, and then another one that's defined as an alternative. It doesn't necessarily have to be the full length of the whole project. It might be the preferred route. Usually the preferred route goes a bulk of the way through the system, and then the alternates are routes in one or two or three places where they would like to provide an alternative to be reviewed by the commission. So anyway, so that's the process. Okay.

What to ask for before September 7

MICHAEL BROWNESo we know feedback's being requested by September 7th, and we know that the developer is hosting open houses to the public. What should landowners do to be prepared for walking into one of those open houses? And what should they be thinking about when they start to write a letter for their input by September 7th? Well, I can offer some thoughts and some options based on my experience of having seen landowners and communities go through this process a number of times, but I will point out that this is an extremely, extremely difficult situation for landowners because this is like something that really affects your belongings, it affects what you own.

ROB DANIELSONAnd then for most of us, when it comes to land, I mean, there's a whole other dimension of what it means to our lives and our future and so forth. So anytime that something comes along, that can really affect your bottom line to this extent, or the health and welfare of your family, or the health and welfare of the habitat that you are associated with. You should really take this very seriously. And ultimately, when it comes down to doing, making decisions and engaging in discussions or potentially negotiations over things like this, you'd want to have the best lawyer in the world on your side. And from my experience, having seen landowners scramble to find lawyers that can do this, I will say upfront that they are in very, very high demand. And now with this many landowners impacted, that might not be feasible. And just I'll add to that, that you really need someone that's specialized in this field. Your family lawyer can read up on this stuff and get, and probably should, for other future, all of our lawyers in the state of Wisconsin should be doing their homework and coming up to speed on this. But nonetheless, so anyway, in light of that, I'll answer your question. If I'm in a situation, as I was at one time, where someone's going to be proposing something to affect my property, it's just simple to say, a development project on my property. This is no different than any other project. In other words, you call up the developer and you say, okay, here's the information that I need. I need a detailed map showing me what the potential, and I mean, by detailed, we're talking, you know, fit 30 to 50 centimeters per pixel, like a high quality aerial satellite image so that you can see things that are a few feet across. And so then I can see, with my own eyes, my parcels on my land. I don't want to get a map that's like for the whole county or the whole town. I want to see a map that's scaled for my property, because I need to make decisions about my property. So I provide the developer all of the parcel numbers that appear to be affected, and even some that might not be affected, just so I can be sure. So I look those up on the county land records, or in July, I might have those laying around from the second tax payment, and I can look at those numbers, tell them what those are. And then I would want to make sure that the detailed maps that I'm asking for have the parcels of my property identified. And if the transmission land should be proposed on the border of one of my parcels, I would like to have also the land parcel next to mine so that I could see what my neighbors' impacts are and so forth. Then I would like to be able to not only see what are on the maps right now, the blue line, which is the supposed center line of the proposed 765 kV project. I need to be able to; this is the development project, right? You want to build driveways to a building? You want to have construction areas? You want to have a product when you're finished? So first of all, the finished product would be a transmission line with an easement, and that's the land that the developer utility actually controls, even though the ownership stays in your name, the easement gives them the power to do a lot of things with this piece of property. So I need to know how wide it is. And if they say, well, we don't know yet how wide it is, from research that I've done, you can do the searching yourself, ask what is the standard width for a 765 kV transmission line? And the general response is 250 feet. So at minimum, I would like the developer to include on this map two lines, 125 feet away, or whatever they want, from the center line showing me with the actual physical dimensions of that 250 feet, so that I can see in terms of how they place it on my land, what else is going to affect immediately? For example, easements generally don't allow any vegetation, trees, or anything like that. Brush, maybe some small brush, but if it goes through a wooded land, pretty well assumed that that would be creating a clean swamp through that forest. So I would definitely need to know what that affected easement area would be. And then I want to know, in addition to that, I'd want them to mark all of the areas on the map where there would be any kind of construction. So you've got a 250-foot-wide easement, and you've got cranes. This is very large, very heavy, very intense to install equipment. A lot of it involves helicopters, apparently. I would like to know what area are you going to be disturbing, or would you be disturbing? And I want all that charted out on the map, drawn out areas out. You've got rocks, you've got concrete, you've got foundations, you've got very, very large infrastructure. How are you going to get this stuff over there to install a tower here or there? So I'd want to know both the construction areas, all potential construction areas outlined on the map. Show me what areas you'd be looking at, and then I also want to know what access roads, both ingress and exgress. Sometimes they have to have two to get the equipment in and out. Basically, they're going to have to bring a lot of heavy equipment into the land. So I want to know where that would be. I feel like we need to be making a punch list for people, or a checklist of these are the things that you need to be asking for, because unfortunately, we're having to put the burden on landowners who, if these are working family farms, they don't have time for this kind of accountability.

MICHAEL BROWNEAnd at the end of the day, it's on them to create these documents and artifacts and organize it all. And who did I speak with? On what date? What was their name? What was the company? It's very confusing. Well, we can back up.

ROB DANIELSONSo the first thing that you would want is the blue line. First thing you would want, if it's not already there, is the center line of the 765 through the property. We'll call that A. And then the second one would be the easement width. You'd want that marked on the map. That's B. And then C would be all the construction areas and access roads. And then B, and this is important, is where the towers are located obviously determines where the center lines are created. So if you have, let's say, for example, that goes over or is proposed to go over, hopefully this will never get built because it's not needed. But you might have a choice. Well, I really do think it would be extremely unfortunate to take this transmission line over my number one grazing area for all kinds of stuff or a trout stream that could be avoided. The list goes on and on, proximity to animals and human beings. So I'd want to know where those towers are, why are the center of every pole? The reason being is that the way that you move the line is moving the poles. And if they don't tell you where the poles are, you don't know what's at risk, right? And then where the modifications could be. Back to your other question about they're looking for input. The input as a landowner that I want to make is I want to make some very, very strong input. I probably, personally, I would ask for all of this that we're discussing right now in email or in a letter before the meeting. So that when I showed up to the meeting, I'd say, "Did you get my letter? This is what I'm looking for because this is what I need." I'm not going to give you input or I can't give you meaningful input unless I know what you have really proposed. And the input that I'm interested in, even though I think the line is not needed and that will never change, I'll never change my mind about that, I still have to be smart and think about like, "Well, if this should get approved, are there not some things that I could do that might make my life a little less miserable or make the habitats or the animals or whatever less harm?" So in this age that we live in, where deregulated private industries have so much power and our laws, our teeth have been taken out of our utility laws and stuff like that, that you really have to, you are the person who's standing up. No one else. No one else is standing between you and good or bad decisions.

What landowners can actually do

MICHAEL BROWNESo anyway, I want to interject here because I know that anyone listening right now is probably saying, "God, that's enormous responsibility." But you know what it also is? You as a landowner, you actually have a fair amount of power. If you have the capacity to stay on top of this stuff, be vigilant and just keep asking and stay organized. This is the way that these lines are going to be fought back. And I want to make sure that everyone knows that this is not a done deal. Right.

ROB DANIELSONThis is not a done deal. And the number of landowners that are engaged to the extent that you're talking about and placing very high standards on siting and other stuff that we're going to talk about here today, those things go hand in hand with the commission looking at it with a great deal more seriousness. So you're really prompting your state lawmakers and the commission and everyone to really to regard this very carefully. And you're the kind of… So what's the motive? Well, the motive is to, as I described, to help minimize or do everything you possibly could to minimize the negative impacts, but also to be the squeaky wheel. Exactly. During Badger Coulee, it was initially proposed to go through Berning County, parts of Richmond County and parts of Sauk County. This is back in 2010. And the first counties or the first communities to get involved in providing feedback like we're talking, landowner feedback, local official feedback, in the end, and ask all kinds of information requests, basically resolutions, to hold the developer to providing the information that they know. And they may be reticent to provide, because if you think about it, anybody just wants to say, so basically, by the time that it came to the third round of corridor deliberations, the developers showed up and said, "Guess what, Berning County, Richmond County, most of Sauk County, you're no longer in the picture." They had eliminated, indeed, the very first communities who spoke up and demanded information that they deserved, and started communicating with the developer coincidentally into that being the ones that were avoided in the final end. And we have other, I say, we, other people that have involved in cases before the PSC are noting that more and more landowners are not only getting involved intensely at the first stages that we're discussing now, but also during the PSC proceeding, using their statutory rights to intervene. And increasingly, the commission is recognizing that these individuals have serious grievances and they are getting adjustments made, fairly serious ones, and not just transmission lines, but power plants and those kinds of things. So anyway, it works. We get vocal and it works.

MICHAEL BROWNEThat's a phenomenal message to hear. We talked about these items that people should be asking for. Am I correct to say that No 765 has a template letter for landowners to send to developers? Do we have something like that ready to help people out?

ROB DANIELSONI think that, in my neighborhood when it was first proposed, two of the landowners came over and said, "Hey," do my neighbors, said, "During Badger Coulee, we asked for information. Should we be doing this now?" And so we sat down and drafted information request resolutions that contains the spirit of the kinds of bullets we're going through right now, the type of information. And then that was, that got down to the neighborhood bar and everybody at the bar wanted one. And then before we had the town next to us, all the landowners there were asking for it. And that template, if you will, which is a basic common sense approach to what information do I need that I'm not getting on this map or this template the developer has provided. So yes, but I'm thinking that maybe the best place to access the sample language and stuff like that. I bet you that if you check the Facebook pages that there are going to be some landowners who are going to be sharing copy and things like that. And if there's not, then reach out and connect with people. Because our organization, I'm on the board with Michael and we will vehemently intervene to oppose this project. But more than likely, we're going to have our hands full working with trying to stop the project at dead in its tracks and knowing that there's so many routes and so many different ways that, in my opinion, there's not one square inch of land in Wisconsin that is justified to be taken for this. So it's very hard for an organization to get really involved and say one route is better than another and stuff like that. We'll do the best as we're doing right now to empower the landowners to represent their strengths and together with their other neighbors, and so yeah. So let's see here. Do you have another question, or should I go back to this? No, I think that's really, really great.

MICHAEL BROWNEI think that the message that I want people to know is that you got more power than you think. This is not a done deal. And there are resources available to help you in this time that is really a hard time to be in. And I think that's really good talk, especially for the many people that I've encountered who they've scrimped and saved, and they were aware of a transmission line. And this is going to get to one of my next questions here, is about this line in particular. We studied these survey lines, and the developer is required by law to consider development of an existing line. And fewer than 9% is running on an existing line. So all that aside, with that in mind, what question should we be asking, and who should we be asking it of? Okay, before we dive in, that's a great, great factor here. There's another big factor too, legally speaking.

ROB DANIELSONBut I want to finish up a couple of things. That's right, on the bullet list of things to ask for, you also want to know, you want a picture or diagram. I would like to have a diagram of the actual towers, each of the unique type of towers that's being proposed for my property, and I'd want that in elevation so that I could see from, and then I'd also like to have the height of each tower. That would be the physical height of the tower, but also the installation height, which would be in sea level. So the top, say for example, if it was on top of a ridge, and it's 200 feet tall on top of a 1,000 foot ridge, and the sea level would be 1,200 feet. But if that's in the valley that's 200 feet less than that, then that would be 800 feet. So anyway, that's the sea level elevation. And then another important thing, this is on your checklist here, that the folks that you will see at the open houses are not engineers, and they're certainly not sighting engineers. Those are transmission sighting engineers. So your goal, if I'm speaking for myself, my goal would be to move this pole over here, this pole over here, because I might, I mean, if there's something right in the area where it's used, throw away land or something like that, I might say, hey, look over there. This is prime forest, wooded land here. This is grazing land. That over there is not, it's owned by a company, and it's just a deer hunting, well, I should say just a deer hunting. It's not, it doesn't have the same economic. So I might suggest moving it other places, but that's really hard to do. It's a pissed neighbor against neighbors. So I'm at least going to look out for my own interest. So I might have some very concrete suggestions that I would, as Michael was saying, make sure I have clearly in writing, after I have these maps in my hands, make those in writing, make sure they're postmarked by the seventh so they get to the developer and become part of the record. I might even just email them to beat the timeline rather than mail them. They have an email address. So I would also, when I went to the open house, I would say, when will the developer have met with a site, had allowed all of the potentially impacted landowners to have one-on-one meetings with a siting engineer? Because all, if there's no meeting with a siting engineer, it's just abstract discussion with someone who doesn't have the knowledge or the ability to really integrate your suggestions because the goal of all of this is to get the accommodations made before the application is submitted. That way, before the application is submitted, which could be in February. Yeah, we don't know how.

Badger Coulee: 37 months, not seven

MICHAEL BROWNEOne person that I spoke with brought this up, and they said, it's one thing to say, we think we can get it done in February. It's another thing to realize that even if this happened in a vacuum by themselves, they would still need public officials to help facilitate and document and track. They would still need public resources to do this and complete that goal. And so, like, well, who's paying for that one? Are paying for your aggressive timeline? Even though landowners and communities are paying for it.

ROB DANIELSONBut just to give you an idea, Badger Coulee had a 37-month public information phase, not seven. Wow. 37 months. And the final year of that time period was dedicated exclusively to one-on-one meetings with landowners to work out these siting accommodations that we're talking about so that when the application goes to the PSC, all of these meetings, imagine how many landowners have got to be completed in the drawings and the final drawings and all the adjustments and the access roads, all of the accommodations made so that when that application goes in, it has a plan that is actually accommodates input. Now, if you don't get the maps that you need in order to provide this input, you don't know where the poles are going to be, you don't know where the easements were going to be, you don't know where the boundaries of your property are, it's an abstract thing you're trying to wade through and make; Think about it. If that's your input, if your input is inconclusive and you are confused, then the developer has no actions and then they get to the next phase and they're saying like, "This is our preliminary," and they made adjustments for you and for everybody else that have made some changes here and there, but now they're a stage closer to their final thing and the amount of time that you have to provide that input and to get the meeting with the transmission siting manager is like basically, we're talking Christmas, you're basically trying to do perhaps the most important thing that you've ever done pertaining to your property in the middle of the Christmas holidays, trying to get them to figure out where, et cetera. So this is; Merry Christmas, Wisconsin. Right. So with the truncated seven month information phase, the lack of communicating with all of the landowners like myself who have been asking them for information for since January and have not gotten these maps and so forth, and they're saying like, "Oh, now come to the open houses and give us input based on these documents that don't show me what I need." So you can see that it doesn't really put the landowners, we landowners into a position of being able to influence the developer and you were saying before about they delivered their timetable as February. They have a publish if you look at their; That is wild. For February. And to the best of my knowledge, nothing like that has ever been done in Wisconsin.

MICHAEL BROWNESo is there a law that says how much time they need to be taking to do this feedback? There's not, okay. There's not.

ROB DANIELSONIn their wisdom, lawmakers from both political parties eliminated all of those criteria and decided that they would just have this phase called the public information phase and American Transmission Company, Excel, they have exercised voluntarily these longer periods of time, one, because they're extremely complex projects and everybody, I mean, just the whole concept is way above people's pay scale. And then the other thing is that they don't want to be giving the commission this half cook plan that's then going to ask the commissioners, think about it. The commissioners basically want, they don't want to see landowners' property placed in hazardous conditions. They don't want to see, in fact, our lawmakers, as you were referring to it, actually considered going through new corridor to be the last of the least, the last thing to possibly look at is going through a field or woodland or something that has not previously been affected by utility infrastructure. We'll get to falling up on that. But the idea here is that the commission expects the developer to work out all of these wrinkles. And now they have a developer that comes along and says, "We're building the longest transmission line ever in Wisconsin, the biggest one ever in Wisconsin with experimental towers, this guy wires situation here that's never been constructed before through the driftless area outgoing hills and valleys and up and down and so forth and other sensitive parts of Wisconsin." So it's a real nightmare for the commission in likelihood to be looking at, and you're also going to give us truckloads of plans for cutting through people's property without them really having substantive conversations with you.

MICHAEL BROWNEI bet the person who awarded this contract is probably sitting up tonight saying, "Damn it. Why did I hand it off to the rookie?" Well, they're not rookies.

ROB DANIELSONThey're rookies in Wisconsin, and they're rookies with this particular design technology. But American Electric Power is the largest transmission builder in the world, probably. But they're really construction people. They're not engineers that go out and communicate with the public and work out sensitivities and listen and balance out options and come up with creative solutions. These are people who are given a line diagram and say, "Go build it." It doesn't seem like if you knew what you were doing and you knew about the siting law that was been around since 2-3 that says, "Develop existing utility corridors first," and absolutely, by all means, the last thing you want to consider is greenfield development.

Why so little existing corridor

MICHAEL BROWNESo then why would these people show up and only propose 9% of existing utility corridors? Any idea why this is happening?

ROB DANIELSONWell, if you look at the maps that are in the county packets and you open those up and zoom in on them, in some instances on some of the layouts, you'll probably see a little black line. If you look and zoom in on that and read it, it will say, "Transmission line not available." That's more than likely an existing transmission line, a much smaller one that's been around for 75 years, and indeed, those are the existing utility corridors that lawmakers, actually in 1993, specified as the number one thing to look at if you're going to build a new transmission line. In other words, don't go and tear up new ground. Look at the centerline of that existing thing and figure out how you can minimize, don't create new utility infrastructure anywhere. When there's trails and highways, and you'll see a lot of the fact that Cardinal Hickory Creek and the Madra Cooley and all of the other expansion transmission lines prior to now have all utilized a lot of existing highway corridor to avoid the existing transmission line sensitivities, which you have a wooden pole structure that's 70 feet high, that 70-foot wide easement is what the majority of the existing transmission lines are. Some people buy properties and never even notice that technology there because it's wood. It blends into the background and so forth. Some people use the access roads for them to build properties or outbuildings or equipment handling stuff. They're kind of literally grown up, if you will, developed along with or beside this transmission line so when it comes along to expanding it, those properties are up. There's some thought that the developer, and prompted, perhaps by many of the landowners who wrote and pointing out that they would have extremely hazardous situations if the 70-foot easement was extended to 250 feet. You can see that one argument that a developer would make is that, "Well, we're trying to avoid these sensitivities and stuff." But the problem is that that assumes that every one of those existing transmission lines has sensitivities that are greater than the sensitivities of going through woods or whatever for the first time. So the wisdom, and I don't know this, and I bet you there are dozens, if not several dozens of people in Wisconsin who've known the reason for this for a long time and they're very secretive and they don't ever talk to real citizens and stuff like that. I understand that one of the utilities, transmission builders here in Wisconsin, who did not get the bid for this particular project from the regional utilities, may have said that they were uncomfortable with this developer utilizing corridor easement that they currently hold the documentation for. So these existing transmission lines that are in black were probably owned by American transmission company as one of them, a lion in the area that we're in. We are a lion to some mass and gas electric, but basically all of those Wisconsin regulated utilities are part owners of American transmission company. So there's a lot of common interests amongst the folks who own the existing. But the question in my mind is, and I'm not a lawyer, I posed it to my state lawmakers and haven't heard any response yet, but the statute says that, like you say, and this is, if you want to look it up, Wisconsin statute 1.12 section 6, 1.12 section 6, you can type that in, jump to it, it has the existing transmission lines at the top of the list. And basically, these existing transmission lines are part of a very important part of the electrical grid. They're called the network transmission lines. They're the transmission lines that actually carry the bulk of the power at any given moment because they're going to the end destinations. They're going to the distribution lines, the substations and so forth that supply the power and so forth. So basically, they're called network transmission lines. They're generally regarded to be, even though they're owned by certain companies and the easements are held, they're held by individual companies. The asset itself has a transmission component in our electrical grid. But they really belong to all of us. The electrons that go through there go not just to the houses, they go everywhere and they're the back, if they will, they're the real arms and legs of our electrical power system. So it's hard for me to imagine that any transmission concern would be able to say that they can interfere in the pursuit of Wisconsin law which says build along existing transmission lines to the extent that you can to minimize impacts. It doesn't make sense to me that I don't know, like I said, this has been around in the gossip circles amongst utility folks for many months now. But I had no clue until this recent maps came out and stuff that they were actually considering not following state law. So that raises questions and then the seven months. So there's two really key procedural things that need to be taken up and evaluated, in my opinion, by state lawmakers because I do not think that in 1993 that the lawmakers who wrote that law, who made new ground last on the list, intended for a utility to come along and say, well, we're not going to give you number one. I find that if they did that, what a super amazing oversight and that would be paramount for our existing state lawmakers to fix immediately, like now, fix it now. So we do not have to have this ambiguity about what an out-of-state transmission, limited liability corporation wants to do with our heart and soul. And so that would be one. And then the other one is the same thing for the public information phase. Sure, American transmission company and Excel. When you go to Excel's public information meetings, I happened to do this two summers ago. When you walk in the door, you're an existing landowner, they take you off to the side and they show you maps with everything that I just described, and they don't wait around and then they make meetings to meet with sighting engineers on that spot.

MICHAEL BROWNEAnd I'm not expecting that that happens at August 24th to the 27th, but that's what should be happening.

ROB DANIELSONWell, that's the precedent, and it certainly didn't hear any landowners complain about it. In fact, a couple of them, when I was at the thing, came up to me afterwards and they were really upset, really upset like, "Oh my God, this is like not good news for us." But then I remember one of them specifically said, "Well, you know, I do feel better though, at least that we are in communications with these people and we will have meetings with them and we do have the maps and stuff that we need to go home and digest and think about what this means to us." So if we don't get any of that stuff, right, the baseline, then in seven months, I mean, it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense on how it can possibly come together in that period of time. For those listening, know 765line.org/events.

The open houses, and what to bring

MICHAEL BROWNEWhat we're talking about is Monday, August 24th is the first one. That's 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Richland County. I'm just going to go down these real quick. You can go to the website and check them out. The 24th is also Crawford County, 4 to 7 p.m. The 25th is Sauk County from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. followed by the 25th in Columbia County, 4 to 7 p.m. 26th Jefferson County, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the 26th, Wednesday the 26th, 4 to 7 p.m., Dane and Dodge counties together at the same time over in Sun Prairie and then the 27th, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Walworth County later in the day, 27th, 4 to 7 p.m. in Rock County. That is just a rapid fire development to be unveiling in such a serious issue here. Robin, in your eyes, if someone's going to go to an open house on the 24th, we've talked about getting a letter out ahead of time with basically a list of requests, but if they're going to spend 30 minutes at one of these open houses, how can they make the most of that time?

ROB DANIELSONWell, going back to my sample, I will have sent in the letter requesting these things that we just ran through and then I would take a copy of that letter with me and I make sure you mail it in as soon as possible and then I'd go in the door and I'd say, "Who can give me specifics about impacts? Where should I go to learn specifics about potential impacts on my land?" And they'll probably send you to a map area or something like that and then I'd meet and shake hands with somebody there, get their name, write it down so I know whom I'm talking with and then I would show them the letter that I had sent in and then I'd ask them if those materials were available for me to pick up at that time because that would be the easiest way to do it. And we're talking the 24th and you're saying it's like a little bit more than two weeks for me to digest all of that stuff and then submit my input on the 7th. So the time is short. So if I'm a landowner, this is all that's on my mind. If you want to talk about need, if you want to talk about how much renewable energy is in the line or whatever, all that kind of stuff, that's great. But if you're a landowner or an effective community or an adjacent landowner, I'm all about getting the detailed mapping in the stuff that we've just gone through because I cannot provide meaningful, actionable input without that material. And it's not in my interest to not be able to make actionable input for the developer. Would someone email me earlier today and say, "Should I coordinate with my neighbors and others?" Absolutely. I communicate with everybody upside down, left and right, and I go as far over the line as I can or whatever, I'm in constant, no such thing as too much information though. So I would correlate with my neighbors. I would make sure that I have my checklist of the things that I want to cover. And then I would, this is important, I would make sure that I pick up at least two or three copies of the input form that you can carry out so that you do not attempt to do a verbal response to the person who's talking to you. They have no way to relay that. You can get, we're all going to be upset. They expect everybody to be upset. In fact, they've kind of intensified this situation to invite issues. And frankly, if there's issues and stuff that happens and whatever, they can simply report that instead of reporting the input. So take those forms with you so that you can sit down with them. I would register on the log that I did attend. And if you want to write down some impressions that you have on the spot, go ahead and put that in the comment box, but be at the end of it, that you will be making a full and complete written comment on another form. That's, I get very practical when it comes to my land and my neighbor's land. So I, the need and all of that stuff is really super important. KARST someone was talking like, like KARST topology, you know, sensitivities, and these are major construction projects. Really this is like on a long list of concerns that people might have, but these are not going to be biologists. These are not going to be transmission sighting engineers. These are not going to be geology. These are people who for the most part are trained in public relations to listen and nod their heads and make, you know, express the interest, do the interest, the bidding of the company. And their job is to get this proposed in the way that's advantageous to them at the time that's advantageous to them and to move forward. And they have made every indication, both by delaying the public notification of this project, by then providing us a shortened review schedule, and then by completely ignoring where the state says that transmission line should be proposed. They have really exact, they have stacked up obstacles in front of every landowner and every community almost to the extent that it seems like, you know, why would, why would they do that if they were, if they were truly as transparent and whatever.

MICHAEL BROWNEIf I were any lawmaker, if I were Tony Evers right now, I'd be saying, "Absolutely not. This is Wisconsin. These are our laws. You abide by them." It's pretty cut and dry in my opinion. Rob, I want to keep a respect for our time and the listeners' time here. I just am immensely grateful that you're in this fight, that you're here, you're committing, your passion, your time, your wisdom. This group, the state overall, the region would not be where it is without you. And on behalf of the listeners and everybody else, the board, the members, everyone, thank you for doing what you do and helping us get organized. If you're on a parting note here, if a listener to this recording does one thing, what should they do?

Before you go

ROB DANIELSONWell, I would see if you can find some sample copy out there to submit a written request in. You can, if you do Facebook pages, go to your local Facebook pages and stuff. I'd like to see samples of request letters, many of them that have been sent in, and get that copy. That should be fairly straightforward. Send that in. You can do that via email, which is very straightforward. And get that in and then go to the open house and show them the request that you've made. Go through that sequence. But watch out, one of the things I would mention is that from previous experience in MariBell, right after these open houses, all of a sudden these surveying engineers show up. They're saying like, "We want to get on your property." And they don't have, generally speaking, I'm not a lawyer, but generally speaking, most of these older easement documents that people are holding, or there's no easement on your property if it's green lash. And they'll probably, in this case, they offered people money. And then they were there doing stuff on their land, and people were not comfortable with the whole situation. So one of the things that was pointed out to me at one of the meetings was, "Hey, you know what I did? I sent them the letter." And they had this letter in their hands, and they didn't say anything. So I contacted and I said, "Did you get the letter?" And they said, "Yeah, we got your letter and stuff." And then this land agent shows up wanting them to sign a document to allow a survey team to go on their property. And they thought about it for a while, and they said, "No, you've got to deliver the information that I asked for. If you want to carry this forward in any way, you've got to go back to what I asked for. I'm certainly not going to consider something else for you when you haven't provided the information that I need in order to make informative input." That goes directly back to the tone here of you have more power than you realize.

MICHAEL BROWNEI think that's a great note to end on here. And Rob, thank you so much for your time. I look forward to seeing you out in the field again soon. All right, Michael, thank you. All right. Thank you. Bye-bye.