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Archive for April, 2009
Thursday, April 30th, 2009
 Here’s a message from Justin Fay that seemed worth repeating whole:
Although the House vote today to oppose repealing the moratorium on nuclear power was a significant victory, we are by no means finished with this issue. We still have a conference committee to work through, and we can be certain that this amendment will continue to be offered every session until it passes…and in spite of today’s encouraging vote, defeating this initiative will only become more difficult in the future.
There are a few simple things that we all can do in the short term to help keep some momentum intact:
1. First and foremost, if your legislator is one of the 72 who voted in support of keeping the moratorium (vote count pasted below), please send them a quick note thanking them for their vote today, and ask your friends and family to do the same.
2. Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper applauding the Minnesota House for their forward-thinking vote on the repeal.
3. Go to the following news stories about the repeal and leave a brief comment voicing your support for the House decision today:
House Vote Results (to be clear – a “negative vote” was a vote to maintain the moratorium):
Those who voted in the affirmative were:
Anderson, B.
Anderson, P.
Anderson, S.
Beard
Brod
Buesgens
Bunn
Cornish
Davids
Dean
Demmer
Dettmer
Doepke
Doty
Downey
Drazkowski
Eastlund
Faust
Garofalo
Gottwalt
Gunther
Hackbarth
Hamilton
Haws
Holberg
Hoppe
Hosch
Howes
Huntley
Juhnke
Kelly
Kiffmeyer
Koenen
Kohls
Lanning
Loon
Mack
Magnus
Mahoney
McFarlane
McNamara
Murdock
Nelson
Nornes
Norton
Olin
Pelowski
Peppin
Poppe
Sanders
Scott
Seifert
Severson
Shimanski
Smith
Swails
Torkelson
Urdahl
Westrom
Zellers
Those who voted in the negative were:
Abeler
Anzelc
Atkins
Benson
Bigham
Bly
Brown
Brynaert
Carlson
Champion
Clark
Davnie
Dittrich
Eken
Falk
Fritz
Gardner
Greiling
Hansen
Hausman
Hayden
Hilstrom
Hilty
Hornstein
Hortman
Jackson
Johnson
Kahn
Kalin
Kath
Knuth
Laine
Lenczewski
Lesch
Liebling
Lieder
Lillie
Loeffler
Mariani
Marquart
Masin
Morgan
Morrow
Mullery
Murphy, E.
Murphy, M.
Newton
Obermueller
Otremba
Paymar
Persell
Peterson
Reinert
Rosenthal
Rukavina
Ruud
Sailer
Scalze
Sertich
Simon
Slawik
Slocum
Solberg
Sterner
Thao
Thissen
Tillberry
Wagenius
Ward
Welti
Winkler
Spk. Kelliher
Tags: nuclear
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Thursday, April 30th, 2009
Spring Waxing Flower Moon
“All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.” Ronald Reagan
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Maybe so. But who would want to sit at that desk?
The House, only moments ago, defeated an amendment to the House Omnibus Energy Bill, offered by Rep. Faust, DFL, to repeal the state’s moratorium on granting nuclear power plant certificates. The vote was 60-72.
The debate lasted almost an hour. The telling points seemed to be three: 1. What will we do with the waste? 2. Nuclear power plants are expensive and pollute water sources, usually rivers, with heat. 3. Should we follow the path laid down in the past toward our energy future or should we create a new path with renewables and a different conception about electrical use, e.g. more conservation, distributed production.
This defeat means the Omnibus Energy conference committee will not have both houses of the legislature in agreement on this issue. The repeal passed as an amendment on the Senate floor. The conference committee will, therefore, have to consider the repeal. This is not over yet.
Tags: nuclear
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Thursday, April 30th, 2009
Spring Waxing Flower Moon
 “God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.” Thomas Jefferson
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Green Jobs: As reported yesterday, the Green Jobs legislation (part of the Federal Stimulus bill) will go to conference committee, perhaps as soon as the next couple of days. Its next stop after that is Governor Pawlenty’s desk.
We have one message for him: Sign It!
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Sensible Communities: As a stand alone bill, Sensible Communities has been dead for a few weeks. Four components of it live on in various omnibus bills: vehicle miles reduction goal, a study by the University of Minnesota on how to reduce vehicle miles, the elimination of school siting requirements and the addition of wetland conservation to environmental reviews required for land use and development planning.
It is possible than one or all of these might pass in their various bills. The one deemed most likely to become law at this point eliminates acreage requirements for school sitings. This would allow new schools to locate more toward the center of population densities rather than on their fringes encouraging more compact growth.
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Nuclear Moratorium Repeal: This has still not come up in the House though new information suggests today might be the day. A new wrinkle is the possibility of an amendment that would link lifting of the moratorium to development of a permanent depository for nuclear waste. This might encourage fence sitters to vote yes in the belief that the long road to such a depository would not mean lifting the ban for quite awhile. The problem is that another session of the legislature could then eliminate the permanent depository language and therefore repeal the moratorium.
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Bill Making Legal Challenges by Non-Profits much more difficult (HF1557): I mentioned this legislation on the 16th of April. In its original form it would have hampered lawsuits by organizations like the Sierra Club by imposing potential financial penalities, even if our suits were successful. This legislation as a whole is dead, but its author, prominent Range DFL’er, Tom Bakk, has changed tactics. He will now try to insert language that reduces the length of time in which a legal challenge can be raised from 6 years to 60 days. This would amount to the same onerous restriction since 60 days is not enough time for most non-profits to evaluate a situation, raise money if necessary, assemble a legal team and file suit.
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Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
 Green Jobs: Green jobs legislation has now passed the House and Senate. Exact language goes to a conference committee chaired by the bill authors, Rep. Hilty and Senator Anderson. This is a win for the environmental community. Congratulations to the Blue/Green Alliance and every one else who has worked on this important jobs and energy savings legislation.
Repeal of Nuclear Moratorium: Current word is that the repeal may show up on the House floor tomorrow. The House session tomorrow begins at 10:30 AM. You can watch on Minnesota Legislative Television or webcast.
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Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
Spring Waning Seed Moon
 Lost Forty Chippewa Forest But I’ll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you’ll come to understand that you’re connected with everything.
Alan Watts
Yes, but what if the far, far forest got given away to land owners who share border with it? What if the far, far forest, instead of being quiet, had the sound of management activities taking place? Management by paper companies. If these things happened, then we might not come to know we’re connected to everything.
There are two bills making their way through the legislative process which would allow both of these incursions on our public lands.
The first bill, HF696, Rep. Dill, allows property owners whose lands are contiguous with public lands to acquire those lands which touch their property with a quit claim deed from the state if there are trespass issues involved. As one environmental advocate puts it, what will prevent a land owner from encroaching on public land with a building or a fence or a continuous use that will then get “resolved” by a private sale. A private sale means no public input. This bill has passed its division in the House.
HF1132, Rep. Dill and others, allows a pilot project which would lease our forest lands to private industry for management. This is, as MCEA puts it, an attack on public lands. The most essential word in the phrase public lands is public. If we allow our lands, our commons, to fall under industrial management then they lose their essence. Here is language from the bill itself: “Forest management lease-pilot project. Allows the commissioner to lease state-owned forest lands for forest management purposes as a pilot project.”
Tags: Forests
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Thursday, April 16th, 2009
Spring Waning Seed Moon
“They played hard. They played defense. They respected their competition. This was a team.” John Schuhmann on the USA 2008 men’s basketball team winning gold.
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As the session moves closer to its May 18 adjournment date, more of the legislative committee’s attention gets taken up by necessary defensive work, that is, staying alert to bills that would harm the environment as well as pressing for adoption of bills that would help.
I’ve written more than once about attempts to repeal the nuclear moratorium. Preventing such legislation from passing is defensive work. The 2008 USA men’s basketball team recovered the gold medal with good defense.
Competitive arenas like the legislative process and the Olympics demand an offense and a defense. Always. Without both, as the USA Olympic team learned, gains from the offense can be lost on defense.
The nuclear moratorium repeal made it into the Senate’s omnibus energy bill on a floor amendment. It did not make it into the House omnibus energy bill, thanks in part to good defensive work. A floor amendment will be offered when the House takes up its omnibus energy bill, probably next Monday. Time for more defense.
Later, the energy bill’s conference committee will be yet another place for defense since the repeal is in the Senate’s bill. It will have to be reconciled with the House version.
A different sort of defensive work is underway on HF1557. This is a bill that would make taking legal action much more risky for groups like the Sierra Club. It is a direct affront to the due process of citizens wishing to challenge the decision of governmental bodies in the court system. In the Senate Tom Bakk carries this legislation. This bill would make challenging companies like Polymet in court many times more difficult.
ATV legislation has also moved to defensive work. There is, for example, a bill to increase the allowable engine size to increase from 800 cc’s to 900 cc’s.
Tags: ATV's, HF1557, nuclear energy
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Thursday, April 16th, 2009
Spring Waning Seed Moon
 Barbara Ward, Only One Earth, 1972. “We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do.”
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The Green Jobs legislation continues to offer the best chance of our learning how to be good guests at this year’s legislature. The federal stimulus money will train workers in jobs designed to help us walk lightly on the earth, as her other creatures do. Weatherizing and retrofitting houses and public buildings will provide jobs for unemployed Minnesotans, many through the HIRE environmental justice project.
There are, too, smaller possible victories such as allowing school districts more leeway in where to site schools and adding confiscation of vehicles to the punishments for repeat ATV offenders.
Otherwise the session continues as a disappointment for environmental policy. Distraction of legislators, even environmental champions, by the size of our deficit has contributed. No one foresaw last August that the nation and the state would be reeling from economic catastrophe followed by economic catastrophe. Many of us had hoped then that a win by Obama might put our issues on the frontline, ready to be tackled at last in Washington as well as in the states. The win happened, but its impact for us, as for so many things political, has had to filter through the larger problems in the economy and how to wind down the war in Iraq.
Another significant contribution to the lack lustre session was the Obama administration’s decision to have the EPA review a waiver for the California Clean Cars act, on the books in California and 13 other states. Though on the books the EPA would not grant California and the other 13 states a waiver allowing them to establish standards more rigorous than the Federal standards. When President Obama asked the EPA to review that decision, it seemed to bode well for our Clean Cars legislation. Not so. In the end it allowed many legislators to imagine the issue could be resolved at the Federal rather the state level. If the Federal government does mandate higher standards for the nation, it will not come soon and the waiver, even if allowed by the EPA, will do nothing for us if we have not passed the Clean Cars legislation.
Both Clean Cars and Safe Mines will now have to move to organizing and issue education in preparation for the next legislative session, as will the Building Sensible Communities legislation.
Later: watch for a post on Bad Bills.
Tags: Green Jobs
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Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
Spring Waning Seed Moon
The House Ways and Means Committee passed the House version (Rep. Hilty) energy omnibus bill. This is important because it does not contain the Senate floor amendment to lift the moratorium on new nuclear energy plants. There is still the probability of an amendment from the floor when the bill comes before the full House, but the decision will have to be made by all the members. It cannot pass hidden in the larger omnibus bill
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Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
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Monday, April 13th, 2009
 Justin has passed on this list as a heads up for this week. Here are committee meetings of interest that are currently on the schedule:
Tuesday
House Environment Finance Committee
8:30am, Room 5 State Office Building (reconvening at 6:30pm for public testimony, amendments, etc.)
*Environment omnibus budget bill
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Senate Environment Finance Committee
12:30pm, Room 107 Capitol (reconvening at 6:30pm if agenda not finished)
*Green Enterprise Authority (Green Jobs task force recommendation)
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Wednesday
House Ways and Means
8:00am, Room 200 State Office Building
*Energy omnibus policy bill (Senate version has the nuclear moratorium repeal language)
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Senate Finance
8:30am, Room 123 Capitol
*SF657 – federal stimulus/green jobs omnibus
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Senate Taxes
8:30am, Room 15 Capitol
*Governor’s green jobs proposals
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House Finance
8:45am, Room 200 State Office Building (will reconvene at 6:30pm)
*Environment omnibus budget bill
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