Sherco Solar 3 Public Hearing 20240509

I made this video of the Sherco Solar 3 Public Hearing held Thursday 5/9/2024, to allow the rest of the Public to see what took place.

On November 7, 2023, the first Sherco Solar 3 Environmental Assessment Public hearing was held at the Clear Lake Town hall. The official 120 page transcript was not released until 11/27/24, and made for a pretty dry reading of the 2 hour event. A “transcript”, while it may capture the “words”, loses the speakers inflection and passion, making it difficult for an individual that wasn’t in attendance that day to read it and fully understand what was being said. Many times back in November, a speaker would hold up exhibits or pointed to a map in the process of making their points, this was all lost in the monotone reading the transcript. So this time I decided to record the Public Hearing, and make it available so that others can see and experience what actually went on, including the crowd reaction.

Unfortunately, as a result of my equipment and inexperience with recording matters like this, the video is of poor quality and the audio is a little difficult to hear. . . so you will have to turn your volume way up!

The hearing started with a panel composed of representatives from Xcel, PUC, Dept. of Commerce and Office of Administrative Hearings providing a projected presentation which does not show well on the video, so I took screen shots of their slides and overlaid them onto the video so that you could read them. When a commenter references a map of the project, I place that slide back over the video.

This meeting went on for 2 hours, so yes, this video is 2 hours long, but it will be much more informative for you than if you were to decide to read the forth coming transcript. (I did lose a couple minutes of the comments towards the end as my computer ran out of storage!!)

The first 20 minutes is the presentation provided by the “panel”.

The first commenter/speaker starts at the 20.17 mark, a Penny Bergstraser. . . I will attempt to list the times and names of the other presenters below for your convenience.

IMPORTANT: WHILE YOU MAY HAVE NOT ATTENDED THIS PUBLIC HEARING, YOU HAVE UNTIL MAY 22, 2024, TO SUBMIT YOUR COMMENTS TO THE PUC. HOW TO SUBMIT IS CONTAINED IN THIS VIDEO AT THE 4 MINUTE, 14 SECOND MARK.

0 – 20.17 min – Panel Introduction/Presentation

20.14 – 29.09 Penny Bergstraser

29.09 – 29.50 Junior Geisfinger

29.50 - 33.17 MacDonald(?)

33.17 – 43.59 Joseph Backowski

43.59 – 45.56 Don (?)

45.56 – 53.54 Mary Simpler

53.54 – 1:02.11 Tom Hentges

1:02.11 – 1:03.47 Shelly Alger-Peyton

1:03.47 – 1:11.55 Bret Collier

1:11.55 – 1:20.25 Lefty Kleis

1:20.25 – 1:25.32 Shelly Alger-Peyton

1:25.32 – 1:35.55 Bret Collier

1:35.55 – 1:41.44 Lefty Kleis

1:41.44 – 1:44.46 Tom Hentges

1:44.46 – 1:45.36 Joseph Backowski

1:45.36 – 1:47.47 Women (this is where I ran out of storage space!)

1:47.47 – 1:50.38 Mary Simpler

1:50.38 – 1:52.12 John R.

1:52.12 – 1:53.56 Same Women as at 1:45.36 above!

1:53.56 – 1:54.28 Shelly Alger-Peyton

1:54.28 – 1:56.32 Bridget(?)

1:56.32 – end Closing

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