How did I spend my day today? Worked from 5am till 11am here at the house on the day job then headed to the City to attend the public comments meeting at the corporation commission about the Wind Catcher Wind farm and transmission line AEP (You can't spell cheap without AEP) / PSO.
My summery of the meeting:
Quote:
There were a lot of people at the Wind Catcher public comments session at the Corporation Commission today. There were basically 3 groups of people there for the most part besides the companies and unions wanting to get a piece of the pie by speaking in favor of it.
There were the people getting the wind mills with dollar signs in their eyes on the damages payment and royalties and tax dollars from the generation for their area. That was about 60% of the people that got up and talked from land owners to mayors to county commissioners to others with a chance at getting trickle down monies.
The second group were the environmentalists, including Sierra club and others touting global warming and how great wind generation was. I noted that all those in favor that spoke in this group were from major cities that won't have the wind generator or transmission lines affecting their lives, but they will feel for those affected as one woman said but it was needed. (Sorry/Not Sorry)... That made up about 30% of the speakers.
The final group were the few of us that get to enjoy all the negatives of the project, the transmission lines. There was Me, a guy from around Skiatook lake, a gentleman from Sperry, and a woman with a large multi generational family farm out west. All but the Sperry guy had land affected by the transmission lines, the 3 of us all declared that no deals would be made and we would be going to court over the issue if they pursued it across our properties by using Eminent Domain. Included also in this grouping was the Speaker for the Osage Nation that also spoke out against the Transmission lines going across Osage County.
While I spoke, the commissioners appeared shocked that I'd never been contacted about the line possibly going across my land, I had a few points I wanted to express, not sure I got through them all, while talking as I'd been sitting there for 3+ hours waiting my turn, mind numb from listening to people drone on for 3+ hours, and public speaking isn't my forte at all.
I was trying to not truly and vulgarly state what I thought of the whole ****ing thing. Tried not to shock the ears of the commissioners too much.
I talked to the judge running the show after it was over when I submitted my stuff and said that I was coherent, but the stenographer might have had trouble keeping up with the speed at which I talked... I submitted my typed notes, including the enlarged map showing the line and width of right of way across my place and Karen Carter's place with the line being within 400' of my house and about 6-700' from her house. As well as the studies I used to gather information about effects of these large lines on property values, animal health, human affects and other side affects of 765,000 volts of electric running down the wire. All of the info I found was only dealing with 100 kV to 365 kV lines.
Thought there would be more people from our area there, but guess it wasn't that important to show up and voice their thoughts in person.
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Got home about 7:30 or 8:00 and applied the first coat of paint to the now dried opposite sides and other small things and then put a couple more hours into the day job work...
Will apply a 2nd coat in the morning when I get up, then figure out what I'm going to do on my day off. Maybe try and start the tractor since it's supposed to be 45 degrees tomorrow and get the wood shed out of the shop and moved into place.