FERC to Bond

Here is part of a letter that the chairman of FERC sent to Sen. Bond's Cape Girardeau office concerning the letter from Reynolds County Commissioners.

All proposals and plans for all project enhancements must be submitted
by AmerenUE to the Commission for review and approval. Interested parties should
work directly with AmerenUE.
To answer your questions, AmerenUE has not submitted a final plan of project
enhancements, and the views of the county will be considered.

I'm willing to bet that the Commissioners have not read the real Order between FERC and Ameren, but have only read news reports.

It's almost 7pm here at Peola Valley and it is 33 degrees and still raining hard. I'm concerned that we are going to have a big ice event and lose power, but our power company is not Ameren.

New Highway?

For those of you that come to Lesterville on Hwy 67 and turn at Farmington to V & W there will be a new highway, at least a new number. V & W will now be Missouri 221 between Farmington and Ironton. The good news is the road is going to be improved starting next year with shoulders.

My Proposal For The "Project Enhancements"

The following is from a three page proposal that I sent to Ameren and FERC on Monday.

Before making my proposals and suggestions for the project enhancements I would like to ask how Ameren and/or FERC are going to define “near the project”. Are you going to use zip codes (e.g. 63654), phone exchanges (e.g. 637), school district boundaries (e.g. Lesterville R-4), radius from the plant office (e.g. 10 miles radius within Reynolds County), or are you going to make a determination for each proposal.

Under project enhancement number one, Economic Development and Quality of Life, I would like to propose that Ameren provide a broadband network for those persons residing near the Taum Sauk project. Ameren already has experience with providing BPL (Broadband over Power Lines) in its test market in Cape Girardeau and it recently announced activity in MDU’s (multi dwelling units) in St. Louis. Ameren has an affiliate called Ameren Energy Communications that has the expertise to approach a project of this scale. I realize that Ameren does not own or operate the majority of electric utility lines near the project, but I feel that if Ameren was providing the equipment and expertise that Black River Electric Cooperative would be open to this venture.

If Black River Electric did not want to provide access to their lines I would propose that Ameren investigate providing Broadband access by WiMAX. In areas without pre-existing physical cable or telephone networks, WiMAX is a viable alternative for broadband access that has hitherto been unavailable.

I also made some proposals for the museum that is located at the Taum Sauk plant. I ended my letter with this paragraph.

Finally, I feel that the funds spent for “project enhancements” should apply to the largest population possible of those persons living “near the project” as well as those individuals visiting the Black River area for recreational activities. I am opposed to giving Reynolds County elected officials any special consideration in deciding how funding for local improvements will be spent. Their requests should not receive any special ranking when deciding how to proceed with the “project enhancements”.

The County Commisioners in their letter to Sen. Bond refered to "community improvments", but this phrase was never used in the Agreement between Ameren and FERC. I sure don't think the money should be used for dump trucks and asphalt.

Now For Something Completely Different

If you like bargans on the internet check this out. They only sell one item each day until they are sold out.

WOOT

Overview

Those of you that have visited the pottery probably know that I love maps and aerial photos. Here is one that I received today.

New Map

Here is an interesting map on Google Maps. If you change to satellite it still has the upper reservoir.

More Shelley Powers

Take the time to read this post and be sure to read both comments.

Just Shelley Blog

$$$$

Well when you find something like this, you just have to share it, even if I am out of town for turkey day. This is from a letter that the Reynolds County Commissioners sent to Kit Bond asking his help in getting some of the FERC fine.

We would like to request the allocated funding to be used in its entirety in Reynolds
County. As County Commissioners we would like to request enough funds to overlay the
road leading to the power plant. We would like to obtain the needed dump trucks and
boom axe to maintain their county roads. Another concern of the Commission is to
request funding for adding on to the Reynolds County Courthouse, allowing additional
office space and storage for important county records.

I can't wait for Ameren and/or FERC to define "local". But the fact that Reynolds County is trying to make sure that Iron County does not get any of the fine is interesting.

See You In a Week

Pam and I are going to spend the week in Springfield with our son and daughter-in-law. I'll still check the web to see if there is any news about the Black River area, but don't expect much on a holiday week. Hope all of you have a great Thanksgiving feed with family and friends.

More Information

Here is an article from the Columbia Daily Tribune that better explains the rift between Ameren and DNR. The last few paragraphs get to the heart of the matter.

Big News Day

The director of DNR meet with Reynolds County residents Monday night and the following two articles are from that meeting. I wasn't there because I did not know it was happening. As I have said in the past there is a news vacuum here and on the web. I defy you to find out what is happening at the Shut-Ins or at the reservoir from DRN or Ameren's web sites. But as you can see from the articles when you wave $5M around in rural Missouri everyone wants a piece of the pie.

Park Hills Newspaper

Kansas City Infozine

Broadband

My dial up service is really slow today. I sometimes think that "Ernestine" (Lilly Tomlin's character from Laugh In) is sitting in Ironton and pluging in my wire so I have service - One ringy dingy - two ringy dingys. Here a a few quotes from an artilce in the Houston paper.

In the United States, we like to think of ourselves as the world's technology leaders, but when it comes to access to broadband services, we're actually well down the path to permanent mediocrity. We were 21st in the world -- right after Estonia.

Many households are hostage to a single broadband provider, and nearly one-tenth have no broadband provider at all.

When I see that 1/10th figure I'm sure they are talking population. If it was geography I'll bet the figure would be over 50% of the country.

Lots of Dump Trucks

The following is from a DRN news release.

In the test of on-site materials, AmerenUE will use the rock from the existing site. The rock will be transported offsite to a commercial quarry operator and crushed to design specifications before its delivered back to the site. The crushed rock will be mixed with cement, fly ash and water in a mixer to produce concrete. The permit allows AmerenUE to construct concrete pads to test the feasibility of the Roller Compacted Concrete Mix Design Program developed to rebuild the Taum Sauk upper reservoir.

So I assume that the trucks heading to Ironton (home of a commercial quarry) are full of large rocks from the old reservoir and the trucks heading back to the Taum Sauk site are full of crushed aggregate.

New FERC Letter

The is a quote from a letter FERC sent to Ameren.

We received your letter of October 30, 2006 regarding proposed additional field
investigations by your insurance carrier. Thank you for notifying us regarding this
proposed work. Please let us know when the exploration program will commence and
when it is completed.

In other news I talked to a local person that has been hired as part of a crew to do an archieological survey of the Goggin Mt. area before work is started on the new Shut-Ins campground. The survey will take a few weeks.

Big News, No

When I saw the title of this article I thought it was the big news about the reservoir, but it just covered stuff that I posted a few weeks ago.

Getting Closer?

There is a letter on the FERC web site from URS asking that FERC not issue a "ruling, comment, or opinion" on the Taum Sauk reservoir until URS has a chance to submit it comments on the Board of Consultants design. URS says it will respond by November 17. They feel that "our refined design is sufficiently robust to accomodate the issues raised in these reports."

Anybody out there know whats really going on?

Correction

I said a few days ago that water was coming over the top of the Lower Reservoir dam after the rains. I talked to an Ameren engineer yesterday and this did not happen. The water did come up about 10 feet before they started releasing it and they dropped the water level to about 7 feet. With the rainy season upon us their problem is how to finish removing the silt that is near the dam.

So I will try not to publish third hand information in the future, but it shows how some current information from Ameren and DNR would keep us all better informed.

Win Some, Lose Some

When I was in my late 20's during the late 60's I saw a poster that said -

It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government still gets in.

So for the last 40 years I've always remember that after a close election.

River Report II

Just got back from voting and the river is looking better at BRL. Still greenish, but clearing. We only hand a half inch of rain yesterday and I'm assuming that they are not letting much out of the Lower Reservoir. Also, we always have to be thankful for all the clear water that is coming down the West and Middle Fork.

River Report

The river looks like crap! Milky pea green again and it is raining today. A friend told me that the Lower Reservoir was full again because of all the rain last week and that at one point water was coming over the top of the dam. November is historically the month with the most rain and most big floods, usually during deer hunting season. This graph is the river level at the East Fork bridge near Lenny's.

Information Please

The following is from J. Carter's blog, a blog that is very anti GOP. I'm not taking a political stand here, what I wish is that Ameren and DNR would update their web site with current information about our future here in Reynolds County. I know that the response is going to be, we can't say anything while negotiations are going on. We had monthly meeting last Spring with great detail about curent work and plans. There has been no official information since the park service put out its proposed plans (no information on what part of that plan they decided to follow) and Ameren put out its press release about the FERC fine. So I want to know what is happening, at the park, at the lower reservoir, and on top of Proffitt Mt.

Here is the quote from Carter's blog. PS. the links won't work from this quote.

The greed of the Blunts has become so shocking and brazen that no one seems to even notice anymore. The latest news is that they will all profit off the AmerenUE fiasco. We all know that Andy Blunt is a registered lobbyist for AmerenUE. But apparently the main stream media has forgotten that about 60 days ago, Amy Blunt went to work for the GOP's favorite law firm, Lathrop & Gage .

Well, here's a shocker for you. The Governor has now hired Amy's law firm, Lathrop & Gage, to represent DNR. (This is also the former, and probably future law firm of DNR Deputy Director Kurt U. Shaffer). So, it seems no matter what happens to Ameren, someone named Blunt is going to make a lot of money.

Ameren Info

The following is from an article about Ameren's 3rd quarter profits.

Ameren said a settlement with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission over the December 2005 breach of the upper reservoir at its Taum Sauk hydroelectric facility, and other costs related to that breach, lowered net income by 7 cents a share from the year-ago period.

Another Idea

Here is a quote from a letter that the Sierra Club (Ozark Chapter) sent to FERC.

Information on energy use should be included in the educational portion of your
agreement with AmerenUE. This could include suggestions for energy efficiency
specifically tailored for life in Reynolds County or southeast Missouri and may
include such suggestions as ways to keep their cars efficient, furnaces and
appliances efficient, and using fluorescent light bulbs as well as recycling them
safely. Education should also be included about types of altemative energy such as
solar power, wind power, and biofuels. Grants for solar installations may be a boon
for local businesses and home owners.

Yea, I would like to see BRL go solar. It does bother me that I have 30 fluorescent tubes lighting my home and business and there is no where to recycle them. If Wal-Mart sells tubes and batteries they ought to also take them back when they stop working.

Wild Bacon

Here is an article about Feral Hogs. While I have never seen any, there are feral hogs in NW Reynolds County, about 20 miles from Lesterville. Last year a group of hunters from Oklahoma came to Lesterville with horses and trained dogs and managed to kill a few hogs.

As Roseann Roseannadana used to say, "It's always something!"