PC Minutes 11-15-05
Planning Commission Meeting – November 15, 2005
PUBLIC HEARING: CHANHASSEN ELECTRIC SUBSTATION:
DETERMINE THE SCOPE OF AN ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT, REQUEST
FOR A CONDITIONAL USE PERMIT WITH VARIANCES AND A SITE PLAN
REVIEW APPLICATION TO CONSTRUCT A LOCAL ELECTRIC DISTRIBUTION
SUBSTATION ON PROPERTY ZONED INDUSTRIAL OFFICE PARK, LOCATED
EAST OF THE GEDNEY PICKLE PLANT, NORTH OF STOUGHTON AVENUE AND
SOUTH OF FLYING CLOUD DRIVE. APPLICANT MINNESOTA VALLEY
ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE, PLANNING CASE NO. 05-30.
Public Present:
Name Address
Carole Schmidt Roseville
th
Dennis Wolf 4291 200 Street W., Jordan
Ronald Jabs 217 Juergens Court, Jordan
Dan Faulkner 2380 Shadow Lane
Jay Molnau St. John’s, Chaska
Sharmeen Al-Jaff presented the staff report on this item.
Sacchet: Questions from staff.
Keefe: Just a real quick one. A real quick one is, what you scoped out in here will allow you to
answer, all the questions will be answered that you need to have answered.
Al-Jaff: Absolutely. It will go beyond what we need.
Sacchet: Yeah go ahead Jerry.
McDonald: What’s the timeframe for all of this? I mean what, since they have presented
something, we’re going to table an issue. I know we’ve only got so much time. Is that going to
allow you enough time to do this assessment? Are we okay there?
Al-Jaff: Yes. They have waived their 120 day timeline already.
McDonald: Okay.
Al-Jaff: They’ve given us a letter to that effect.
Sacchet: Kurt.
Papke: Yeah, in Section 3 there’s a bullet for human health and safety and there’s a bullet for
electric and magnetic fields. When we’ve looked at this proposal before there was a lot of
discussion around the relationships between those two so would, you know these are listed as
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Planning Commission Meeting – November 15, 2005
separate bullets but would I be correct in assuming that the health and human safety issue will be
part and parcel will be, will look at the impact of the electric and magnetic fields?
Al-Jaff: Yes.
Papke: Okay.
Sacchet: Two questions. One is, when we were, you mentioned the overhead lines. For some
reason I seem to recall from previous discussions on this that there wouldn’t necessarily be new
overhead lines. That most of that is already in place. I don’t know whether you know that.
Maybe we can ask the applicant if you don’t know but, so we’re not talking about having a
whole type of new high tension wires strung?
Al-Jaff: You will not increase the electromagnetic field within that area. Nothing is going to
change.
Sacchet: Or we can ask the applicant.
Al-Jaff: Could you please.
Sacchet: We’ll ask him. Then the other question I think is very crucial to me, it’s at the end of
the report you state the responsible government unit is legally responsible for the accuracy and
completeness of the document. Meaning the study. Now the responsible governing unit is the
city government, right?
Al-Jaff: Correct.
Sacchet: So we are legally responsible for the accuracy and completeness of the study.
Al-Jaff: Correct.
Sacchet: That’s, that’s definitely a responsibility. So by looking at this we have to make sure we
cover all angles and you’re confident that we have an exhaustive list here. To be legally
responsible for the completeness. Just want to ask you since it’s stated so explicitly here.
Al-Jaff: It is a fairly comprehensive list that goes beyond, there are quite a few things that staff
is aware they do not exist out there such as lakes for instance. I guarantee you there are no lakes
out on the, within the study area, yet we’re still asking.
Sacchet: Just so we have complete.
Al-Jaff: We want to make sure that we’ve covered every potential aspect of an environmental
assessment. Chances are the majority of these will say no impact, none exists.
Sacchet: That’s going to be easy for them, that part. Alright. Thank you very much Sharmeen.
I’d like to ask the applicant if you want to come forward. If you have anything to add to what
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Planning Commission Meeting – November 15, 2005
staff presented. You want to do so, and we may have some questions for you too. If you want to
state your name and address for the record please.
Ron Jabs: Yes, good evening Mr. Chairman and commissioners. My name is Ron Jabs. I’m an
employee of Minnesota Valley Electric. Signed on as the applicant and try to answer all of your
questions, however I do have a number of other representatives from Minnesota Valley.
Different experts in various aspects. As to the basic report that Sharmeen has provided for you,
Minnesota Valley fully agrees with and supports the recommendation, all of the different aspects
of the environmental review process. They are very exhaustive and I think you’ll find that
they’ll thoroughly address the concerns that come up through this sort of a process. Minnesota
Valley as part of it’s normal due diligence has already contacted several federal and state
regulatory agencies and they’ve already commented and those responses have been, have come
back as not raising any red flags if you will. I have also contacted the neighboring properties
around there. There aren’t a tremendous number of them. Obviously the M.A. Gedney
Company is, they’re the ones that we acquired the property from and they’re very supportive of
the project. I contacted St. John’s cemetery board. One of the representatives has actually met
with two of them on site and we discussed the scope of the project and encouraged any kind of
feedback, not only this evening but at any point through the process. I’ve also met with the
owner and also the manager at the mobile home court that lies on the south side of Stoughton
Avenue and I guess their biggest concern was that they just not be put out of power through the
process, but essentially they were comfortable with it. We are getting rid of an old facility that
Xcel Energy had in our process and in terms of aesthetics will actually make the site look nicer
so I think there’s some real benefits to it, but I think the question was asked about the overhead
lines. There are existing transmission lines, actually 3 different sets of them. There’s a 69 KV
transmission line that feeds across the site. A 115 KV or kilovolt line and then a 230 that does
kind of a diagonal actually across the M.A. Gedney property. Those facilities will essentially
remain in place. We’re simply building our substation right underneath the transmission, the 115
and the 69. We need to move the 69 around a little bit so it isn’t interfering with the process or
the substation itself but essentially those lines will remain in place. As far as new additional
lines, what we refer to as our distribution level, that’s what goes back out, the high voltage
transmission feeds into the transformers. Drops it down to a usable voltage. That’s what we call
our distribution. That will be all underground, out of that substation. Feeds back out onto some
existing system that’s out remote from the site so I think in a nutshell, that’s what we’re looking
for. Concur that the, that Minnesota Valley and Great River Energy, our partner in this process,
has waived the 120 day limitation but we do look forward to moving the process along you know
as quickly as we can because the need is great and we want to get moving on it so that we have
reliable power out there. I stand for any kind of questions.
Sacchet: Thank you very much. Questions from the applicant. Yeah, Jerry.
McDonald: I have a question. I just want to be clear. I mean you answered a lot of the
questions I had. I was under the impression that you would be distributing power out of there.
I’m glad to hear most of it’s going to be underground so that’s good. The majority of this
purpose, as I recall from our meetings is more or less to take care of the southern part of
Chanhassen which is scheduled for development within I think the next 5 years or so.
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Planning Commission Meeting – November 15, 2005
Ron Jabs: Yes.
McDonald: And that’s the major reason for doing all this is so that we do have a reliable
substation and distribution for the city.
Ron Jabs: That is certainly correct. The new growth and in that southern portion there, the 312
growth that’s going to be spurred by that. Plus the other ties that are currently helping out to
serve the Chanhassen area are becoming stressed and this is going to really reinforce that whole
system.
McDonald: Okay, and then you said something else that I hadn’t heard before about cleaning up
the site and you included I thought the NSP substation. Is that going to go away and be folded in
as part of what you end up doing there?
Ron Jabs: I’m real happy to say yes. We didn’t want to assure that to begin with until we could
negotiate that but there’s a .6 acre parcel that Xcel had a switching substation present right along
Stoughton Avenue. It’s very prevalent when you drive along Stoughton Avenue, and we were
able to, because they’re not really using that or it’s under utilized, they were willing to work with
us and we now will be removing that. We’ll be running a driveway right through where the
present driveway comes onto that site. Right through the middle of that old substation. The rest
of that .6 acres is going to be green space and landscape. Our site is actually further to the north
and so you’ll have a buffer between the roadway going in and I think you’ll be pleased when we
get into the conditional use process and seeing the site layout. The landscaping and all those
other aspects but of course tonight’s focus is on the environmental assessment and like I say,
we’ve started some of those processes. We don’t want to make presumptions and move ahead of
that game but we’ve already assembled some of the materials and we’ll address the EMF kinds
of things as was brought up previously.
McDonald: Yeah, just thanks. I’m glad to hear you’re making these changes and it will clean up
the area and make it look a little less old industrial so, okay.
Ron Jabs: We thought it was the right thing to do and you know we want to make it look decent
too.
McDonald: No further questions.
Sacchet: Any other questions of the applicant? Just to add onto this a little bit. To be really
clear, I mean by removing that old switching station you call it, chances are that you’re actually
decreasing the radiation and the magnetic fields of that site. You’re using the same overhead
lines and then underground distribution so from that would it be reasonable to state that certainly
it’d be rather decreasing than increasing the potential impact because I think ultimately in this
whole list of environmental impact items, the one that is really the crucial one is the human
health and safety. And I think over time that probably will become more evident. It’s something
that most people don’t really pay attention to yet at this point but then on the other hand I do
know people that suffer from it too, so I just want to hear from you that by removing this old
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Planning Commission Meeting – November 15, 2005
station, I would think that what you put in is more fine tuned I would expect with new equipment
to minimize those potential impacts. Is that a fair statement to make?
Ron Jabs: I’m not, at this point I’m not maybe, not real prepared to address that in detail.
Sacchet: The assessment will go into that more.
Ron Jabs: It will and one of the main things is that you still have the 230 line, the 115 and the 69
pretty much running through in the original location and those influences are probably, I’m
going to say it’s probably.
Sacchet: Stay the same.
Ron Jabs: Greater influences than the sub-site itself. And those equipments. Within the sub-site
area, basically within the fence itself everything that is thrown off from the equipment itself is
diminished and with an understanding of how quickly this diminishes with distance. I guess
that’s the real key thing. The area is large enough and so forth that all of the, everything is
within acceptable levels within the property and certainly with the fenced in areas that we’re
going to be developing so, hope that kind of answers your question.
Sacchet: Yeah, it helped. Kurt, you wanted to jump in?
Papke: Yeah I had another question that occurred to me while you were conversing. I don’t
know if this is for staff or the applicant. With the construction of the water treatment plant we
had some environmental surprises with some things that were found underground here once
excavation began and I guess my question was spurred when we started discussing the removal
of the existing Xcel Energy facility. Will the scope of the environmental assessment take into
account any potential subterranean discoveries that might be encountered when this site is
removed?
Al-Jaff: One of the things that we would ask the study would be soils for instance. It’s a matter
of how far down do you go? And there are times when these things are missed.
Morris: If I may. A lot of times with an EA document they will look at historical photos, aerial
photos so they can look at past was there an abuse of use on that land and see if there was
something that was being done that would generate something like that.
Sacchet: Alright. Well thank you very much. Did you want to add anything else at this point
still?
Ron Jabs: Just kind of a follow-up.
Sacchet: Sure, go ahead.
Ron Jabs: We did some soil borings on site and we decided to even take additional ones and so
there will be reports available on that type of thing and we’re aware of the concrete disposal
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issue that you ran into on that yeah. I guess we’re not aware of that kind of thing but that will be
thoroughly looked at as we process. We need to assure ourselves too that the site is suitable and
appropriate. That’s all part of our requirements.
Sacchet: Excellent.
Ron Jabs: Thank you.
Sacchet: Thank you very much. Now this is a public hearing. Does anybody want to address
this at this point, please come forward. Seeing nobody getting up, I close the public hearing and
bring it to the commission. Comments. Discussion. Anybody want to add anything?
Everybody clear? I have just one question of staff. I mean we have this motion, this
recommendation that you’re proposing, but then you made a comment that basically we need to
table everything else.
Al-Jaff: Correct.
Sacchet: So we need to state that? We can make that in the same motion, right?
Al-Jaff: If you, the recommendation, if you read the recommendation.
Sacchet: That takes care of it.
Al-Jaff: That takes care of it.
Sacchet: Okay. Alright, because that only addresses the environmental study which implies
everything else comes after, right?
Al-Jaff: Correct.
Sacchet: Alright. Do we have somebody who ventures a motion?
Papke: Okay Mr. Chair, I would like to make a motion that the Planning Commission approves
the EA statement scoping and that we direct staff to prepare the EA consistent with the scoping
and that we table further proceedings on the conditional use permit, site plan and variance until
such time when the EA is completed and submitted to the Planning Commission.
Sacchet: We have a motion. Is there a second?
McDonald: I’ll second.
Sacchet: We have a motion. A second. I don’t think there are friendly amendments so
everybody say in favor.
Papke moved, McDonald seconded that the Planning Commission approves the
Environmental Assessment Scoping, directs staff to prepare the EA consistent with the
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scoping, tables further proceedings on the Conditional Use Permit, Site Plan, and Variance
until such time when the EA is completed and submitted to the Planning Commission. All
voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 6 to 0.
Sacchet: We wish you luck with this. We look forward to see the results of this environmental
study.
APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Commissioner Larson noted the verbatim and summary
minutes of the Planning Commission meeting dated November 1, 2005 as presented.
COMMISSION PRESENTATIONS:
None.
Chairman Sacchet adjourned the Planning Commission meeting at 8:35 p.m.
Submitted by Kate Aanenson
Community Development Director
Prepared by Nann Opheim
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