From evidence in the article, one can pretty safely conclude that it was
Hennepin County (HERC personnel and a couple of county commissioners) and
United Properties that planted this one-sided hype of burning trash in the
middle of downtown Minneapolis. The article neither refers to nor quotes
any city of Minneapolis official or environmental activist, or scientist.
(I mean, it doesn't even mention Peter McLaughlin, who actually represents
Minneapolis on the county board and is a major HERC proponent! He's a
Democrat.)
The head of the HERC told the reporter, accurately, that it's been several
years now since the HERC built out all the underground pipes necessary to
heat a whole slew more big business and residential buildings. Minneapolis
government agencies still have to approve that. But Hennepin County went
ahead and built out the infrastructure, and sits waiting for permission;
the business community and developers generally are on board already, of
course. This article intends to build support to pressure Minneapolis into
approving what the county has already built, but can't yet use.
Has anyone else locally even mentioned this fact? I remember seeing the
expenses for, and purposes of, that infrastructure in a county budget
document several years ago. But no one else seemed upset at the county's
assumption that it's just a mater of time before Minneapolis bends to its
will. So Build It Out.
Any opponents to burning garbage downtown, from the 1980s to today, are
called NIMBYs in this piece. When it was proposed and built, however, there
were no residential Neighbors to have a Back Yard anywhere near it;
opposition was based on environmental objections. It still is, but you'd
never know it from this Politico article..
The article claims that there is nothing emitted from the HERC, although it
seems utterly confused about the smells: the head HERC guy says he doesn't
even notice the obvious smells anymore, after more than 25 years there. So
there is a smell (gets in your clothes and a HERC media tour guide won't do
part of the tour because of it).
I'm so relieved to know, from this puff-piece article, that there is
nothing noxious being spewed from the HERC! Nothing at all; never has been!
Nothing. We should all just calm down and be quiet, right?
After all, United Properties paid for a special PCA study of HERC emissions
a few years ago that said that there's nothing coming out of the stacks. I
mean, if United Properties is about to fund development in the area only if
there's no noxious stuff flowing out of smokestacks from the burner, the
very-business-friendly PCA is not about to highlight what's being spewed.
What's really insulting is that Politico is considered a new outlet or
"source." This is just a trade-magazine hype piece of one-sided marketing
for the HERC. Not "news."
Connie Sullivan
Como, in Southeast Minneapolis