ML24150A326

Deis Public Meeting Transcript 5.15.2024

ML24150A326
Person / Time
Site:	Monticello
Issue date:	05/15/2024
From:	NRC/NMSS/DREFS/ELRB
To:
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NRC-2812
Download: ML24150A326 (55)

Text

Official Transcript of Proceedings

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

Title:

Draft Environmental Impact Statement Meeting Related to the Monticello Power Plant License Renewal Application

Docket Number: (n/a)

Location: Monticello, Minnesota

Date: Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Work Order No.: NRC-2812 Pages 1-54

NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.

Court Reporters and Transcribers 1716 14th Street, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20009 (202) 234-4433 1

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

+ + + + +

DRAFT ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT MEETING RELATED

TO THE MONTICELLO POWER PLANT LICENSE RENEWAL

APPLICATION

+ + + + +

WEDNESDAY,

MAY 15, 2024

+ + + + +

The meeting was convened at the Monticello

Community Center, 505 Walnut Street, Monticello,

Minnesota, at 6:00 p.m., Brett Klukan, Facilitator,

presiding.

PRESENT:

BRETT KLUKAN, Facilitator

STEVE KOENICK, Branch Chief, Environmental Project

Management Branch 1, Office of Nuclear Material

Safety and Safeguards, Division of Rulemaking,

Environmental, and Financial Support, NRC

JESSICA UMANA, Environmental Review Lead, Office of

Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, NRC

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ALSO PRESENT:

GEORGE CROCKER, North American Water Office

ROGER CUTHBERTSON

LEA FOUSHEE, North American Water Office

SUSAN JEFFERY

JOHN LAFORGE, Nukewatch

RACHEL LEONARD, Administrator, City of Monticello

KELLY LUNDEEN, Nukewatch

DAVID LUCE

LINDSAY POTTER

JO SCHUBERT

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T-A-B-L-E O-F C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S

Page

Opening Remarks.....................................

Introduction and Purpose............................

Environmental Impact Statement Preliminary Findings.

Public Questions and Presentation...................

Public Comments on the Environmental Impact Statement

Adjourn.............................................

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P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S

6:00 p.m.

MR. KLUKAN: Okay, so again, welcome

everyone this evening to the NRC's preliminary findings

meeting for the environmental review for the Monticello

Nuclear Power Plant, a nuclear generating plant with

one subsequent license renewal proceeding.

Again, my name is Brett Klukan. It is my

pleasure to facilitate this evening's meeting, hosted

by the NRC. My colleague Jessica Umana will be on the

meeting presenting tonight.

Our goal this evening is twofold. One,

to provide you with an overview of the NRC's preliminary

findings in our draft License Renewal Environmental

Impact Statement, and what you'll hear is Draft EIS

or DEIS. And second, to solicit your comments on the

Draft EIS.

Okay, here's our agenda for this evening.

After some opening remarks and several introductions,

we will move on to a brief presentation involving the

preliminary findings of the Draft EIS and our associated

processes. We'll then take a short time to see if

anyone has any clarifying questions on the

presentation, like how do I offer additional comments

again, what are the mechanisms for doing so, where can

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I get a copy of the DEIS and whatnot. After that, the

final and most important part of the meeting this

evening, we will open the floor to your comments on

the DEIS.

So on this slide we have the two of our

interesting speakers, their names and titles. And

again, we have Jessica Umana, who is the Environmental

Review Lead in the Office of Nuclear Material Safety

and Safeguards. And we have Steve Koenick, who is the

Branch Chief of the Environmental Project Branch 1 in

the same office, the Office of Nuclear Material Safety

and Safeguards, in the Division of Rulemaking,

Environmental, and Financial Support.

So this is a comment-gathering meeting,

which means that our primary purpose this evening is

to listen to you. Specifically, to gather your

comments on the draft Environmental Impact Statement.

So we appreciate your patience of hearing out our

presentation. We want to make sure that everyone who's

joining us this evening has at least a basic

understanding of that document, of the structure of

that document, as well as the associated processes for

how we move forward with the NRC review.

Please know that we are transcribing

tonight's meeting, so I would ask that when it is your

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turn to speak, will you please state your name for the

benefit of our transcriptionist, as well as any

organizational affiliation you would like to have

captured. As we meet here, no regulatory decisions

will be made at tonight's meeting.

Now for some basic ground rules. I ask

that you please adhere to civil decorum, excuse me.

Out of respect for each other, don't just rob the

speaking times of others just as you wouldn't want to

be interrupted yourself. However, I want to make this

very clear, and hopefully this will not be an issue

this evening, but under no circumstances will

threatening or gestures or statements be tolerated,

and any such statements or gestures will be cause for

the ejection from the meeting this evening. If you

feel that you are threatened in any way, please come

speak to me or one of the other administrative staff

to communicate prompt and immediate action.

Now, if you something that you'd like to

give to the NRC staff, please hand it to me. I got

some and whatnot and we already got them out ourselves.

So, but as try to stay, if you will, in the carpeted

area. Now without further ado, I'd like to turn it

over to Steve.

MR. KOENICK: Thank you, Brett. And good

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evening, everyone. My name, as Brett mentioned, is

Steven Koenick, and I am the Environmental Project

Management Branch 1 Branch Chief of our Center of

Expertise at the U.S. Regulatory Commission. And I'd

like to welcome everyone to tonight's meeting. This

is our second public meeting on the Draft Environmental

Impact Statement, or GEIS for the Monticello Nuclear

Generating Plant Station subsequent license renewal.

So as Brett mentioned, today's purpose is

for us to present our findings and to hear from you

on comments for the Draft Environmental Impact

Statement. Before we begin today's presentation, I'd

like to briefly introduce the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory

Commission to you and its mission. The NRC regulates

commercial nuclear power, fuel cycle, research test

reactors, and general use of radioactive material in

a medical and industrial, and educational settings.

The NRC was formed in 1974, following the

Energy Reorganization Act, which basically split the

Atomic Energy Commission into an independent regulatory

entity, the NRC, and what is now the Department of

Energy, which does the promotional aspects of nuclear

technology. I included the strategic plan from 2022

to 2026. There's a QR code there and the plan provides,

sets out three strategic goals as the key to the agency

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successfully fulfilling its mission.

The first one is to ensure the safe and

secure use of radioactive materials. The second goal

is to continue to foster a healthy organization, and

the third goal is to inspire stakeholder confidence

in the NRC. For the third goal, stakeholder

confidence, we use meetings like this to engage with

members of the public regarding how we conduct our

processes.

I would like to take a moment to address

in terms of stakeholder confidence, I would like to

take a moment to address and clarify some

miscommunication regarding the presence of detectable

tritium in the Mississippi River. I know we had

meetings in which we reported there were no indications

of tritium leak made into the Mississippi. However,

as you have looked in our Draft Environmental Impact

Statement, we do conclude that there were some very

low concentrations of tritium in the Mississippi River.

These concentrations were very low, well below the

required detection levels, leading to the

misrepresentation that the tritium was not detected

in the Mississippi.

So we apologize for this miscommunication.

It is important to note that we continue to conclude

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that the public remains safe, that the detected level

of tritium were extremely low. The levels were so low

that they would not impact accepted drinking water

standards for the local community or the Minneapolis

area.

Furthermore, the staff at XCel's review

of this issue is ongoing. Nonetheless, we are

reviewing our internal processes to prevent these types

of miscommunication in the future. And we will be

available after this meeting to discuss in more detail

if you have any questions. I look forward to hearing

your insights and feedback on the Monticello's DEIS,

and thank you in advance for your participation.

With that, I will turn the presentation

over to Jessica.

MS. UMANA: Hello everyone. Welcome, and

thank you for taking time this evening to join us.

The time is very much appreciated. So we're just going

to jump right into it.

I'm going to start with this slide with

some background information on Monticello. Monticello

is a single unit electric generating plant consisting

of a General Electric Boiling Water Reactor. The NRC

issued the original license in September 8, 1970, and

was granted an initial renewed license in 2006. The

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current renewed license expires in September 2030, and

if the renew license is granted, we are looking at a

20-year period of re-licensing for the plant.

Onto our environmental review. In terms

of our environmental review, we have a Generic

Environmental Impact Statement or a GEIS, which

addresses environmental issues that are common to all

plants or a distinct subset of plants. Previous

reviews for subsequent license renewal used the GEIS

to take a softer look at generic topics while a deeper

dive into Category 2, or what we call site-specific

issues, was conducted. That all changed with the

issuance of Commission Orders in 2022. So what we've

done is created a site-specific environmental impact

statement for Monticello, which does a full assessment

of all Category 1 or generic issues, in Category 2

site-specific issues.

Last week at the virtual meeting for those

that were there, I misspoke, so I do want to capture

this on the record as a correction. What you'll see

here in this Draft Environmental Impact Statement is

a full evaluation of all generic and site-specific

issues. Last week I mentioned that the Draft EIS was

the full evaluation of all site-specific issues only.

However, since this is a subsequent license renewal,

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we have to look at both generic and site-specific

issues.

Here's a nice graphic to entertain you.

So this graphic here just shows you some of the resource

areas that we take into consideration in our

environmental review. So we do look at things like

surface and ground water, use and quality, radiation

protection and postulated accidents, air quality and

meteorology.

Now as to how impacts are defined. The

NRC characterizes potential impacts according to levels

of significance for potential impacts, Small, Moderate

or Large. A Small impact would be defined as effects

that are not detectable or are so minor that they will

neither destabilize nor noticeably alter any important

attribute of the resource. A Moderate impact is

defined as effects are sufficient to alter noticeably,

but not to destabilize important attributes of a

resource. And finally, large impacts indicate that

the environmental effects are clearly noticeable and

are sufficient to destabilize important attributes of

the resource.

We do have some special resource areas that

don't follow along with the categorization of small,

moderate or large. So for federally listed species

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in critical habitats, we use the language of the

Endangered Species Act, which again is similar in that

it has three category definitions for impacts: no

effect, may affect but not likely to adversely affect,

or may affect in a slight to adverse effect. So again,

three categories.

For essential fish habitat, we use the

language of the Magnuson Stevens Act, which in this

case has four categorical definitions for impacts.

And those are no adverse impacts; minimal adverse

impacts; more than minimal, but less than substantial

adverse effects; and substantial adverse impact.

The impacts on historic and cultural

resource use the language of the National Historic

Preservation Act to define impacts as either there would

be no adverse effect or there would be an adverse effect.

And then for Environmental Justice, we use the language

of Executive Order 12898 to make a determination whether

its impacts, if any, have high and adverse human health

or environmental effects on minority and low-income

populations.

Now to move on to the Draft EIS preliminary

findings. This slide shows the list of resource areas

where the impact was determined to be small. You can

see that they include air quality and noise, terrestrial

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and aquatic resources, socioeconomics, waste

management and so on. For the most part, we found that

the impacts on various resource areas due to the 20

additional years of operation of Monticello, we would

estimate as being small in the environment.

Going on to other topics that use different

categorizations, the ones that we covered just a few

minutes ago, we see that for historic and cultural

resources, our preliminary finding is that subsequent

license renewal would not adversely affect known

historic properties. For environmental justice there

are no disproportionately high and adverse human health

and environmental effects on minority and low-income

populations as a result of the proposed action.

For cumulative impacts, this one is a

little bit more complicated, so we don't necessarily

slap a single, or have categorical definitions for this.

We do ask that you go ahead and look at Section 3.15

in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement if you're

interested specifically in cumulative impacts, which

considers the continued operation of the plant, along

with operation of other things going on around the

plant.

Now for ground water impacts, we look at

several environmental issues, four actually, and those

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are contamination in use, specifically non-cooling

system impact. Use-complex for a plant that withdraw

more than 100 gallons per minute, use-complex for plants

with closed-cycle cooling systems that withdraw makeup

water from a river, and lastly, radionuclides released

to the ground water. All of these environmental issues

related to ground water have a small impact, with the

exception of the last one, which we found to be small

to moderate. Again, this is a correction I wanted to

make from last week's presentation where I said all

ground water environmental issues were small.

For special species status and habitats,

we have a preliminary finding that the proposed action

may affect, but is not likely to adversely affect the

critters that you see listed here: the Northern

long-eared bat, the tri-colored bat, the whooping crane

and the Monarch butterfly. No effect is seen on

designated critical habitats or essential fish

habitats. Our National Marine Sanctuary is present.

For alternatives, we find no new and significant

information identified regarding the following

alternatives in which power replacement includes

natural gas and renewables, renewables in storage and

new nuclear. And also, all these evaluations require

that we look at the No Action alternative as well.

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This brings us to our preliminary

recommendation. Based on its evaluation of

environmental impacts, the NRC staff preliminary

recommendation is the adverse environmental impacts

of Monticello's subsequent license renewal are not so

great that preserving the option of subsequent license

renewal for energy planning decision makers would be

unreasonable. That's a mouthful. So in short terms,

the analysis that the staff performed, we concluded

that there's not an environmental reason for

energy-planner decisions to not allow the plant to

operate for an additional 20 years.

Given the impacts on the environment, we

don't see it great enough that we would say hey, you

need to shut down the plant. Again the NRC has no role

in energy-planning decisions of utility officials or

state regulators as to whether a nuclear power plant

should continue to operate. We can only provide the

analysis of the environmental impact, and we make

recommendation as to whether the decision-makers should

take the option to continue to operate the plant off

the table.

These are some environmental review

milestones. Another clarification that I wanted to

provide from last week's meeting is initially we were

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not sure if we were going to hold a public meeting to

get your comments on the draft, and we didn't want to

put a date out there until we were close to draft

publication to make sure that the 45-day comment period

we gave was close to that date. So I do apologize for

that.

To cover some of our review milestones,

a comment period for the Draft Environmental Impact

Statement started on April 19th with the publication

of a federal registered notice by the EPA. The draft

is published by the NRC's federal register on April

24th, with our comment period closing 45 days from the

NRC's publication date, which is June 10th. If you

provide your comments after that date, we will do our

best to include your comments as we deliberate and work

towards the final environmental impact statement, but

we can't guarantee that we will accept your comments

and process them after the 10th. So please try to get

your comments in by the 10th. Our goal is to issue

the Environmental Impact Statement by October this

year.

If you would like to have a copy of the

Draft Environmental Impact Statement, I think I have

like three more copies. It's a bestseller so please

grab one. So I think some of you took copies already.

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I also was able to drop off two copies at the library

across the street. So they are in the reference section

back there. If you wish to see an electronic version,

we have the link up there, and I do believe the QR code

also directs them to that. If you need a card we have

some on the table outside. And again, if you would

like to go to our Agency Document Access and Management

System, take note of the ML number here, and then you

can also read the Environmental Impact Statement there.

For additional information on the project,

we do have a project website dedicated to Monticello,

and that's at the link up here. There you can see the

subsequent license renewal application, the

environmental report, the current schedule, and the

safety and environmental project manager information

associated with Monticello. You can also sign up for

the Listserv at the link provided here in the last

bullet, if you like.

Okay, submitting comments. You can do it

the old school method and try snail mail, or you can

go to regulations.gov and use Docket ID NRC-2023-0031,

and submit your comment through there. Or you can email

our resource mailbox at Monticello Environmental at

NRC.gov. And again, remember that your comment should

try to come in by June 10th. Last week we heard that

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June 10th is not enough time to get your comments

together, so if you'd like to request an extension,

please take note of my email, that's

jessica.umana@nrc.gov.

Now we're going to move into the question

portion of this, if there are any questions on the

presentation. I'm going to hand it back over to Brett.

MR. KLUKAN: Okay, so without any further

delay, does anyone have any clarifying questions on

the presentation or any of the materials or statements

you heard tonight that from either Steve or Jess? If

you do, please come up. The microphone is on.

MR. CUTHBERTSON: I have a question for

Jessica Umana, about the regulator. I was just

wondering, how can waste management impact be judged

to be small, when the monitoring of the waste is going

to have to go on for thousands of years. How can we

say at this present point in time that the impact of

Monticello's waste management is small when the jury

is not out yet? We won't know how small it is until

for the next, you know, this is going to be ages for

thousands of years.

MR. KLUKAN: Could you state your name for

the record?

MR. CUTHBERTSON: I'm Roger Cuthbertson.

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MS. UMANA: Hi Roger, thank you so much

for the question. Unfortunately, I don't have my

subject matter expert here who fit the analysis in an

environmental statement, but your comment is being

captured by our transcriber so we will be able to provide

a response to you.

MR. KLUKAN: Does anyone else have a fair

amount of questions they'd like to ask at this time?

All right, there are none. We'll now for - I saw a

hand. Would you like to make it from a microphone.

MS. JEFFERY: I don't need a microphone.

What are you gonna do with the waste?

MR. KLUKAN: Okay. So, what again,

Jessica has mentioned, we don't have the subject matter

expertise here to answer your substantive questions.

As you can see, the DEIS is very long and contains

a wide variety of comments. Roger and Danica are here.

Excuse me, Jessica and Steve are here this evening

to go over the general here's what the NRC does, here's

how its process works. But what we'll do is capture

that. Again, it's part of transcript as a comment on

the DEIS.

What was your name? Just so - the reason

for the microphone is there's a series of other

microphones up here as well to make sure we can capture

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that. But what was your name again?

MS. JEFFERY: Susan Jeffery.

MR. KLUKAN: Susan Jeffery.

MS. JEFFERY: Yeah.

MR. KLUKAN: All right, great. So we'll

capture that as a comment on your behalf, as part of

our meeting. Any other clarifying questions? Okay.

I'd like now to move into any elected

officials or representatives of any tribe nations at

this time, and then we'll get to federal. Any

representatives of a tribal nation prepared to offer

anything at this time? All right.

Okay, I know we have a representative from

the City of Monticello here.

MS. LEONARD: Good evening, my name is

Rachel Leonard. I'm the city administrator for the

City of Monticello. I'm here to speak in support of

the subsequent re-licensing of the Monticello nuclear

generating plant on the condition that we continue to

monitor the environmental impacts of, and I know that

is being done in relation to the tritium water leak

in 2023.

XCel's power plant is an influential part

of our community and there are significant benefits

if Monticello is to have its license extended for an

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additional 20 years. The station provides a host of

stable living wage jobs. It makes substantial

contributions to our tax based, is a driver of economic

vitality in the company, is civically engaged in a

variety of initiatives and assistance for the city.

We also understand the critical importance

of nuclear power, as XCel Energy and the state of

Minnesota strive to achieve their clean energy goals,

and we believe the continued operation of the plant

is a key component of the responsible strategy to

maintain electrical capacity as well as resiliency

across the grid. We thank you for your thorough review

of the plant and the potential environmental impacts.

And I thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight

in support of allowing the plant to operate responsibly

for an additional 20 years. Thank you.

MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. Are

there any other presiding officials or representatives

at this time.

Okay, moving now to the public comment

portion of the meeting. So that's a 30 - want to give

like five minutes for this song? Does that sound about

right? How long is the song? Give me an estimate.

MR. CUTHBERTSON: Three and a half

minutes.

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MR. KLUKAN: Three and a half -- so then

I'm going to pack all the public comments at the end

by 7:15, okay? Okay, so then I have ten people on here

to do that. So that gives us about a little over an

hour. So try to keep your comments beneath six minutes.

I'll give you a one-minute warning. I don't want to

cut off anybody. That's not why I came out here

tonight. But you know, out of respect for everybody

so they get equal chance at the microphone, please try

to keep yourself to six minutes. And now again, without

any further delay, let us start with Jo Schubert.

Again, if you need the microphone brought to you, please

let me know. Otherwise, please use the podium. And

again, start with your name and any affiliation.

MS. SCHUBERT: Hi, I'm Jo Schubert. And

I want to thank you for having this hearing. This is

research by Steven Starr, director of the Clinical

Library Science Program at the University of Missouri,

and this is from his work entitled The Comparison of

Japan with Radioactive Cesium, The Banana Comparison.

Radioactive waste producers like NSP and

XCel and others often compare the radioactive waste

that they produce with naturally occurring elements

like the potassium 40 found in bananas. This is

deliberately confusing disinformation, which is used

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to make the impression that ingesting or breathing

radioactive emissions from reactors is normal and

harmless. This is false. Most naturally occurring

radioactive elements commonly found in earth's crust

are very weakly radioactive.

Potassium 40 in bananas, has an extremely

weak radioactive specific activity, 7 millions of one

curie per gram. Tritium, on the other hand, has a

specific activity of 9,800 curies per gram. In other

words, tritium is 1.3 billion times as radioactive as

Potassium 40. Which one would you rather have in your

bananas or your drinking water? Thank you.

MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. Next

we have Raymond Campos.

MR. CAMPOS: Can I go at the end?

MR. KLUKAN: Sure, okay, so we'll circle

back to you. Next we have, and again, I apologize if

I'm mispronouncing anyone. I think it's Dan LaForge?

John.

MR. LAFORGE: Poor handwriting. My name

is John LaForge. I'm a staff person with Luke Watch

in northwest Wisconsin. The Draft Environmental

Impact Statement trivializes Monticello's major recent

radioactive leak, which has poisoned the Mississippi

and tarnished XCel's public image.

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The 829,000 gallon leak of reactive cooling

water highly contaminated with radioactive tritium,

xenon and iodine, endangers 3.7 million people in the

Minneapolis St. Paul metro area, and another 20 million

people downstream who rely on the Mississippi River

for drinking water. During water is the principal

matter of fact regarding Monticello's environmental

impact. Yet the draft Environmental Impact Statement

only notes that the Minneapolis Intake Water Works are

37 miles downstream.

The leak occurred from late 2022 through

early 2023, and created a plume of radioactive ground

water, which according to the draft Environmental

Impact Statement, quote, likely discharged to the

river, end quote. The concentration of tritium in the

leak was 250 times what's allowed in drinking water

by the Environmental Protection Agency. Tritium

permanently contaminates gigantic volumes of water that

it comes in contact with, and it stays in the environment

for 123 years or ten radioactive half-lives.

On March 18, 2023, NSC spokesperson

Victoria Mitland told the press, quote, there is no

pathway for the tritium to get into drinking water,

end quote. But XCel's own annual Radioactive Effluent

Release Report says, quote, there are several

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mechanisms that can result in doses to the public,

including ingestion of radionuclides in water, end

quote. Mitland's public relations fib was committed

one year before the NSC's own DEIS concluded, and I

quote, tritium impacted ground water likely discharged

to the river, end quote.

Chris Clark, XCel's president, told the

Associated Press, quote, even if the tritium reached

the river, which Clark assured wouldn't happen, it would

dissipate within a few yards, end quote. This is twice

untrue. Saying that tritium would not reach the river

was false, and the word dissipate means to disappear.

While XCel knows full well that tritium persists in

the environment for over a century. The treatment

contamination becomes diluted in the river, but all

the tritium itself stays there as it moves downstream.

Consuming tritium, ingesting tritium, even

in trace amounts, is not safe. Tritium crosses the

placenta. Tritium can cause problem pregnancies and

tritium can cause birth abnormalities. It's common

knowledge that the harmful effects of radiation are

particularly dangerous to women, girls and infants and

fetuses.

At the May 8 public hearing here in this

building, the NRC's Jason Reed said, and this is a quote,

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even if the whole leak had gone into the Mississippi,

it wouldn't create a health threat, end quote. This

shocking dishonesty is debunked by the NRC's own online

fact sheet titled Radiation Exposure and Cancer, which

says, quote, any amount of radiation may pose some risk

for causing cancer and hereditary effect. Any increase

in dose, no matter how small, results in an incremental

increase in risk, end quote.

XCel kept from notifying the public about

this leak for four months while it submitted its

application for the extended license. All this

dishonesty and secrecy are good reasons for the public's

loss of faith in XCel's operation of the reactor and

in the ability of the NSC to do any regulation. The

NRC's draft Environmental Impact Statement makes the

bogus claim that climate change impacts, quote, on

future reactor operations projected in the renewal

period are outside the scope of a license renewal

environmental review, end quote.

This is contrary to the recommendations

of a government accounting office report, which was

requested by Congress, both to assess and to increase

the resiliency of reactor operations in the face of

climate change. The key AO report to Congress is

titled, quote, Nuclear Power Plants: NRC Should Take

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Action to Fully Consider the Potential Impacts of

Climate Change, end quote. Moreover, ignoring climate

change threats is a violation of the National

Environmental Policy Act or NEPA. NEPA requires that

the NRC take a, quote-unquote, hard look at

environmental impacts whenever taking major federal

actions and decision making that involve the public

and due process.

The NRC's neglect of climate change in the

draft Environmental Impact Statement is an unlawful

attempt to circumvent these NEPA requirements. The

NRC staff had two years to update its license renewal,

environmental review process under the NRC commission

orders of February 24, 2022. All it did in these two

years was come up with the claim in the draft

Environmental Impact Statement that the current

licensing basis is robust enough to sufficiently

address anything climate could throw at Monticello.

The basis wasn't robust enough then. It certainly

isn't now, given an accelerated climate crisis.

The new information which the NRC says it

must take into consideration, could well be an

overwhelming climate-driven severe weather event.

Wildfires, for example, or flooding of the Mississippi,

heating up the river water that makes it unsuitable

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for cooling. Such events may occur too abruptly for

any mitigation action. That plan needs to happen in

advance and should have been part of the draft

Environmental Impact Statement. The public deserves

to know exactly when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

staff will formally answer the government accounting

office's report's findings and recommendations. Thank

you.

MR. KLUKAN: Thank you for your comment.

Next we have Susan Jeffery.

MS. JEFFERY: I'm Susan Jeffery. My first

point is that we don't trust you. We do not trust NRC,

NSP, XCel, no matter what you call yourselves, you're

hiding behind tritiated water, which I drink, along

with, what, 20 million other people. We can't trust

you because you don't tell the truth or you hide your

facts.

In other countries this would be called

corruption, but we don't call it corruption. In

America we call it business as usual. Monticello is

way, way past its due date. It's beyond pregnant.

It's carrying death. It's a zombie nuke, it's the

undead, it will never die because radioactivity lives

pretty much forever.

In this area around the Twin Cities, we

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have a triple threat. Two nuclear power plants from

Prairie Island and one from Monticello. But

Monticello's not just another nuke. It's a Fukushima

nuke. It just seems that money is more important than

life, and that's too bad.

As I asked before, what are you going to

do with the waste? I used to be a newspaper reporter

at Cape Canaveral, and that was one of the most popular

questions. Can't you shoot it up into space? The

answer is no. There's too much of it, it weighs too

much, and if there's an accident it will nuclify pretty

much the east coast of the United States.

So just to reiterate, we don't trust you.

You don't tell the truth. You're way past your due

date. You're not doing anything about it except

looking for more profits. We've got a triple threat,

we've got a Fukushima type nuke on top of the Twin

Cities. It's dangerous, it's irreversible, and you

must stop it. There's no excuse to continue this.

We have all kinds of other power sources. We need to

grow up and be sure about the future because if not

we're going to eat up the future.

So thanks for your time. Please take into

consideration the comments about trust and about the

future, and do something other than count your money.

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MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much for your

comments. Next we will turn to Lea Foushee. Again,

I apologize for any mispronunciation.

MS. FOUSHEE: I've heard it all my life.

I'm Lea Foushee. I'm the environmental justice

director of the North American Water Office. And I'm

here today to ask you, what's your plan if Monticello

goes down? You have a terrorist threat, they could

take it out, and they would take out Minneapolis right

along with it because our water intake for Minneapolis

is at Fridley, 37 miles away from here. Minneapolis

has no wells. There would be no water except

radioactive water that would do nothing but kill and

maim and harm every living thing.

So what's your plan? What's your plan for

water? Water for life? You don't have any, do you?

You have no water for life. You only have water for

death. And more death. And I pity you.

MR. KLUKAN: Thank you for your comments.

Next we'll move to George Crocker. George Crocker?

MR. CROCKER: My name is George Crocker.

I'm the executive director of the North American Water

Office. I have been dealing with the NRC since the

mid-80s. And at that time it became quite clear what

your mission is. You are enablers. You enable

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reckless death. Institutionalized reckless

endangerment. It's what you do, and that is

disgusting.

MR. KLUKAN: Thank you for your comments.

Next we will turn to Roger -- I know you said your

name already. Cuthbertson?

MR. CUTHBERTSON: Hi, you got that pretty

close. My name is Roger Cuthbertson. Thanks for

inviting me to speak. I live in Shorewood, Minnesota,

along with over three and a half million other people.

We are uniquely and precariously sandwiched between

two aging nuclear reactors. Our house is located about

35 air miles from the Monticello nuclear reactor and

about 45 air miles from the Prairie Island nuclear

reactor.

Before I get to the question of whether

or not to grant a re-licensing of the aging Monticello

Nuclear Power Plant to the year 2050, when it will be

twice the age that it was originally designed to run,

I would like to mention a personal interaction my wife

and I had with XCel Energy, which speaks to the question

of whether XCel Energy, as a public, quote-unquote,

utility, is maintaining a proper balance between

serving the community and making money. In the spring

of 2022, my wife and I spent $13,000 on solar panels

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for the roof of our house, which would tie into XCel

Energy's grid. Didn't expect the investment to really

save us much or any money, even in the long run, but

it seemed like a good thing to do to resist global

warming.

On the other hand, we didn't want to get

fleeced either. We didn't quarrel with the fact that

the agreement we signed with XCel Energy allowed XCel

to charge more for the electricity they sold us than

the price we got for selling to them. However, some

months after the installation was complete, XCel

unilaterally increased the difference between the price

they got and what we got. It wasn't a big change, but

it really didn't seem fair. It's possible we didn't

read the fine print of the contract with XCel carefully

enough.

It was always an impossible conflict of

interest in my opinion to expect the whole proper

monopoly XCel heavily entered in nuclear power conserve

community interest such as counting down on energy use

for the sake of global warming, keeping the community

safe and not burdening future generations with costs

and perils related to energies which future generations

would not necessarily enjoy. Plutonium waste, which

is not the only waste, but the plutonium waste from

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nuclear power plants such as Monticello, are 2 million

times more toxic than cobra venom, and have a half-life

of 24,000 years, and can't be neutralized by any kind

of chemistry, such as burning.

The way I think about it is this is so

dangerous using nuclear power in the long run. Using

nuclear power for our energy needs at this present

moment is like having a wild party that it takes the

next 10,000 or more generations of people to clean up

the mess. Do we care about our children and future

generations to come? Or do we not? XCel Energy's

proposal to extend the operating license for its aging

Monticello reactor to twice its originally accepted

life span is the epitome of irresponsibility.

To ask for this insane request when just

recently the reactor leaked 829,000 gallons of

radioactive water into the Mississippi 40 miles or so

upstream from the intakes for the water supply of

Minneapolis, this is unconscionable. The pipes began

leaking in part because the radioactive liquids that

flow through them are highly corrosive, in part because

they were not thoroughly inspected. XCel Energy

deliberately withheld the information that a leak had

occurred for months, then lied about the extent of the

danger, saying that there was no way the radioactive

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water could reach the Mississippi River.

XCel Energy then claimed the problem was

solved, only to later admit that there was another spill

greater than the first. And then to finally have to

admit that some of the tritium water had reached the

Mississippi River after all. This is the kind of

irresponsibility that shows XCel just can't do the job

it said it could. We can expect more of these. The

older the reactor gets, the same corrosion that caused

pipes to leak might cause more serious leaches in larger

containment vessels in the aging power plant. There

could be a catastrophic event.

I say no to an extended license for the

Monticello Nuclear Power Plant. Decommission this

plant. Hold XCel Energy accountable for endangering

and damaging the environment and humans, past, present

and future. There should be an understanding that the

assets of a company will be used to cover its obligations

to its workers' pensions and the decommissioning costs

of reactors.

XCel Energy should pay for future cleanup

and storage of nuclear materials accumulated during

the lifetime of the nuclear-power-generation

Minnesota. If there was any money left you and Xcel

Energy, after fully meeting its obligations regarding

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the harm that is done, that money should be used to

convert -- to bring energy production such as wind and

solar in the future. Eventually, the Prairie Island

reactor should be decommissioned as well.

XCel Energy should be replaced by a

publicly-owned and operated nonprofit utility

committed to a green non-nuclear future. Thank you.

MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. Next

we will go to Kelly Lundeen.

MS. LUNDEEN: Kelly Lundeen. Thank you

for listening, accepting our public comments. I work

with an organization called Nuke Watch, and I live in

a small town of one thousand people named Shell Lake,

Wisconsin. We are not local people. We would be in

the radioactive plume if there was a meltdown at

Monticello. The only difference between my town and

yours is that instead of a large nuclear plant, we have

a lake, a beautiful lake that a lot of people from the

Twin Cities have cabins on our lake, and so that's where

we get our tax money.

And the other thing is, I know the people

work at XCel, they need good jobs, you're smart people,

you could use those talents to do decommissioning, which

should start as soon as possible.

I'm going to read from a study called Health

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Trends Near Monticello Nuclear Reactor, published by

Joseph Mangano of Radiation Public Health Project,

about the health and mortality effects. The U.S.

reactors have operated for over six decades, but federal

regulators have only conducted one study of cancer in

local residents in the U.S. That report used

statistics before 1985 and is thus outdated. No

studies are currently planned.

Monticello is in Wright County, close to

the border of Sherburne County. Almost all of the

residents of these counties live within 25 miles of

the reactor, and they are the most vulnerab left to

exposures from environmental releases. The draft EIS

neglects any mention of health and mortality statistics

among people near the Monticello reactor. Researcher

Joe Mangano has completed the report on death rates

in childhood cancer deaths in these two counties.

In the late 1960s and early '70s, before

and just after Monticello started up, the two-county

death rate was 6-7 percent below that of other Minnesota

counties for cancers and for all causes combined of

death. By the late 1970s, the two-county death rate

of Sherburne and Wright County exceeded the state rate

for all causes and has remained higher since. If the

local rate had remained 6 percent below the state, over

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4,000 fewer deaths would have occurred. So we're

talking about local children, babies, and other

community members.

Cancer death rates are also high. In the

two most recent years, 2022 and 2023, the local rate

was 9 and 20 percent above the overall state rate

respectively. Many factors can account for an elevated

risk of death, but one clue that Monticello releases

may be one factor is cancer mortality among children.

Children are much more likely to be harmed by a dose

of radiation than are adults. Prior to the early 1990s,

local child cancer mortality was 37 percent below the

statewide rate, but it has been 14 percent greater ever

since.

I also want to make some comments not

related to those effects, but just regarding tritium.

And honestly, I'll admit this, I have not read the

422 pages, but tonight was the first time I heard mention

of there was an actual reading of tritium in the

Mississippi River. I had read that it had not been

detected, and I heard that it was likely, but this is

the first time. So I'm going to have to read a little

closer. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Website

Radiation Exposure and Cancer discusses the dose risk

relationship. So how much radiation can you be exposed

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to and how likely is that going to be to cause you cancer.

And the NRC's own website acknowledges the linear

threshold model which says that any exposure comes with

increased risk.

Tritium is the radioactive form of

hydrogen, and when it becomes part of the water it

behaves the same as water. It follows the entire water

cycle. Even if you weren't worried about the tritium

in the ground water, the river water, the routine

releases that we are going to be adding onto for your

local community, 20 more years of water vapor. Tritium

in your air. So that means if you want to protect

yourself from that you're going to have to stop

breathing. Everyone who lives in this area and in a

60-mile radius.

This affects soil, plants and food grown

near nuclear reactors. They have been found to be

contaminated up to 60 miles from sites. That includes

the entire metropolitan area. While it may not be able

to penetrate skin, there are other points of exposure

to radioactive tritium, and all of the other radioactive

elements released.

So I am here to say no action alternative.

Also, please extend the comment period for others in

the community and in the United States to make their

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comments. Thank you.

MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much for your

comments. Next we have Lindsay Potter.

MS. POTTER: Hello, my name is Lindsay

Potter. Thank you for hosting this meeting and for

hearing all of the comments here tonight. I wanted

to start on a point that Kelly ended with, that I know

you said you heard about this already, but I think

extending the comment period is a crucially important

part of being sure that you can really hear from the

public. I think a 422-page document warrants a

sufficient amount of time to leaf through.

I even heard several NRC staff members on

my way into the meeting tonight say that they haven't

had time to make it through the 422-page document, which

seems a little bit absurd. So I am all this given the

comment period, I also wanted to note that now it's

been a full week since the online meetings were held.

Extending the comment period was also mentioned then,

and Richard Skokowski said that people should email

him in order to officially file for an extension of

the comment period or officially request that, and I

would just like to say that I know he has been emailed

on this point, and hasn't responded. So to me that

means that the NRC is also not keeping up with these

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requests and not responding to them promptly. And

during a 45-day period, a lapse of a week without a

response is a major blow to one's ability to make one's

voice heard.

On top of that I would also just like to

say that there was a list of more than a dozen questions

and I know Jessica Umana has spoken to me about this

personally tonight, but I think for the record it should

be plain to say that I think those questions were in

February and have not heard from any NRC office

regarding the answers to those. So I just think that

if the NRC is not going to be transparent and

communicative with the people who are concerned about

this project, that there needs to be, in the very least,

an extended period for comment.

Now more to the point of the comment I'd

like to make tonight. One of my biggest concerns

regarding the DEIS, which I have read portions of, but

not all of, is its lack of consideration for the safety

of public drinking water, specifically the public

drinking water pumped from the Mississippi River. Of

course, we've heard mention that the Twin Cities and

20 million other people pull their drinking water from

this river. I know that also in the meetings last week

when we raised some questions about drinking water all

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the NRC had to say was, Well, there are no private wells

within the plume of the tritiated leaked water, but

they do not in the DEIS recognize that the Mississippi

River serves as the drinking water source for millions

of people. It need not be just one private well because

the river is the source of that drinking water.

The NRC says time and again that the 829,000

gallon leak of tritiated coolant water into the ground

water poses no safety or health risk to the public,

and you have just said tonight that the amount of tritium

measured in the river is too low to affect the public.

But I'm concerned with the fact that the NRC makes

and sets its own standards for what is a concerning

dose of radiation to the public. The NRC's standard

that they've outlined is actually 25 times higher than

what the EPA deems to be as a dose of radiation in a

year.

The EPA is talking about what is safe to

a large adult male who is drinking two liters of water

a day. So if you're a pregnant woman who drinks twice

that much and has a fetus growing inside of you, your

risk consuming that same amount of radiation is going

to be far, far greater. So I don't see how an

organization who sets its own limits, and the acronym

they use is that the radiation should be as low as

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reasonably achievable. So that clearly caters to the

utility, to XCel, to the other operating nuclear

reactors, that all that they're responsible to for the

public is to get the level that's easy for them to

achieve. But it doesn't match the EPA's requirement.

And I don't see how you can draw a line

in the sand and say on one side of this fence what the

NRC says is safe goes, but on the other side of the

fence the limits might be different. And so in the

DEIS you clearly outlined the fact that the river water,

especially at high water stages, merges with and is

indistinguishable from the ground water. It explains

in the DEIS how the river water reverses its direction,

the course of its flow and starts flowing towards the

plant, towards the reactor and is inseparable from the

ground water.

So I don't think that it's reasonable that

this regulatory body could say, Okay, well here is a

clear line and those waters can be kept distinct from

each other. Even if you say that the amounts that have

been found in the river now are too low to cause harm,

I would say the river is swiftly moving. So when were

those tests conducted, and how can any of the tests

conducted after the fact really determine the full

amount of tritiated water that reached the river?

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Especially when the estimate for the leaked water was

doubled a year after the initial leak? That still has

not been explained as well. How was it determined that

the quantity of the leaked water is suddenly 829,000

gallons instead of 400,000 gallons? And why should

that estimate be believed to be any more accurate than

the original one was if there's no accountability and

there's no explanation for why and how this amount could

so dramatically change and could be reported to have

changed so far after the fact?

And all I would say is, in addition to that,

is that the EPA is also currently reviewing their

recommendations on tritium and ground water, and has

published in the federal register the fact that they're

trying to figure out if those limitations should be

stricter. So the EPA is moving towards stricter

limits, believing that the limit that they originally

set, which I think they set in 1977, were very poorly

informed compared to what information is available by

today's standards and using today's science.

I would also say that I'm sorry to call

your name out, but Mr. Phil Meyer, who is your specialist

on ground water and was the consultant for this report,

did not know that the EPA is currently reviewing those

standards. So again, I see a large discretion between

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the way that the NRC chooses to define public safety

in the way that other trusted sources define public

safety, and I don't see why you should be able to say

that something within your bubble of jurisdiction is

suddenly immune from this other oversight and immune

from having to meet these standards of safety that are

agreed upon by other parts of the public.

And with that I would say I don't believe

that the NRC has proven that by making and following

their own rules without regard for public

accountability and safety that they can be trusted to

deem the reactor's operation is safe. Thank you.

MR. KLUKAN: Thank you for your comments.

Next we will turn to David Luce.

MR. LUCE: Sorry, my mouth is dry.

MR. KLUKAN: No worries.

MR. LUCE: I won't be able to speak unless

I water it. My name is David Luce, L-U-C-E. I'm a

member of the Farview Neighborhood Plot Club in the

city of Minneapolis. Several years ago I attended an

event by some of your colleagues or former colleagues

in the city of Plymouth, Minnesota, and it was called

Waste Confidence. I'm a college graduate, went to

college, and I couldn't ever figure out what that phrase

meant, Waste Confidence, but I'll come back to the

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confidence.

So my wife and I drink tap water in

Minneapolis. It comes from the Minneapolis Water

Department and it's treated with some chemicals for

some issues. So we drink chemically-treated

Mississippi River water. And I actually like it with

ice cubes. It seems to taste better with ice cubes,

in fact, it's reminiscent of the water that I drank

as a child from a 514 well in the Minneapolis area.

So confidence, I heard the term stakeholder

confidence here tonight. I'm not sure exactly what

that means, but I'm interested in my own confidence

in clean safe drinking water for myself, my neighbors,

my family, the young families that are moving into

Minneapolis with small children and who are having more

children in Minneapolis. And I have to say that my

clean water confidence, as far as tap water in the city

of Minneapolis goes, is extremely low in terms of is

this water safe to drink? And what are the

consequences, the long-term consequences of drinking

this water or raising children drinking this water?

So keeping it really short, my confidence

in the NRC, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of the

federal government, is very low, extremely low, and

my confidence that the NRC as a regulator of a deadly

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dinosaur industry, while also being an apologist for

this deadly industry, what sort of regulation of this

deadly industry can happen when you're also a kind of

PR agency for the whole industry. When are you going

to actually shut down one of these extremely dangerous

nuclear stations, nuclear power stations?

I'd like to ask everyone in the room how

much confidence does anyone have that there won't be

a nuclear power station meltdown in the United States

of America in your or your children's lifetime? How

confident is anyone in the room? That's my question.

And when is the NRC going to shut down one of these

stations or let the license expire and not re-license

it beyond its safe lifetime, if there actually is a

safe lifetime for any nuclear power station. Thank

you very much.

MR. KLUKAN: Thank you for your comments.

Next we're going to turn back to you, Raymond? I'm

done with my list of individuals who indicated upon

registration that they'd like to speak. Is there

anyone else who would like to speak this evening, or

offer comments, I should say? Anyone else? Going

once, twice. You're welcome to come back up to the

microphone.

MR. LAFORGE: John LaForge again. I'd

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just like to reiterate that I too would recommend that

the comment period be extended, particularly because

issuance of the draft EIS was two months late, and that

really crunched the amount of time we had to study it.

Add my voice to that too, thanks.

MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. Anyone else have

anything they'd like to add? Or else we will turn to

the song. So for the transcription, as well as to be

fair to the camera person, if you wouldn't mind coming

up here. Assemble yourselves in the general area.

I don't know where you want us to put instruments, but

you want to turn this around or face this way when you

play, whatever you'd like to do. I saw that you were

passing out lyrics. I didn't know if you wanted to

- I feel like it's easier to lead a song if you're facing

the people.

MS. SCHUBERT: I need to read part of this

that I go over again.

MR. KLUKAN: Sure.

MS. SCHUBERT: So all I want to say is that

this is a call and response song. The last sentence

of each verse is repeated so people can repeat that

with us if they would like to. I don't know if I can

turn around.

MR. KLUKAN: Come to this side and then

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face this way.

MS. SCHUBERT: I could do that. I have

to be on that side. Okay. Yeah, that'll help.

(Singing) I heard it from the trees and

a mountain flower high. I heard it in the river and

the fishes swimming by. I heard it in the earth and

I heard it in the sky. Nuclear power is no good for

you and I. Nuclear power is no good for you and I.

Power to the people, that's the way it ought

to be. Power from the sun and thermals in the sea.

Power from the wind and biomass. Nuclear power is no

good for us. Nuclear power is no good for us.

The children grow around us with dreams

in their eyes. They look to us for help and they trust

that we are wise. We fill their world with poison from

nuclear waste. Nuclear power is such a disgrace.

Nuclear power is such a disgrace.

Power to the people, that's the way it ought

to be. Power from the sun and thermals in the sea.

Power from the wind and biomass. Nuclear power is no

good for us. Nuclear power is no good for us.

In 2621 the waste around my town will only be

half gone. 800 generations will live with our mess.

Nuclear power causes human distress. Nuclear power

causes human distress.

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Power to the people, that's the way it ought

to be. Power from the sun and thermals in the sea.

Power from the wind and biomass. Nuclear power is no

good for us. Nuclear power is no good for us.

An Xcel reactor is too out of date. We should

have decommissioned it in 2011. Leaked into the

Mississippi radioactive tritium, let's shut it down

now before it does more harm. Let's shut it down now

before it does more harm.

Power to the people, that's the way it ought

to be. Power from the sun and thermals in the sea.

Power from the wind and biomass. Nuclear power is no

good for us. Nuclear power is no good for us.

You've got to shut it down. We keep making

nuclear power and kill humankind. Nuclear power is

a terrible crime. Nuclear power is a terrible crime.

Power to the people, that's the way it ought

to be. Power from the sun and thermals in the sea.

Power from the wind and biomass. Nuclear power is no

good for us. Nuclear power is no good for us.

If you care about creatures and a river passing

by, if you listen to your commonsense you'll know the

reason why. If you care about the earth and humanity,

we've got to stop this nuclear power insanity. We've

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got to stop this nuclear power insanity.

Power to the people, that's the way it ought

to be. Power from the sun and thermals in the sea.

Power from the wind and biomass. Nuclear power is no

good for us. Nuclear power is no good for us.

Thank you. Thank you.

MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. And for

the transcript, that was Roger and Jo. Okay, all right,

before I turn it over to Steve for closing remarks,

I just wanted to thank you for participating, coming

out tonight and participating and offering your

comments here this evening. I'd also like to thank

the city for allowing us this opportunity to use this

wonderful and beautiful venue.

And with that, we'll turn it over to Steve

for closing remarks.

MR. KOENICK: Thank you, Brett, and thank

you again to the city of Monticello. This is a very

nice venue for these types of events. And on behalf

of the staff I would like to thank everyone for taking

the time to attend tonight's meeting and provide very

thoughtful comments and questions, and your song. I'd

like to briefly summarize our next steps. We are

currently about halfway through this open period. We

have your requests to extend the comment period. We

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are considering that, and we will notify you directly

or update our website accordingly, but as a person

mentioned, we will make a decision soon so you can act

accordingly. So thank you for that.

And our team will gather the comments we

heard today, as well as the comments we heard last week,

as well as all the comments that will be submitted.

Yes, you have your hand up?

MS. FOUSHEE: Does everyone that wants an

extension have to request it?

MR. KOENICK: No. No, we have enough.

We have sufficient requests. So thank you, and good

clarification there. And we do have, going back a few

slides, so if you have additional comments, here are

the ways to submit your comments as Jessica mentioned

earlier in her presentation. And once again, we will

be looking at this meeting that was transcribed and

we will delineate all the comments. And we will parse

through all the comments that we heard, and this will

be addressed within the final EIS. So there is going

to be an Appendix A in the final Environmental Impact

Statement that we'll address all of the comments that

were received through whichever means that they were.

And so we will combine them, we'll evaluate

and disposition them, and then we anticipate issuing

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the final impact statement in October of this year,

and Jessica has already mentioned the numerous ways

that you can gain access to these reports. And I

believe we did have a couple copies left. Do we still

have a few copies if anybody is interested for that?

So with that, thank you again for your

comments and for taking the time.

MR. LUCE: Excuse me, sir. I have a

procedural question.

MR. KOENICK: Yes.

MR. LUCE: I mentioned that I live in the

city of Minneapolis and the city water comes from the

river. And that I had gone to a previous meeting in

Plymouth that the NRC put on. And now we're meeting

in Monticello. Since Minneapolis residents are some

of the closest residents who are most affected by

drinking the river water, I'd like to know if you would

hold a meeting in Minneapolis to explain your

conclusions to the residents who are most affected by

drinking the water from the Mississippi.

MR. KOENICK: In order to do a wide reach

of individuals, that is the component of the virtual

meeting that we held last week, which is widely

accessible by people all over. So that's how we try

to be more accessible to a wider audience by conducting

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a virtual meeting as well as in certain cases in public

meetings. And the report is available for persons to

review and provide comments. Thank you.

So that with that, once again thank you

for taking the time to attend today's meeting, and I

hope you have a pleasant evening. So thank you.

MR. KLUKAN: Just one final comment, with

that, thank you again and we look forward to meeting

again. Thank you and with that, good night.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went

off the record at 7:29 p.m.)

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