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The Peregrine Chick:
2022 NESTING SEASON

From our friends at GRE ....

March 23, 2022

Great River Energy’s long-term peregrine falcon residents returned in late February to the Elk River, Minnesota, nest box. Brooklyn, the male, returned for an eighth year and Breezy (pictured), the female, returned for a fifth year.  With the help of an Eagle Scout and the Raptor Resource Project, Great River Energy first installed the nesting box in 2006 atop Elk River Energy Recovery Station. The nest box was relocated in early 2020 to a platform above the native prairie on Great River Energy’s Elk River campus. Since 2006, 46 young falcons have fledged from the Elk River location. 

I only know that Brooklyn & Breezy had 4 chicks last year but nothing on outcomes ...

bcbird:
Thanks for the updates here, TPC. 
The Elk River nest box had been one of the non Manitoba sites I liked to follow. 

The Peregrine Chick:
From the Raptor Resource website:

This year’s female is once again Breezy 31/P, joined by her mate Brooklyn 65/M. The two are nesting on a tower built especially for them by Great River Energy. The camera is not live at this time.

Egg Laying
Egg #1: March 28, 2020 @ 7:00 AM
Egg #2: March 30, 2020 @ 4:47 PM
Egg #3: April 2, 2020 @ 7:20 AM
Egg #4: April 2, 2020 @4:57 pm

Hatch is expected to begin around May 5

There weren't any additional updates on the website - if the chicks did hatch about May 5th they should be fledging or about to fledge shortly now ...

The Peregrine Chick:
For those that may be interested in a little background about WTF plants and why the GRE Elk River plant is being decommissioned ...

Minnesota WTE plant closing after county turns down offer to buy for one dollar
Cole Rosengren / Waste Dive / 26 Nov 2018

Great River Energy (GRE) plans to close the Elk River Resource Recovery Project in Minnesota, as reported by MPR News, due to financial challenges caused in part by declining energy revenues. This includes a 1,000 ton-per-day refuse-derived fuel operation, a 29 MW power plant and an ash landfill.
The utility had approached multiple counties, including Hennepin and Anoka, about potentially purchasing the site. Sherburne County, the final option, decided against it during a Nov. 20 meeting. Even with GRE offering the facility for $1 and promising to cover any potential closure costs through 2020, the lack of necessary tonnage was a primary deal breaker.
With the region's other WTE facilities largely operating at capacity, an estimated 250,000 tons per year of waste is now expected to end up in one of four area landfills. The Star-Tribune previously reported this may shorten their average remaining permitted lifespan to six years.
Dive Insight:

The Elk River site has been processing waste into RDF since a 1989 retrofit and GRE took over the full operation in 2010. GRE, a cooperative, recognized this presented an "extremely unusual decision" for the county and appears to have made the deal as favorable as possible. In addition to the $1 sale price – along with the assumption of $5.4 million worth of closure expenses and $4 million in employee severance through the end of 2020 – it also offered a two-year power purchase agreement weighted in the county's favor.

Yet the facility needs 320,000 tons per year to remain financially viable and has seen its incoming stream steadily decrease since at least 2013. According to documents provided to the Sherburne County Board of Commissioners, only 140,000 tons were guaranteed by GRE during its proposed two-year bridge period. In a memo evaluating the proposal, the county's solid waste administrator wrote that “unless additional guaranteed tonnage are secured in writing, this project will lose money," and "result in fiscal loss to the county."

That same memo also recognized “the overall benefits of processing solid waste rather than relying on indiscriminate land disposal is undisputed,” in keeping with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency's (MPCA) waste recovery hierarchy. According to the Energy Recovery Council, the state has seven other active WTE facilities. GRE won an operating contract for one of those sites, owned by Hennepin County, over incumbent Covanta in 2016.

Following the EPA's own national hierarchy, MPCA recently went so far as to start enforcing a decades-old law requiring waste go to WTE facilities with slack capacity, such as GRE's Elk River site, rather than to area landfills. Waste Management (which owns three of the four local landfills) and Republic Services (which owns the fourth) sued, and the matter is pending appeal. Meanwhile, Waste Management plans to begin exporting tonnage from one local site in Burnsville out of state in advance of shrinking capacity.

While Minnesota handles a larger portion of its waste via WTE than landfills, this is not the national norm. Outside of select regions, WTE is still the minority option, and new or expanded projects remain challenging for a host of political reasons. GRE's Elk River facility will now join a list of at least three others — in California, New Jersey and Florida — that have announced closure plans in 2018.

RCF:
Employees install nest box for falcons

February 14, 2020
Work to provide a new home to the peregrine falcons who usually nest at Elk River Energy Recovery Station has begun.

With decommissioning of the Elk River power plant underway, employees chose a new site for the falcons to return to for their typical nesting period from mid-February through March, depending on weather patterns.

Line technicians from Great River Energy’s Big Lake transmission service center set a pole with a platform, nest box and camera on a hill atop the cooperative’s native prairie, adjacent to the power plant.

The project’s next phase of work involves getting the camera that will monitor the falcons’ nesting activities operational. After this is completed, the falcons are expected to occupy the nest box.

The Elk River Energy Recovery Station was taken out of service in 2019 and is being decommissioned.


https://greatriverenergy.com/employees-install-nest-box-for-falcons/

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