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Submitted photo
Charise Canales, 18, works to raise awareness of and support for a long-in-development power plant on the Mississippi River.
By Cristof Traudes
A Southwest High senior says now is the time for hydropower In three months, Charise Canales will graduate from Southwest High School.
She"s smackdab in the middle of the senior rush, completing, hopefully acing major exams and preparing for more. She"s waiting, hoping, longing to hear back from the seven mostly East Coast colleges she"s applied to, keeping her fingers crossed that one of her top three sends her an acceptance packet. All pretty typical stuff.
Less typical is her deliberate insertion into a two decades-long, often contentious discussion. The teensy, bespectacled 18-year-old supports — actively supports — the Crown Hydro project, the proposed hydroelectric power plant that would produce energy from St. Anthony Falls. That"s the same Crown Hydro project that once drew out a highly concerned former vice president and recently angered the Minneapolis City Council.
Canales doesn"t care much about the drama. She believes Crown Hydro will create jobs and has the potential of offsetting 18,000 tons of carbon dioxide. That"s what she"s telling her family, her friends, the Internet. In September, she launched the Power of One Hundred, a website aimed at getting 100 people to support the project. So far, she has 18.
The time is now, she said, for Crown Hydro to build.
"It"s been in the works since I was born," she said. "My fate is kind of intertwined with the project."
Canales was born in 1990. That same year, Crown Hydro applied for its first federal license, seeking to use land near St. Anthony Falls to build an underground power-producing facility. The license was approved in 1999, and on most fronts, the project was moving toward becoming reality. Around the same time, Canales had her first taste of activism.
"When I was about 10 or 11, I decided I wanted to save all the pandas in the world," she said. It became her constant mission; she became known by her classmates as the "panda girl." She"d sling around a book in one arm, a stuffed animal in the other.
Getting to that point had not been a completely unnatural progression. She comes from an active family. Her stepfather, Kip Hedges, is a former president of the International Association of Machinists Local 1833.
She finally crossed paths with Crown Hydro after joining her high school"s green team in 2007. That was the same year the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board voted to deny Crown Hydro a move forward after former Vice President Walter Mondale made a last-minute request to stop the project.
It was the last time Crown Hydro had any formal interaction with Minneapolis government. After the Park Board vote, its backers sought other ways to find approval. They changed spokespersons and hired a lobbyist, deciding the Legislature was the way to get the power plant built.
The new spokesperson and lobbyist turned out to be the same person, Nikki Carlson. She also turned out to be the neighbor of one of Canales" good friends. That connection brought them together last summer. Now, Canales believes the timing for Crown Hydro is perfect. The world is focused on becoming more environmentally friendly, and new construction projects are in demand to battle the economic slump.
Crown Hydro"s project would create 40 construction jobs, Carlson said, and would produce enough electricity to power 2,000 homes.
Opponents remain. Their main concerns are fourfold: that the project involves a private company"s use of public land, that the power plant would create noise, that it would have a negative impact on St. Anthony Falls" historic quality and that it could potentially cause the falls to collapse, much like they did in 1869. Also creating worry is that the plant could significantly shrink the flow of the falls.
Crown Hydro has been trying to squelch those concerns — all of which are either unnecessary or flat-out wrong, it says — one by one by going on a mass informational tour.
Canales" main task for Crown Hydro also is to inform; it"s what she does about 10 hours each week. Her first job for the project involved meeting with the University of Minnesota"s green team. She couldn"t say for sure that everyone walked out a supporter, but she feels confident she put to rest some concerns.
A step forward, she called it.
Earlier this month, a step backward: A Senate bill that would have allowed Crown Hydro to move ahead without Park Board approval was pulled by its author, leaving the normal process of landlord negotiations as the only way to go.
That was good news for both the Park Board and the City Council — the council unanimously and vocally opposed the bill, calling it an "egregious" power grab. But for Canales, the chances of Crown Hydro breaking ground before she dons a purple cap and gown have decreased.
She"s disappointed but hopeful, already planning what she"d do if things don"t move forward until after she"s left Minneapolis.
For the next three months, though, she"ll do her best to gather as much support as possible. She"ll continue trying to convince friends. She"ll write letters and contact organizations. She"ll manage her website and try to find those other 82 of 100. She"ll do all of that, plus study to get through two advanced placement courses, prepare for oral International Baccalaureate exams and try to find some time to relax as an ordinary teenager.
Just three months left.
"This is what high school is all about, right?" Canales said.
For more on Charise Canales’ efforts to find 100 Crown Hydro supporters, go to www.powerofonehundred.org.
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Art beat // Closing and opening
By Dylan Thomas
Art of This leaving current space, but won’t cease to existLYNDALE — A few weeks before they planned to shutter their Nicollet Avenue art space for good, John Marks and David Petersen of Art of This Gallery reflected on “Open Summer,” their ongoing, open door, last blast summer project. A free-for-all residency program that eventually enrolled 80-some artists, the slowly percolating “Open Summer” was building steam as it headed into its, and the gallery’s, grand finale at the end of August. And for all the potential pitfalls in telling some seven dozen people where the gallery key is hidden, about the worst thing that happened all summer was when someone spilled salsa in the refrigerator and never cleaned it up.
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On the mat // Green yogis in Linden Hills
By Sarah McKenzie
Devanadi Yoga, a new studio near Lake Harriet, is a trailblazer in the local yoga community. The small 525-square-foot studio, tucked behind the Bruley Center on West 43rd Street in Linden Hills, is the first yoga studio in the state to be certified by the Green Yoga Association for its environmentally friendly efforts. The studio’s green practices include using non-VOC paint, controlling the thermostat to keep the building energy efficient and encouraging students to walk, bus or bike to class. Tanya Boigenzahn Sowards, studio director/owner of Devanadi Yoga, said being green is “core value of the studio and it ties back to the yogic philosophy of doing no harm.” “Minneapolis frequently ranks as one of the top green
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Everyday gardener // Q&A
By Meleah Maynard
Struggling tomatoes, rain barrels and rootbound plantsEven though spring started in earnest in March this year, it still seems like summer is going by too fast. So, fast, in fact, my inbox has been a bit stuffed with questions. As always, I’ve replied directly to people who asked for help with various things. But here in the column I’m going to cover some of the questions that seem likely to be of interest to a lot of gardeners. By far, the questions I’m getting most are about tomatoes, so I’ll start there. Q: My tomato plants look good and have a lot of flowers, but I’m not getting a lot of fruit this year. What’s going on?A: It’s been too hot for tomatoes to set fruit
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Flavor // A smokin’ sensation on Nicollet
By Carla Waldemar
If you’re wondering what caused the traffic stand-still on South Nicollet the other evening, let’s just say I should have kept my window shut. When passing cars got a whiff of possibly the best aroma in the galaxy — I’m talking about barbecue, of course — they halted to demand, “Where’d you get that?” At C&G’s, of course. Greg Alford launched C&G’s Smoking Barbecue exactly a year ago; the anniversary balloons in the otherwise-Spartan, clean-as-a-whistle hole in the wall provided the only touch of whimsy in this serious business. Greg was born in Louisiana, which may explain his superior taste in food. He grew up in Detroit, one of 12 kids whose mamma set him to cooking when he was 5, he
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Wild city // Eating the yard
By Mary Jean Port
I love August. It is so lush. All summer, as I nurse the garden along, I anticipate these eating days. We now have too much of everything: tomatoes, green beans, heat, humidity, and also thunder, for those of us who have a dog frightened by it. I have been working our piece of ground for 14 years, and have good soil to show for it. Back when we first started, my husband was more of a lawn guy. He liked the idea of a garden, but drew a line in the grass with his toe. Don’t dig up anything beyond here, he said. So I dug my first of what are now 10 beds, and planted the pumpkin right on his line. The vines ran out of the garden and took over the whole backyard. My husband good-naturedly threw up his hands. We started with vegetables, and
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Kid rock
By Sam Lane
Twin Town Guitars hosts a camp that gives young musicians a chance to play and perform in a bandMore than 60 excited, camera-toting fans packed Cause Spirits and Soundbar on a warm August afternoon waiting for two headline bands to take the stage. The hotly anticipated musicians weren’t well known. They weren’t 20-somethings trying to strike a record deal. They weren’t middle-aged men trying to relive their youth. They were kids, ages 8–17, who spent prior weeks at Twin Town Guitars, 3400 Lyndale Ave. S., preparing for their first concert. In an economy where budget cuts deal constant blows to public school music programs, the owners of Twin Town have spent the last three summers providing a haven for aspiring
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