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B3. Gathering Stakeholder Input <br />B3.1 Minnesota Brightfields Conference <br />Barr staff attended a Minnesota Brightfields conference on February 20, 2020 and heard from a range of <br />experts from the EPA, State of MN, developers, non -profits, industry representatives, and consultants. That <br />conference assisted in providing some background and context for this study. <br />B3.2 Virtual Focus Group Meetings <br />The scope of work required two in -person focus group meetings to gather feedback on stakeholders' <br />concerns, questions, and perceived barriers to solar development on closed landfills. The COVID-19 <br />pandemic required us to modify our approach and provide an on-line venue for these meetings. <br />Barr invited representatives from solar development companies, general contractors, utilities, transmission <br />system operators (Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO)), state governments, local <br />governments, and non-profit organizations who have experience and/or interest in both solar <br />development and landfills. Attendees were identified from lists of people who had previously attended <br />conferences and events focused on solar development on brownfields. Barr reached out to people <br />individually to gauge their interest and obtained additional recommendations for persons to invite. <br />Through this process of identifying potential participants, we heard several names repeated as persons <br />who could contribute to this project. The invitee list was reviewed with the EQB and other project leads. In <br />total, approximately 125 people were invited to the virtual focus group sessions. <br />Barr held two virtual focus group meetings via WebEx (full audio and video) for approximately 2 hours <br />each on March 27, 2020 and April 1, 2020. Each meeting was attended by approximately 15 to 20 <br />participants, representing a mix of industry categories. The sessions included a project introduction, <br />overview of MN Closed Landfills, an introduction to the draft Web tool (description provided in next <br />paragraph), results from a survey sent to all participants, and small and large group discussions. <br />The draft Web tool started with the list of 114 land management areas. The tool includes many key site <br />features including facility address, local utility, solid waste permit number, land management area size, <br />waste -footprint size, power transmission lines, power distribution lines, and substations. The tool allows <br />users to query sites by a range of site features. The query function allows users to put in ranges of values. <br />For example, a user can query "sites larger than 5 acres; sites less than 1 mile from transmission; sites <br />more than 1 mile from a substation, etc." <br />Additional information was gathered from a survey questionnaire included with the invitation to the focus <br />group meetings, which invitees were allowed to complete up to several weeks after the last focus group. <br />There were 11 total respondents: four worked in state government, two were solar developers, two were <br />contractors (not solar), one worked in local government, and two fell into the category of "other." One of <br />those in the "other" category did brownfields work for a nonprofit. <br />A summary of responses received from stakeholders following the focus group meetings indicated that <br />perceived benefits of placing solar energy on closed landfill sites include: <br />B5 <br />