After years of telling people that the depreciation of PATH-Allegheny's Plant in Service was related to PATH's ROW office that they opened in Martinsburg before the project died, today the truth finally came out during PATH's 2013 PTRR Open Meeting.

After Maryland Office of People's Counsel's Gary Alexander verified with PATH that they never "put a shovel in the ground" PATH turned right around and told me that the depreciation was linked to amounts PATH spent to clear land at the old chicken farm they bought as a site for their mid-point Welton Springs substation.  I guess it technically wasn't "a shovel"... more like a backhoe or a bulldozer.

PATH never had a permit to do any construction (or destruction) of any kind in West Virginia, so what were they doing clearing land and recording the expense in their construction accounts that they now want to recover from 60 million PJM ratepayers?

Although all this will be dealt with later, I'm sure you CAKES folks can consider yourself really lucky that PATH never showed up and razed the farm they purchased for their "Kemptown" substation during the permitting process.

Silly PATH!  Never thought your project wasn't going to happen, did you?  Ut-oh!  That's probably going to cost you...