"...and just in case some people want them underground your government and transmission companies will have a full array of irrational arguments and inflated costs to make sure nothing gets buried."
Here's an oldie, but a goodie!
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Did you know that there is a small group of scientific researchers that study transmission opposition? We're like some exotic creature that nobody understands. They speak in hushed tones, like they're narrating a golf tournament, so as not to disturb the creatures in their native habitat. *Warning! Strong Language* When I run across one of their studies, it's usually interesting reading because a scientist without a political agenda will generally hit upon some truth. Of course, that truth is usually wrapped up in complicated hypotheses and mind numbing statistics, but little truths often escape. Like in this study. One of the little truths I gleaned from this one is that "compensation packages" are most often associated with environmental group involvement in transmission siting and permitting. Environmentalists are associated with compensation packages; marginalized groups are associated with undergrounding and combined remediation; and environmentalists, the federal government, and the breadth of coalition actors is associated with the combined remediation outcome. A compensation package means that someone got paid off to accept the impacts of the project. It is never the affected landowner, who bears the greatest impact. However, opponents often have differentiated goals, and a just outcome for one member of a coalition may be unjust for another. Environmentalists use landowners as battering rams, and ultimately sacrificial lambs, to achieve their own goals. An environmental group opposing a project because of its fuel source will pretend it cares about property rights in order to win the support of landowners, but when push comes to shove, the environmental group will often end its opposition if the project owner agrees to fund environmental goals. Ditto on the local governments, to a degree. Local governments usually get involved at the request of their constituents. But a project developer knows that it may end the government's opposition by offering additional payments for the local government. Neither situation actually provides compensation to affected landowners, but pays others to toss the landowners under the bus in exchange for their own gain. The take away: Don't allow your landowner group to be conscripted to fight the battles of others. Autonomy always. Just because a well-funded national environmental organization weighs in on your side doesn't mean they have the same interest as you. In fact, they may be using you. Local governments don't usually get involved with the idea of using you for their own gain, but sometimes the payola is just too much for these local officials to resist. When that happens, they are usually tossed out of office at the next election, but that doesn't stop the impacts from happening. The second truth is that "public meetings" hosted by transmission developers are nothing more than a staged dog & pony show. These meetings are not meant as a two-way exchange of ideas. Don't waste your time trying to convince the transmission developer to change its plans. Developers often determine the dimensions of the project, such as route options, during the upstream phase of the decision-making process (Cotton and Devine-Wright 2013). Public consultation can occur later, and community meetings can have the goals of limiting engagement to final route selection and of selling the project. That's right, the decision of what to build where has already been made. You'd be more productive to look at these meetings as an opportunity to gather information for your battle and to make connections with other disgruntled landowners. I always look at them as first and foremost recruitment venues, and secondarily as a place to document conflicting and misleading information.
It's all good though because transmission developers, governments, regulators and environmental groups dismiss these studies because they often don't agree with their own misunderstandings about grassroots opposition. They may think they have us all figured out, but they never even get close. And that's how we win our battles. We've established that burying Grain Belt Express on existing public rights of way is technologically feasible. But it costs more to build it that way. The cost of the project is of no concern to affected landowners being asked to accept the financial burden the project imposes on them.
Here's why: Grain Belt Express is a merchant transmission project, not a transmission project ordered by a regional transmission planning organization because it is needed for reliability of the system, or economic reasons. Or even to support state public policy laws. A public utility must maintain its system to provide reliable and economic service to all customers within its service territory. A public utility must provide service to all customers within its territory at equitable rates. A public utility cannot pick and choose which customers it wants to serve, and it cannot charge different rates to similarly situated customers. A public utility may have different rates for different classes of customers, for example residential users may pay different rates than commercial or industrial customers. But a public utility cannot charge a different amount to two residential customers, or two commercial customers. A public utility has an obligation to serve all customers equitably. A merchant transmission project is not a public utility because it has no obligation to serve any customer, and it may charge different rates to similarly situated customers. It does not operate in the interest of the public, it operates in its own private interest. A merchant can pick and choose which customers it wants to serve, often based on profit. For example, a merchant transmission company may choose to serve only the portion of its potential customers who volunteer to pay the most money for the service. And even then, it can charge different rates for each customer. It's like a water line that chooses to supply water for only select customers who pay the most for water, or wear a certain colored coat, or vote for a certain candidate. The rest of the people go without water. Because a merchant is only providing service to chosen customers, it is not providing a public service. It is providing a private service negotiated between just two parties. If your neighbor wanted to build another driveway into his property that was routed through your backyard, could he condemn your backyard and use it for his own private business? Of course not! Instead, your neighbor may negotiate with you on a free market basis to sell him an easement to cross your property, but he can't just take it. This is why merchant transmission companies should never be granted the solemn power of eminent domain. Merchant transmission is not providing a PUBLIC service. Now let's noodle over the issue of merchant transmission rates. Your public utility is regulated and may only charge its customers its cost of providing the service, plus a small profit set by regulators. It can't just charge whatever it wants, its rates are thoroughly examined and set by regulators in order to protect the public interest. Your public utility cannot choose to serve only customers who offer to pay the most, or wear a certain coat, etc. It must serve the entire public. A merchant transmission company is not regulated and does not use cost of service rates. Instead, it may be granted negotiated rates by federal regulators. A negotiated rate is just that... a rate for service that is negotiated voluntarily between two sophisticated parties. Federal regulators rely on the market value of the service to keep prices at reasonable rates. If a merchant insists on pricing its service higher than voluntary customers are willing to pay, it won't have any customers. Customers will only pay for the service if it is reasonably priced for their needs. A merchant transmission project is a speculative business venture that is proposed solely for profit. The merchant supposes that if it builds transmission between Point A and Point B that customers will elect to take service. Those customers will negotiate rates with the merchant on a free market basis. The rates they volunteer to pay do not exceed the market value of the service. The market value of the service is the price the service would fetch in a competitive market. It reflects the value of the service to voluntary customers. The market value is completely unaffected by the cost to construct the project. The price for service reflects what voluntary customers are willing to pay, not the merchant's cost to construct the project. If Grain Belt Express claims that undergrounding, or negotiating easements in a free market, makes its project too expensive to appeal to its voluntary customers, the proper response is: "Too bad for you, Grain Belt Express." It means that the merchant's financial proposal to provide service at market-based rates is uneconomic. When a merchant transmission project is uneconomic, it doesn't attract voluntary customers, and the project fails. There is no reason landowners should be held captive to the financial proposals of private parties. Landowners should not be forced to accept financial or emotional harm so that a privately held company that does not provide a public service can make money. It is not incumbent upon Midwest landowners to make a sacrifice so that voluntary customers in another region can pay cheaper rates for a private service. Don't visit the financial impacts of GBE on the people of Illinois, Missouri and Kansas so that GBE can make a huge profit selling "cheap" service to the people of other states. GBE is trying to undercut renewables in those other states on price, and in so doing causing financial harm to Midwestern landowners. The people in other states don't have a "right" to cheaper electricity that trumps your right to own and use your land to make a living. Grain Belt Express is an uneconomic project trying to avoid failure by heaping undue costs on others who will receive no benefit. Invenergy was completely unprepared for Illinois landowners who asked why the project was not proposed to be buried on existing rights of way at recent "Open House" dog and pony shows. Instead, Invenergy personnel just made up some pretty laughable excuses. Burial along existing roadways is possible because Invenergy is doing just that on a proposed HVDC transmission line in New York. Clean Path New York is a joint venture between Invenergy, Energy RE and the New York Power Authority. The project bundles new transmission with new clean energy — about 3,400 megawatts of new wind and solar capacity to be built upstate by EnergyRe and Invenergy, the latter a major clean energy developer. So a HVDC transmission line CAN be buried along existing roadways, under water, and underneath existing AC transmission lines.... when Invenergy wants to do it. But look at that price tag! 174 miles of line costs $3.5B! That's more than the cost of the entire 800-mile long Grain Belt Express project! But even at that cost, Invenergy can still manage to make a profit on the New York line. Sort of makes you think about how much profit could be made on GBE if it builds a much cheaper project on overhead lattice towers. Go ahead, get out your calculators... What Invenergy spends on line, it more than makes up for by building wind and solar farms in upstate New York and selling the electricity to New York City. The federal government pays for most of the wind farm through generous production tax credits. Invenergy gets paid by taxpayers for every electron it generates, and subsequently sells to electric customers. Taxpayers pay Invenergy to generate electricity, and then they pay to purchase the electricity they paid to generate. What a racket! But don't you think that Invenergy might also want to build the non-existent wind farms in Kansas that it proposes will be served by GBE? Perhaps most galling of all Invenergy's lies is its assertion that its New York project is "an example to the nation" for how to build transmission without causing sacrifice from landowners. ... its use of underground high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) line along existing rights of way to minimize the risk of opposition from landowners and communities along the path of the project.... “We think that using existing rights of way is less impactful, both ecologically and in terms of communities and view corridors,” he said. “We think that this project will serve as an example for the rest of the nation on how to solve these complex issues.” Not much of an example when Invenergy turns right around and tries to ram through an overhead transmission project using eminent domain to acquire new rights of way across private property that is hotly opposed by landowners in four states. What a bunch of HYPOCRITES. What's good for the goose is always good for the gander, and landowners in the Midwest aren't getting the same respect that Invenergy has shown to landowners in New York. What makes landowners in New York more important than landowners in Kansas, Missouri, and Illinois? There’s certainly a need for strategies to enable massive grid expansion that can accommodate large amounts of new wind and solar power. Proposed transmission projects can face a decade or more of challenges related to siting, permitting and cost allocation. These hurdles have fatally tripped up several high-profile projects over the past decade. See that link above for "several high-profile projects"? Go ahead and click it. It's a list of 7 transmission projects that have been stymied by landowner opposition. Grain Belt Express is number 4 on the list. Also, the "existing railroads and highways" link goes to a story about SOO Green Renewable Rail. SOO Green is very much alive, despite what you may have been told by Invenergy. SOO Green is building an underground HVDC project on existing rights of way without any subsidies from the State of Illinois, or any other state. That's because the project's economics pencil out, even with increased costs to bury the project. Buried HVDC can be done in Illinois. If you read the linked article, you will find out that SOO Green's biggest hurdle right now isn't landowners, but getting through the interconnection process at PJM, the east coast power grid. Guess what? GBE also plans to interconnect with PJM. Get in line, fellas! The cost is manageable. The technology exists. There's an existing interstate that runs east-west across all three states. Burying Grain Belt Express on existing highway right of way is absolutely possible!
Why then is Invenergy trying to build an outdated and invasive project across prime farmland? Why isn't there any respect for the landowners in Kansas, Missouri and Illinois? Why is Invenergy so greedy about potential profit? The cheaper GBE is to construct, the larger Invenergy's profit. Isn't it about time that landowners and elected officials in Illinois get straight answers from Invenergy, instead of self-serving lies? It's you, dear ratepayer. You're the bank that pays utilities to borrow your money. In a recent Concurrence to a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission granting of incentives to an independent transmission developer, Commissioner Mark Christie makes a great plain language analogy that anyone can understand. The Commission’s incentive policies— particularly the CWIP Incentive, which allows recovery of costs before a project has been put into service—run the risk of making consumers “the bank” for the transmission developer; but, unlike a real bank, which gets to charge interest for the money it loans, under our existing incentives policies the consumer not only effectively “loans” the money through the formula rates mechanism, but also pays the utility a profit, known as Return on Equity, or “ROE,” for the privilege of serving as the utility’s de facto lender. There is something wrong with this picture. CWIP, or Construction Work In Progress, is a rate mechanism that allows utilities to stuff all their costs of developing and building a new transmission line into a special account that earns interest for the utility while it is engaged in permitting and construction. Of course, captive electric ratepayers are the ones paying this interest, often to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, before even one electron is transmitted. Worse yet, consumers will continue to pay, even if the project is later abandoned and never built.
Consumers are on the hook for the costs of transmission. When a new transmission line is needed, the utility spends some of its own money, and borrows some from a bank, to finance the construction. Consumers pay principal and interest on this amount until it is paid off, just like your home mortgage. No problem there, however FERC grants special incentives to the utility on top of the already sweet interest rates they are granted, which are often upwards of 10%. Just try finding an investment that pays you a guaranteed 10% over 40 years. You can't. Isn't that generous enough? No. FERC sweetens the pot by increasing the interest rate if the project is especially risky. Why? The utility has been ordered by the regional transmission organization to construct the project. And it is guaranteed to get all its money back, plus interest. Why do they need a couple extra points on the interest rate? Isn't that just too much frosting on the cupcake? In addition to the ROE (interest) incentive, FERC grants all projects ordered by the RTO what is known as the abandonment incentive. That incentive guarantees that if a project is later cancelled by the RTO, the utility may collect all the money it has spent, plus interest, from consumers who never get a thing in return. Does that sound fair to you? It doesn't sound fair to Commissioner Christie, either. His concurrence is a breath of fresh air from federal agency that seems to care more about the utilities it regulates than the consumers it exists to serve. Furthermore, when a project is abandoned, it's nobody's fault. The utility points the finger at the RTO that mistakenly ordered the project in the first place. However, that's a coy pretext. The utility is the one who begged to have the RTO order them to build the project in the first place. Oftentimes, the utility is the one that originally dreamed up the project, and asked the RTO to create a "need" for it. Nobody, not even FERC, cares that the RTO ordered a project that cost the ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars and was never built. There is no investigation into what went wrong. If the RTO makes a $500M mistake, there ought to be some accounting, just to find the error and prevent a similar mistake in the future. But FERC doesn't care to find out why the project was ordered and subsequently cancelled. No harm, no foul. However, the consumers shoulder all the financial burden of the error. They have to pay back all the money that has been wasted on a project that nobody needs and which is never built. Finally... a FERC Commissioner brave enough to stand up for consumers! FERC has become all too political lately... and when politics abound, regulation is forgotten. Regulation is a learned science. When FERC is populated with political deal makers and special interests, its decisions often conflict with regulatory principles. Commissioner Christie is an experienced regulator with a wealth of experience. We need more commissioners like him! Money doesn't grow on special U.S. Government trees. The Government has no money of its own to give away. All the Government's money comes out of your pocket in the form of taxes. When the Government gives money away, it is giving away YOUR money. When did the Democratic party become the face of elitism? Ha ha ha, ho ho ho, let's gather the elite few and crack some jokes about all the "resistance" to the Democrats' plan to turn rural America into an energy serfdom to serve the cities the elite call home. Some communities are pushing back on the idea of agricultural land and other places being used for large scale wind and solar farms. No, it's just the kind of thing a stupid, elitist asshole would say. Why would anyone who wasn't an elitist asshole ask the greedy elite who are profiting from big wind how it's going? Someone from Scranton who fancies himself a "regular joe" might ask the communities instead. It wouldn't be so hard to do... it's not just "some" communities that are pushing back. It's ALL of them. "Some" is just a desperate attempt to mitigate the rural outrage over this invasion. Where were the electric ratepayers or public ratepayer representatives yesterday? They weren't invited to the elitist asshole convention at the White House. Joe doesn't care what they think. So, the energy elite said they would "meet with lawmakers 'every week, day in and day out' until Congress passes major clean energy tax credits." Right, because they have a herd of expensive lobbyists who are paid to harass lawmakers every day (paid for by you). What do you have? No time... because you're working hard every day to pay your taxes that Joe is giving to his elitist asshole friends. “The tax credits will make more sophisticated energy infrastructure much less expensive,” said Pat Vincent-Collawn, CEO of New Mexico-based PNM Resources Inc. What? Is that like a manufacturer's coupon you can spend at the grocery store that lowers the price of the item you buy? Of course not! Government money doesn't grow on trees. It comes from tax payers. The price of the energy infrastructure doesn't change... it's just about when and where the citizens pay for it... in their tax bill, or in their electric bill? But guess what? All these investor-owned utility CEO's are a pretty stupid bunch. Their beloved tax credit will simply be passed through to ratepayers.... none of it will end up in the IOU profit. But the merchant transmission developers who compete with the IOUs will get to keep the tax credit. That's right... merchants have market based negotiated rates that are indifferent to the cost of the transmission project. The market value for transmission service between Point A and Point B remains the same no matter how much the project costs to build. The refundable tax credit is hundreds of millions of tax dollars right into merchant transmission developer pockets. Is that what these silly IOU CEO's intend? Merchant transmission would be making money hand over fist if the credits were passed. Maybe these CEOs should rethink this whole thing... An aggressive clean energy transition will be a pricey one, especially for the electricity industry, which is among the most capital-intensive sectors in the United States. The industry collectively spent $143.3 billion in capital expenditures in 2021, EEI said. Poor Nick! He's not the brightest bulb on the string, is he? I guess you don't need to be when you're a member of the Elitist Asshole club. Prior to the event, EEI executives briefed Wall Street investors and analysts at the Nasdaq MarketSite. So while the CEO's are pretending these tax credits are for consumers at the White House... they had just got done telling Wall Street that the tax credits would increase corporate profit. Not even trying to hide their elitist asshole moves any longer. Apparently you don't need to when the elitist assholes are in charge. Akins said the plan to add renewables presents an opportunity to work with unions and to save customers billions of dollars. The challenge is siting and building transmission to support all of those renewables, he said. How so, Nick, you pompous little snit? That doesn't even make sense. "Scope" the project? Is that where you put a lighted camera down the project's throat... or maybe up its tookus??? Just a bunch of gobbeldy-gook buzzwords the elitist assholes throw around. None of it has to make sense. They all just nod importantly and agree.
Ahh... so here's the place you can thwart the elitist asshole take over. Resist. There's not a thing the elitist assholes can do to stop community opposition to new electric transmission. Our elitist asshole pal Nick has lost a bunch of electric transmission fights... let's start with the PATH project; and then there was the SWEPCO Shipe Rd. to King's River Project, the WindCatcher project, and the Transource Independence Energy Connection project. All AEP projects, all cancelled because of resistance. Being an elitist asshole isn't all that. How fast the tables can turn! Contact your elected representative. And be sure to vote in November! We've got to get rid of these elitist assholes. Well, that will teach them! FERC recently released the results of its audit of FirstEnergy transmission company rates. The audit found that some of FirstEnergy's lobbying costs had been passed through in consumer electric rates. The audit also found that FirstEnergy had made other accounting "mistakes" that improperly increased the rates the company collected. The exposure of FirstEnergy's accounting "mistakes" could result in the refund of millions. Why is it that all utility accounting "mistakes" are in the company's favor? I've never seen a regulatory audit where it was determined that an accounting mistake was in the customer's favor. Maybe they're not mistakes at all... maybe they are "on purposes"? FERC's audit report even states that perhaps these "mistakes" were not innocent. The DOJ complaint and audit staff’s discussions on internal controls during onsite interviews of FESC employees raised audit staff’s concerns about the existence of significant shortcomings in FirstEnergy and its subsidiary companies’ controls over financial reporting, including controls over accounting for the costs of civic, political, and related activities, such as lobbying activities, performed by and on behalf of FirstEnergy and its subsidiaries. Moreover, these controls may have been circumvented in ways designed to conceal the nature and purpose of expenditures made and, as a result, that led to the improper inclusion of lobbying and other nonutility costs in wholesale rate determinations. They did it on purpose to steal from consumers. But, wait, there's more! Even more concerning, several factual assertions agreed to by FirstEnergy in DPA and the remedies FirstEnergy agreed to undertake, point towards internal controls having been possibly obfuscated or circumvented to conceal or mislead as to the actual amounts, nature, and purpose of the lobbying expenditures made, and as a result, the improper inclusion of lobbying and other nonutility costs in wholesale transmission billing rates. Yes, they did it on purpose. It was no accident.
So, what happens to a utility when FERC finds that it willfully practiced creative accounting in order to collect more from its customers than it was entitled to? Slap on the wrist. It must revise its policies, train its employees, conduct a labor study, and submit a report of how much it will refund to customers. All these activities will be paid for by the ratepayers who were harmed. FirstEnergy is not fined or penalized in any way. As long as it spits out a bunch of paper and empty promises, it can continue on bilking ratepayers. This is what always happens when FERC's Division of Audits performs a review and finds the same old errors committed by almost all utilities that serve to unlawfully increase electric rates. The utilities simply made a "mistake" and new policies and training will fix it and prevent it from happening again. But it always happens again. When is FERC going to punish its utility pets? Compare to the way FERC goes after electricity market traders who commit similar "mistakes" that may result in excess profit. FERC hounds them to the ends of the earth and demands ridiculous monetary penalties. But if you're a utility, you're allowed to steal from ratepayers with only a slap on the wrist. FERC's random audits don't do a thing to deter utility accounting fraud. When utilities are allowed to keep making the same "mistakes" over and over, it's a criminal enterprise that deserves penalties. Utilities have stolen billions from consumers by committing accounting fraud... and they continue to get away with it. Disappointing... and infuriating. Powhatan Energy Fund has a new document on its website*, a transcript from a September 13, 2021 court hearing. The judge seems rather perplexed over the case, and positively peeved that she was promised over and over again by FERC that the case was about to settle; and then it didn't. "And so what I want you to know is that you took advantage of my good grace. All of you. I'm going to say FERC especially. They were the ones coming in and telling me, "Listen, we're going to do it. We're going to do it. We're going to settle the case. We're going to settle the case. Did FERC lie to the judge? Was it ever going to settle? It's not like an offer of settlement was never made by Powhatan, it's just that FERC chose not to accept the offer. And why not, FERC? At what point did this case become more about human ego than it is about regulation in the public interest? It seems like the Judge was equally perplexed over FERC's obstinate refusal to settle, even though it would receive absolutely nothing if the case went to trial and FERC won. What I am hearing is there is an entity who is being sued and is claiming it's broke. Now, that to me suggests what are you going to get? You're going to get years of litigating money that they say they don't have. It sounds like the only thing FERC is going to get is a consolation prize... a piece of paper to hang on somebody's wall. There will be no financial recovery. The ratepayers get nothing. FERC's consolation prize sucks. Sometimes swaggering around like Wyatt Earp doesn't make you a hero. Sometimes it just wastes an incredible amount of time and money. No wonder the judge is so exasperated. At what point does the government's aggressive pursuit of retribution deserve scrutiny from the court? Isn't the Court supposed to protect citizens from unreasonable aggression perpetrated by their own government? Considering that this case has been languishing at the Court for seven years (the rocket engines attached to it must be defective), and the defendants have had their professional and personal lives turned upside down for more than a decade, at what point should a Court start giving the government the hairy eyeball? Maybe the government has made a lot of mistakes, causing the tables to turn, and make Powhatan the ultimate victim? At what point will Powhatan's punishment be complete? Maybe FERC should have accepted Powhatan's settlement offer last year and been done with it? FERC was warned last summer that there was little money left. Most of it has been spent defending against FERC's unreasonably aggressive pursuit of ridiculous penalty amounts that it refused to explain for years. Powhatan had to wait a decade and spend millions of dollars to find out what it had supposedly done wrong and how FERC calculated its impractical penalty amounts. And now all the money has been spent. It's not like FERC didn't enter into a substantially similar settlement with another accused party where it recovered a small amount of money and banned the trader from the markets for a period of time. There were no penalties in that settlement. What's different about the Powhatan defendants? Is it because they didn't do this the minute FERC threw open the batwing doors and swaggered into the marketplace? Is it about FERClitigation.com? Is it about all the media stories? Is it because the Gates brothers annoyed FERC by refusing to back down?
So, what does FERC get for ratepayers now? It gets to be an unsecured creditor in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy action that would probably produce little to no money. Thanks a lot, FERC. Continuing this ego-driven d*ck-waving contest would try the patience of even the most patient soul. Her Honor is probably feeling more like a kindergarten teacher than a federal court judge right now. Maybe she needs to cancel recess and put the little government cowboys down for a nap and let them sleep it off? If FERC settled right now, it could have this headline: "FERC Bankrupts Powhatan". Maybe FERC could even sweeten it a bit by adding a subhead "Bans Principals from Electric Markets." FERC has to readjust its expectations here. Honestly, I've never seen such a pointless pursuit. Maybe FERC should propose a headline and ownership of ferclitigation.com to settle the case? It might be the only thing of value Powhatan has left. *And now the website is for sale! Who wouldn't want to own a website that could call out the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for all the stupid litigation mistakes it makes? Maybe FERC wants to buy it and decorate it in a wild west theme? Incredible Letter to the Editor of the Effingham Daily News. David Buckman, President, Block Grain Belt Express Illinois asks why Grain Belt Express cannot be buried on existing rights of way like a similar project proposed in Illinois. And why can't GBE be buried like Invenergy's CleanPATH NY transmission project? WHY Invenergy? WHY? One alternative is to build/bury the transmission lines along the right of way of public highways. Route 36 which crosses Illinois from east to west is one such possibility. The State would then receive any payments that the company intended to pay related to this project which would help reduce the State’s outstanding debt. |
About the Author Keryn Newman blogs here at StopPATH WV about energy issues, transmission policy, misguided regulation, our greedy energy companies and their corporate spin.
In 2008, AEP & Allegheny Energy's PATH joint venture used their transmission line routing etch-a-sketch to draw a 765kV line across the street from her house. Oooops! And the rest is history. About
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