However, most the attendees at the Bell Schoolhouse Fire Station meeting opposed the project. Dennis Daniels, who organized the meeting, said he has already been a victim of eminent domain once and does not want to go through the process again.
 
"Honestly I don't have any questions for (representatives)," he said. "I just don't want them to come through my property."
 
He's concerned that the power line will decrease property values, restrict further development on his land and be an eyesore.
 
"It bothers me most that it's a private, for-profit company," he said. "They're going to use eminent domain to take our property rights away to give to a company in San Francisco to make millions of dollars off of each year."

In a public meeting at the Bell Schoolhouse Fire Station just outside Starkville Thursday, Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley urged residents to reach out to representatives from Southern Cross Transmission if they have questions about the company's proposed wind energy transmission line.
 
"Let it not be said of you that you didn't call on these people and that you didn't file an objection," Presley said at the meeting.

While eminent domain is not out of the question, Presley said he believes the company will do everything in its power to avoid having to use it. Southern Cross representatives have told him they have put in similar lines in other parts of the country without resorting to eminent domain.

Presley said his office received a plethora of letters, emails and phone calls from property owners who received letters. In a meeting with company representatives, Presley said someone from the company has to meet with property owners one-on-one at the time and place of the landowner's choosing.
 
In an interview with The Dispatch Thursday, Presley said a Southern Cross representative had already begun meeting with landowners individually. Presley also had the company designate a point of contact for landowners to call. Since then, his office has received fewer calls from concerned citizens.
 
In June, Southern Cross Transmission sent letters to landowners whose property is within 500 feet of one of the proposed routes and promised to hold meetings and answer questions from landowners. The company then hosted an open house for property owners, but many left that meeting with more questions than answers, Presley said.
 
Legally, Southern Cross Transmission doesn't have to communicate with the public at all until it has decided on a route and filed a proposal with the Public Service Commission. But Presley wants to ensure that the company shows landowners the dignity and respect they deserve.

FERC has previously found that the interconnection of the Southern Cross Project to the ERCOT transmission system is in the public interest and that the Project will create substantial benefits both for the ERCOT and the Southeast regions.

Southern Cross Transmission plans to settle on a route and file its proposal with the commission this fall. Once that happens, Presley said, citizens have 20 days to file an objection, which gives them legal rights in the case.

He requested landowners write down whatever questions they have, take those questions directly to the company and wait until they had met with Southern Cross representatives before deciding whether to oppose the project.

Presley has also said he will not approve the project unless the company can prove it has some benefit to Mississippi.
 
"I'm as much for clean air and clean energy as the next guy, but it's got to be about more than renewable energy," he said. "For us, that's a plus, but there has to be other things."

"At the end of the day, the ability to connect into wind energy, which does not cost anything as far as burning coal, burning natural gas, (is) obviously an energy source that could have a benefit to the state," Presley said.
 
"That's the benefit," he added. "But also obviously if this electricity is low cost, I'm not going to be supporting trucking it through Mississippi to pump it to Atlanta, Georgia, and our people have cheap electricity ran over the top of their property and not being able to take advantage of it."

The Plains & Eastern Clean Line is one of the largest clean energy infrastructure projects in the country. It will provide a pathway for 4,000 megawatts of low-cost wind power to be delivered from Oklahoma to the Mid-South and Southeast. The agreement between Clean Line Energy and TRC, which has a major office located in Tulsa, furthers Clean Line's commitment to working with local suppliers.
"Clean Line Energy's mission of building modern energy infrastructure closely aligns with our own core values of sustainability, including our commitment to grow our clean energy services year over year," said Chris Vincze, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "The 700-mile transmission line will improve the U.S. electric grid, support economic development and job growth, and make safe, reliable and lower-cost power available to consumers.

TRC will provide program management, acquisition of environmental and cultural survey consents, and acquisition support. It also will be communicating with landowners across the route to educate them about the benefits of the project.

Do not represent that a relative, neighbor and/or friend supports or opposes the Project.

Do not suggest that any person should be ashamed of or embarrassed by his or her opposition to the Project or that such opposition is inappropriate.

Do not argue with property owners about the merits of the Project.

Is the project just an excuse to expand the reach of coal-fired power plants rather than supporting a clean energy project?

Existing coal fleet utilization currently ~ 72% -74%

Can increase to ~ 85% with adequate load & transmission

Most underutilized coal capacity in Middle U.S.

Current U.S. coal capacity ~ 310 GW, furnishes ~ 2 trillion kWh annually, U.S. consumes ~ 1.1B tons of coal

If new transmission increases existing coal fleet utilization 10%, then:
--Coal could provide additional 200B kWh
--Coal demand would increase by 100M tons
--Even assuming no new coal plants are built
--However, new transmission could facilitate new coal plants

“Restricting new transmission to green electrons is as bad as restricting a new highway to only electric vehicles.”

As a resident of a "state farther east" proposed to be the beneficiary of this senseless sacrifice of Missourians, I am not in favor of importing renewables from other states. For years, West Virginians made a sacrifice to export energy to states to the east. Now that the bottom has fallen out of that market, West Virginia is left with nothing to show for its years of sacrifice. We must rebuild our energy economy and that includes building our own renewable energy generators for local use. We cannot afford to ship our energy dollars out of state to import Midwest wind, but must put them to work in our own communities to promote local jobs and economic development. Grain Belt Express is not wanted in Eastern states.

National Grid considers many factors when it evaluates whether to invest in the development of a new transmission project, including the economic viability of the project and the prospects for the project to attract debt financing for construction. But perhaps most important is the ability of management to bring the project to commercial operation, including the ability to work well with customers, regulators and other stakeholders while managing all aspects of the development and construction process.

Each [project] is overseen by a capable project management staff, with strong support from a deep and experienced home office.

National Grid has the right to designate two out of seven members of Clean Line’s Board of Directors. These rights, among others, provide National Grid with the ability to assist in and help direct the development and commercialization of Clean Line’s portfolio of HVDC transmission projects, including the Grain Belt Express Project.

First, the Grain Belt Express Project is economically attractive, as it provides a valued service to customers as exemplified by the contract with MJMEUC. Grain Belt Express has already identified significant customer interest in the project through its open solicitation for capacity, which has resulted in requests for more than 20,000 megawatts of service.

...the DOE is among the most prominent defendants requiring payment from the Judgment Fund, which pays for claims against the government. The department paid out more in legal claims than any other agency last year and the year before, according to the fund's records — more than $5 billion over the last decade.

And according to the department itself, the bloodletting as far from over. The DOE has failed to make good on some of its most important contractual obligations for years, and its private partners have been collecting billions in damages.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 requires that the DOE dispose of nuclear waste being produced at civilian energy plants around the country, which in turn pay fees for a long-term storage facility. The department's contracts with dozens of energy companies said it would start disposing of the waste in 1998.

The companies held up their end, feeding about $750 million into the Nuclear Waste Fund each year. But the department did not manage to set up any facility to receive the waste, forcing energy companies to store it themselves on-site.

The hang-up has been in finding a location for the centralized storage facility. For decades, Yucca Mountain in Nevada was the only location that could legally be considered, despite fierce opposition from state and local groups. The Obama administration eventually abandoned the site as "unworkable" in 2011.

How will a grid that provides a two-way street to carry and store more renewable energy help resolve this situation? DOE's Hannegan responds with a sports analogy. On a mesh-like grid, the problem, whether it is a computer hacker, a big forest fire or a battery failure, is a threat that can be quickly isolated, allowing the rest of the surrounding grid to operate normally using better controls and quickly dispatched stored electricity.

Lawlor says this "isn't about eminent domain," which is one of the worries of many who live along the proposed route.  

"We will sit down with every single landowner and negotiate with them on the unique nature of their property. In fact we've been doing that for a couple years now."

What happens if a landowner doesn’t want to negotiate with Grain Belt Express?

The Company is allowing sufficient time for negotiations with each individual landowner along the route. Grain Belt Express is committed to conducting easement negotiations in a manner that respects the private property rights of landowners and achieves a voluntary easement acquisition. The Company is also committed to working with landowners to minimize the impacts of the Project upon their property. In order to ensure that infrastructure projects in the public interest can be completed, the entities building them need the right to condemn certain easements, particularly in cases of parcels that have title issues, parcels with missing or unlocatable landowners or heirs, or parcels where landowners refuse all reasonable attempts at contact or negotiation. Grain Belt Express views the use of eminent domain as a last resort that is appropriate only after exhausting all reasonable attempts at voluntary easement acquisition and title curative work. In all cases, landowners are entitled to due process and payment of fair market value for any easement acquired, and will retain ownership of their land.

...sit down with every single landowner and negotiate with them on the unique nature of their property.

Specifically, Clean Line has agreed to:

Offer the option of binding arbitration to resolve any compensation disputes.

Establish a Missouri Agriculture Protocol. Clean Line will follow strict guidelines to avoid, minimize and mitigate any impacts to agricultural fields or activities. The Missouri Agriculture Protocol should implement utility best practices and establishes an Agriculture Inspector to monitor construction activities. The Agriculture Inspector has the power to immediately stop construction when best practices are not being followed or when contractors are in violation of any negotiated obligation with landowners.

Establishment of a fund to decommission the project when it is determined to be near the end of its useful life.

Have a local firm update land value assessments. In the event land values have decreased since the last assessment because of commodity prices or any other reason, the Grain Belt Express will honor the higher of the values. Also, compensation will not be reduced after an Order has been issued approving the project by the Missouri Public Service Commission.

On May 27, 2016, House File 2459 was signed into law, adding § 478.6A “Merchant line franchises – requirements – limitations” to the Iowa Code. This newly- enacted statute creates a new class of electric transmission lines, called “merchant lines,” and sets time limits for processing franchise petitions for merchant lines. Clean Line’s proposed electric transmission line is a merchant line as defined in the new statute. Going forward, all petitions for a franchise for a merchant line that involves the taking of property under eminent domain will be subject to § 478.6A, which establishes a three-year deadline for Board action on those petitions.  If that deadline is not met then the petition shall be rejected and the petitioner may not file a petition for the same or similar project within sixty months following the date of rejection.
Section 39 of House File 2459 sets out slightly different time requirements for merchant line petitions filed on or after November 1, 2014, that have not yet been approved by the Board as of May 27, 2016. The three-year approval period is not applicable to these petitions; instead, the Board must act on these petitions within two years. The Clean Line petitions fall into this classification and therefore a decision on these petitions must be issued by the Board no later than May 27, 2018.

The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

MARK TWAIN, Following the Equator

To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct.

MARK TWAIN, "How to Tell a Story"

In order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.

MARK TWAIN, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Preliminary calculations, assuming existing production tax credits for wind project participation in the project, could reduce costs by as much as $10M/year or $10 per  megawatt hour compared to delivery of other wind projects from SPP to MISO.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

MARK TWAIN, Autobiography

Government is merely a servant – merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.

MARK TWAIN, The Bible According to Mark Twain

Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.

MARK TWAIN, Europe and Elsewhere