I've missed quite a lot while I was busy writing other things, but now that I've got that handled, I dropped in to the Missouri PSC docket to see what's happened with the complaints that the Missouri Landowners Alliance filed. If I was looking for more bizarre insults from Invenergy, I wasn't disappointed in the least.
I can only guess that Invenergy's attorneys don't read much in the way of classic literature, and perhaps have not read Orwell's 1984 at all. What other excuse could there be for getting the plot so wrong, and placing Invenergy in the role of oppressed person who is not allowed to have thoughts that deviate from the status quo. Seriously? Invenergy IS the status quo in the Grain Belt Express situation. It's landowners who are not allowed freedom of thought in this scenario. It's landowners who are being pursued to sign over their property for benefit of a transmission line project that Invenergy admits it hasn't quite figured out yet.
Bottom line: If you wouldn't sign over your property without the threat of eminent domain, then you might want to think twice before you sign over your property.
I can only guess that Invenergy's attorneys don't read much in the way of classic literature, and perhaps have not read Orwell's 1984 at all. What other excuse could there be for getting the plot so wrong, and placing Invenergy in the role of oppressed person who is not allowed to have thoughts that deviate from the status quo. Seriously? Invenergy IS the status quo in the Grain Belt Express situation. It's landowners who are not allowed freedom of thought in this scenario. It's landowners who are being pursued to sign over their property for benefit of a transmission line project that Invenergy admits it hasn't quite figured out yet.
Bottom line: If you wouldn't sign over your property without the threat of eminent domain, then you might want to think twice before you sign over your property.
“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.”
The general plot of this complaint is that Invenergy has been all over the map about what it is building for the past several months. The specific project that the Missouri PSC permitted appears not to be the one Invenergy is building. Invenergy says that it really doesn't know what it's building anymore, and that it has not made up its mind. It wants the luxury of time to figure it out, and hash over its ideas publicly in the name of "transparency." Meanwhile, it thinks it has the right to continue on with the permit it was issued and when Invenergy finally decides what its project will be, only then will it let the MO PSC and the landowners know. There's something wrong with this... is Invenergy perhaps negotiating easements with landowners under false pretenses?
The permit Invenergy was issued is for a public use project, where the company will sell capacity on Grain Belt Express to other unaffiliated entities at negotiated rates. The transmission line that was permitted, being publicly available for anyone to negotiate for its use, was granted eminent domain authority. But Invenergy's supposed public thought process, carried out through press releases and letters to landowners, sort of hints that Invenergy is contemplating changing Grain Belt Express into a transmission line for its own private use. There was the time Beth Conley called it a "gen-tie." There was the time Michael Polsky claimed Invenergy would be building the wind resources in Kansas that would generate the power carried on the line. If Invenergy is going to build and own the wind resources that generate the power transmitted on GBE, then it would be a transmission line that only Invenergy could use. It would no longer be a public use if no one else could transmit power over the line. Would such a revised project still be able to use eminent domain to acquire land for its own use?
But yet Invenergy, in all its dithering uncertainty, is still trying to acquire easements from landowners. If landowners willingly enter into easement agreements, and Invenergy later changes its project to a private use, would they have any recourse? If Invenergy doesn't know what it's building, maybe it should stop trying to acquire easements until it makes up its mind?
Who does that? Who spends a whole bunch of money acquiring land for a project that has no substance? If Invenergy has no real plan, why is it spending so much money trying to acquire land for a certain project route? Invenergy claims the route is set, but it has no idea where the project will begin or end now, or who would purchase the capacity (or maybe just the power generated in Kansas and delivered via Invenergy's private transmission highway). Do you really think (if you're still allowed to think) that Invenergy is spending money hand over fist on a project that it has not defined? Personally, I'm not buying it. I think Invenergy knows darn well what it is intending to build and where it intends to build it. But Invenergy doesn't want me to think that, and it doesn't want you to think it either. It wants landowners (and the PSC) to think it's maybe still building the public use project that was permitted, and that it still has eminent domain authority. Who's the Thought Police now, Invenergy?
Invenergy seems mighty tweaked that the Missouri Landowners Alliance would even think that maybe Invenergy is trying to pull a fast one. Maybe Invenergy is using its current permit to coerce landowners to sign easements that they wouldn't sign without the sledgehammer of eminent domain? Don't even think it!
The permit Invenergy was issued is for a public use project, where the company will sell capacity on Grain Belt Express to other unaffiliated entities at negotiated rates. The transmission line that was permitted, being publicly available for anyone to negotiate for its use, was granted eminent domain authority. But Invenergy's supposed public thought process, carried out through press releases and letters to landowners, sort of hints that Invenergy is contemplating changing Grain Belt Express into a transmission line for its own private use. There was the time Beth Conley called it a "gen-tie." There was the time Michael Polsky claimed Invenergy would be building the wind resources in Kansas that would generate the power carried on the line. If Invenergy is going to build and own the wind resources that generate the power transmitted on GBE, then it would be a transmission line that only Invenergy could use. It would no longer be a public use if no one else could transmit power over the line. Would such a revised project still be able to use eminent domain to acquire land for its own use?
But yet Invenergy, in all its dithering uncertainty, is still trying to acquire easements from landowners. If landowners willingly enter into easement agreements, and Invenergy later changes its project to a private use, would they have any recourse? If Invenergy doesn't know what it's building, maybe it should stop trying to acquire easements until it makes up its mind?
Who does that? Who spends a whole bunch of money acquiring land for a project that has no substance? If Invenergy has no real plan, why is it spending so much money trying to acquire land for a certain project route? Invenergy claims the route is set, but it has no idea where the project will begin or end now, or who would purchase the capacity (or maybe just the power generated in Kansas and delivered via Invenergy's private transmission highway). Do you really think (if you're still allowed to think) that Invenergy is spending money hand over fist on a project that it has not defined? Personally, I'm not buying it. I think Invenergy knows darn well what it is intending to build and where it intends to build it. But Invenergy doesn't want me to think that, and it doesn't want you to think it either. It wants landowners (and the PSC) to think it's maybe still building the public use project that was permitted, and that it still has eminent domain authority. Who's the Thought Police now, Invenergy?
Invenergy seems mighty tweaked that the Missouri Landowners Alliance would even think that maybe Invenergy is trying to pull a fast one. Maybe Invenergy is using its current permit to coerce landowners to sign easements that they wouldn't sign without the sledgehammer of eminent domain? Don't even think it!
“The most gifted of [the Proletariate], who might possibly become a nuclei of discontent, are simply marked down by the Thought Police and eliminated.”
Something sure smells funny about Invenergy lately. What remains to be seen is whether the Missouri PSC will step up and do its job to protect the people of Missouri, or will the legislature have to step in?
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