StopPATH WV

Oh, FirstEnergy, you're such a little fibber!

Yesterday, FE announced the closure of six of their oldest, dirtiest coal-fired generating plants, including the local R. Paul Smith plant in Williamsport, Maryland.  Residents of the town say it's a "devastating blow."

FirstEnergy blames the EPA for the shut down and says that 529 employees will lose their jobs at the six plants.  Aside from early retirement and severance, FirstEnergy has nothing much to offer these loyal employees.  They also have nothing to offer the towns who are losing tax revenue and business generated by the plants.  FirstEnergy says "too bad, so sad, look at what the EPA did to you" to all the "little people" affected by their business decision.

And make no mistake about it, the decision was all about what's best for FirstEnergy's bottom line and stock dividends.  FirstEnergy closed these plants because they are no longer profitable.  That's the real bottom line.

These plants rarely operate because they are obsolete and expensive to run.  The only reason they have remained open this long is that they have been receiving capacity payments through PJM Interconnection's electricity market to remain available to supplement base load plants on a couple days a year when loads are heavy.

"The plant, which has a coal-fired boiler and a fuel-oil fired boiler, hasn’t generated power recently but has been run within the past year, he said.

But Durbin couldn’t say when the plant last generated power, noting that such information would be considered proprietary."

Proprietary?  That's power company double-speak for, "I can't tell you because the answer would make me a liar."

Electrical demand has been down for several years and continues to fall.  This is due to energy efficiency, demand side management and the building of new generation near load centers on the east coast.  The "peaks" in electrical demand are flattening due to demand side management, whereby electricity use is voluntarily curtailed during times of peak demand.  Smaller peaks means that peaking plants like the one in Williamsport are no longer needed.  If they're no longer needed, they're not going to continue to receive capacity payments to sit around idle for 363 days a year.  No money coming in, and FirstEnergy gives them the axe.  This has NOTHING to do with the EPA.

Now, let's take a look at what FirstEnergy says out of the other side of their mouth... the one that speaks to their shareholders, who continually demand an increase in their earnings every quarter.

In this press release on Marketwatch, FE claims that the generating plant shut downs resulted in a .38 per share "charge" to their Non-GAAP earnings, but it didn't do a thing to their overall $2.44 per share GAAP earnings. 

It's all about FirstEnergy's greedy bottom line.  It's not about the EPA, or the well-being of their loyal employees, or the communities they serve.

While looking at the Susquehanna Roseland EIS today, I came across the slide show that the NPS is presenting at their public hearings in Pennsylvania and New Jersey this week.

The slide show obviously uses power company-submitted "photo simulations" to show citizens what the proposed power line will supposedly look like.  These photo sims are created by environmental permitting firms like Burns & McDonnell, who are being paid to produce Photoshopped propaganda.  I saw many just like them in PATH's LRE and EIS application.

These Photoshop phonies take great liberty with perspective, hoping you're dumb enough to fall for their trickery.

Here's a great example.  Notice how the "before" picture only captures the bottom 50 feet or so of the lattice tower structure?  When this 100 foot high structure is replaced with a tubular steel structure twice it's size in the "after" picture, the perspective of the tower suddenly changes, although the background remains the same.  All of a sudden most of the structure is visible in the "photo."  Sometimes they place the new structure further away along the right-of-way in order to make it appear smaller by comparison, but it looks like they didn't even bother in this one.  They placed the out of perspective structure in the same basic location as the existing one.  Fail!

And what's that hiding behind the tower?  Is it a new right-of-way three times the width of the old one (yes, I measured it)?  You're not supposed to notice that!

If you're interested in seeing the entire slide show that demonstrates the damage the new line will do to the parks, you can download it here and view with a great deal of skepticism.

Note to Power Companies and Paid Contractors:  Seriously guys, use some of your ill-gotten booty to invest in a new bag of tricks.  This one has gone stale.

Big brother is watching you.  There's a fun (or rude, depending on results) little self-discovery tool making the rounds in social media circles that was promoted in a Business Insider article yesterday.

Google has been keeping track of your browsing habits and compiling demographics based on the websites you frequent and has determined your age and sex for the purposes of providing ad content targeted to your interests.

I'm a 55-64 year old male.  Holy Grecian Formula and Sansabelt slacks, Batman, I've turned into one of THEM!  *Note to self:  Must develop new online hobbies.

This is because my Google-determined target ad categories are:

Business & Industrial - Energy & Utilities
Business & Industrial - Energy & Utilities - Electricity
Internet & Telecom - Web Services - Search Engine Optimization & Marketing
Internet & Telecom - Web Services - Web Hosting & Domain Registration
News - Technology News
Reference - Geographic Reference - Maps - Traffic & Public Transit
World Localities - North America - USA - Mid-Atlantic (USA) - Pennsylvania
World Localities - North America - USA - South (USA) - West Virginia

I'm going to tell myself that's because my idea of a good time involves rolling this chair back and getting away from my inhuman task master.  Although... I wonder if there's an online Rorschach test I can use to try to counterbalance Google's unwelcome opinion of me?

Go ahead, try it.  I want to find out which one of you is living the internet life that is supposed to belong to me...

The National Park Service has announced that the public will be able to further comment on PSE&G and PPL's $30M land-bribe once the plan is revealed.  However, it sounds more like you'll just be flapping your gums after the decision has been made, so don't wait -- go ahead and comment NOW before January 31.

The National Park Service and the public need more time to evaluate two utilities' proposed trade to add park land in exchange for allowing a massive power line to cross Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, federal officials said Monday.

"Acquiring conservation lands to enhance national park resources and to create or connect regional wildlife corridors could be a means of mitigating and compensating for impacts from construction, operation, and maintenance of a transmission line upgrade," the park service said in its first public comment on the proposal. "However, the NPS will not be able to determine whether the lost use and resource impacts are offset until the agency has fully evaluated the mitigation proposal and the public has had a chance to review it."

Following this week's hearings, the park service will take written comments until Jan. 31. But the utilities aren't expected to make details of their proposed land purchases public until officials file their own written comments.

This leaves unanswered how public comment will be considered if the public doesn't get land purchase details until after the comment period closes. National Park Service spokeswoman Deb Nordeen said she is unsure how the process will work, but the public will be able to comment on the agency's final impact statement late this year.

The NPS seems to be a little worried that they will be correctly painted as accepting a bribe from a for-profit corporation in exchange for looking the other way while a national park is destroyed.  And, of course, they will be!

The Susquehanna Roseland project is not needed any more than PATH ever was.  This $1.2B project has now increased its cost by another $30M to pay for the NPS land-bribe, and you are the one who's going to be stuck paying for it all, along with a sweet 12.9% yearly profit for PSE&G and PPL, including that purchase of the land-bribe.

The NPS-hosted public hearings began last night.  The power companies bussed in union members to speak in favor of their project, purporting that the transmission line would provide jobs. 

Hey, remember when PATH bussed in a gaggle of union stooges to speak in favor of their project during PSC hearings in Shepherdstown back in 2009?

My favorite part of that episode was the stragglers who drove themselves and ended up asking us where the "union rally" was being held.  Uh-huh... these guys showed up at their own volition to support PATH ;-)  Or, maybe it was what happened at the next public hearing in the series when the PSC refused to let more union guys testify because the union was an intervenor and thereby prevented from testifying at the public hearings.  That was fun :-)

The power companies seriously need to come up with some new plays -- the game is up!

A Response to PATH's Answer to the Formal Challenge was filed at FERC today.

PATH's got lots of problems, but probably the simplest to explain here is that their accountants don't know whether to add or subtract.  It does make a difference!

Instead of learning when to add and when to subtract, PATH wastes the Commission's time whining that:  "Clearly, Challengers Newman and Haverty are individuals who are opposed to the PATH Project. (Footnoted:  Challenge p. 14 ("the PATH Project can no longer be justified."); see also http://www.stoppathwv.com/stoppathwv-blog.html. (Stop PATH WV, Inc. is an organization comprised of citizens who object to the PATH Project)." PATH should be ashamed of themselves for incorrectly quoting small portions of larger sentences without proper indication, and for calling the "wahhhhmbulance" again.  The complete quote that they cherry picked from reads "Stop PATH WV, Inc. is a registered 501(c)4 social justice grassroots organization comprised of ordinary citizens who object to the Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline because it is not needed, it is not wanted, it is destructive to West Virginia, and it is an obstacle to meaningful reform of U.S. energy policy." And the page they got it from (which was not the Blog) contains the title "www.stoppathwv.com - Jefferson County, WV" (not Calhoun Co., WV).

Perhaps PATH should spend more time learning proper format for quotes in legal documents and the difference between debits and credits, and less time reading StopPATHWV Blog.  Does anyone's opposition to the PATH Project cause Allegheny/FirstEnergy to make incredibly stupid accounting mistakes?  No, they make those all on their own.  The only assistance they get from StopPATH is a little publicity. 

Newman and Haverty have filed both Formal Challenges pro se, as individuals.  Neither are representing StopPATH WV, Inc. in the matter, because then they'd have to be lawyers.  StopPATH WV, Inc. has NOTHING to do with any of PATH's problems at FERC.  While Newman is a member of StopPATH WV, Inc., Haverty is not.  But, both Challengers are also members of lots of other organizations that PATH failed to mention, and for which they did not provide the FERC Commissioners with web links.  PATH's lawyers need to do a little more research, in order to find other member organizations to which Challengers belong and whine about those organizations too in their legal filings.

PATH seems to think that we go out of our way to make them look bad when the reality is that PATH manages to look bad all by itself, no assistance needed.  Finding errors in PATH's financial filings is like shooting fish in a barrel.

Remember all the fun we had last year with AEP's "Principles of Business Conduct"? 

Well, now it's FirstEnergy's turn to sing, dance and make us laugh with their improbable "Code of Business Conduct."

According to FirstEnergy CEO Anthony "Tony" Alexander,

"Maintaining high ethical standards builds trust with our customers, shareholders, fellow employees, and the communities we serve.  Our Code of Business Conduct communicates the fundamentals of ethical behavior in the workplace and provides important guidelines to ensure we maintain our high standards."

FirstEnergy?  Ethical?

I'm not going to analyze the whole thing this time -- I've got better things to do, but here's a real whopper from Tony the Trickster.

"Corporate Records – Ensure you accurately record all financial transactions in a timely manner in accordance with prescribed accounting principles. Make full, fair, accurate, timely and understandable disclosure of financial and nonfinancial information as required by law and regulation. Never knowingly record false or misleading information on any Company record, report, or document, including those reports and documents submitted to any government agency, including but not limited to the Securities and Exchange Commission."

Their Q & A section is a laugh a minute!

Q: Why do I need a Code of Business Conduct since honesty is common sense?
A: We all must maintain the highest standards of honesty and integrity. Even honest individuals are sometimes not sure of what is appropriate business conduct since not everyone shares the same perspective and values. The Code of Business Conduct provides guidelines for appropriate business conduct and a formal method of establishing accountability for noncompliance.

Does this mean that Mr. Burns and Tony the Trickster are short on common sense?

This one is my favorite:

Q: What are some warning signs that actual or contemplated business activities may be contrary to the Code of Business Conduct?
A: If you hear any of the following types of statements, there could* be a problem:
• "Shred those documents immediately."
• "No one will ever be the wiser."
• "This sounds too good to be true."
• "I know it's not totally above board, but it's the only way to get the results we need."
• "Everybody does it."
• "It never happened. Right?"
• "OK, but just this once."
• "I don't care how you do it, just make it happen within the deadline."
• "A little white lie won't hurt anything."

*This means that you may hear these statements regularly at FirstEnergy, but that doesn't necessarily mean there's a problem.  After all, where do you think they got these quotes from if not from their daily business interactions?

After running into a buzzsaw in federal court, the DOE and their investor owned utility pets are trying again to "fix" what they call "the stalled transmission policy process created in the 2005 Energy Policy Act."

What they really mean is that they haven't been successful in subverting state authority so that they can site money-making new transmission projects.  Last fall, DOE & FERC, assisted by industry lobbyists, cooked up a scheme to federalize transmission siting.  They got caught and slapped by the states and members of Congress, and supposedly dropped their plan to give authority to designate NIETCs to FERC.  However, the plan lives on.

The 2012 "congestion study" now underway can best be summed up by this quote:

"The effect of the new plan would be to allow transmission developers or other industry participants to propose transmission congestion responses that would be incorporated into DOE-designated corridors."

In other words... allowing greedy corporations to tell them where they wish to site a transmission line, and then DOE will designate a "congestion corridor" to go along with the corporation's proposal.

Cart.  Horse.

DOE - not the brightest bulb in the string...

"It was euphoric for me to be with the regulators and see the light bulbs go off when they realized some of the information they hadn't been getting," she said. "This process helped to give them that data."

Well, here it is -- the power companies behind the unneeded Susquehanna Roseland 500kV transmission line proposal in Pennsylvania and New Jersey have put together a "mitigation package" that they will present to the NPS at the end of January.

As reported last month, the NPS is expected to bend over and approve destruction of the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area in exchange for $30M of new park land.


Read a good article about the situation here:

"Thousands of acres identified as priorities by conservation groups would be preserved at a cost of tens of millions of dollars, PPL and Public Service Electric & Gas Co. said in a press release."

The proposal, however, was met with derision from some environmentalists. The New Jersey Sierra Club accused the utilities of trying "to buy silence from environmental groups and others that should be opposing this line."

"You cannot mitigate for the destruction of a National Park," the organization said in a press release. "This project would ruin the scenic beauty, breathtaking vistas, and critical resources of our national parks" and "allow for the production of more coal-fired energy, creating more coal pollution that will impact people's health while they are using the parks."

The Sierra Club also noted the utilities' ratepayers would ultimately pay for any mitigation, since utilities fold their expenses into rates. Additionally, utilities are entitled under federal rules to a 12 percent profit on transmission line expenditures.

"The utilities cannot make up for his kind of destruction by buying lands in other places," Jeff Tittel, the New Jersey Sierra Club director said. "This is nothing more than blood money."

Because the Susquehanna Roseland Project is within the PJM regional transmission zone and is a 500kV project, this means that every one of the 60 million electric consumers within PJM's 13 state region will pay a portion of the cost of the transmission project.  Even if you're a PJM grid customer in Michigan, Tennessee, Illinois or North Carolina, or any other PJM  state far removed from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, you will still pay for a portion of PSE&G and PPL's payoff of National Park Service officials. 

This $30M of new park land will be paid for by you over the next 50 - 70 years, and PSE&G and PPL will make a 12.9% profit on the purchase every year, courtesy of federal transmission incentives granted to the project's owners by FERC.  Here's how it works:  The power companies will purchase the land and claim it's a "regulatory expense" (a cost necessary to obtain regulatory approval for the project).  The cost of the land will be placed into the companies' transmission rate base account for the project, which you will pay down by reimbursing them for their cost of the project in your monthly electric bill over the expected 50 - 70 year life of the line.  Just like a new car, the $30M value of the land-bribe will depreciate a little bit each year.  You will reimburse the power companies for that yearly amount of depreciation, plus 12.9% interest on the remaining value of the land-bribe.  So, let's say that in the first year, the balance of the land purchase is $30M and the depreciation rate is 5%.   You will pay them $1.5M, and the value of the land will fall to $28.5M, but you will also pay them 12.9% of $30M that year - $3.87M.  The amount electric consumers will pay for the power companies "mitigation package" will total $5.37M in the first year alone.  The second year will again reduce the value of the land by 5%, and add in a 12.9% return for the power companies on the remaining value.  The depreciation rate I'm using is only hypothetical, of course, but the profits for PSE&G and PPL are real.  What you can depend on is that this "mitigation package" won't cost the corporations a thing and will, in fact, make them a huge profit.

The end result here is that YOU will pay for the "mitigation" of damage to YOUR park and the power companies causing the damage and making a profit selling electricity over the line will get off scott free!  The power companies behind the transmission line claim that the line will save electric consumers millions of dollars in "congestion costs," but that savings is being whittled away by deals like this and is not taking into account the billions of dollars electric consumers will pay for the line over its lifetime.

Are you angry enough to do something about this yet?  Good, we're going to make this easy!  Send your comments about this rip-off of consumers and citizens (who are the ultimate owners of our national parks) to the NPS through this online form, and tell them that you do not want to pay the cost of PSE&G and PPL's "mitigation package" bribe or have your national park assets squandered in the name of corporate greed!

Do it now!  Comment period closes at midnight on January 31, 2012.  Please share this one with your friends and link on Facebook and other social media sites!

Attorneys for a woman killed by a falling Allegheny Power distribution line say that improper procedure taught to linemen by the company was the cause of the failure of a line that killed a Pennsylvania woman.  Now the attorney has asked the Pennsylvania Utilities Commission to open an investigation with an eye toward correcting other improperly spliced lines before they also fail and possibly kill someone else.  Read an article with a link to the letter sent to the PUC here. 

If you're a more visual person, here's a news video story, but there's no link to the letter.

Bet you don't walk around outside anymore without looking over your head for former Allegheny Power lines, now the legal responsibility of FirstEnergy.  Of course, FirstEnergy didn't have any comment.  Todd was probably doing some primal screaming underneath his desk and couldn't come to the phone.

Was Allegheny Energy-FirstEnergy planning to buy themselves another CPCN for an unneeded transmission project from West Virginia's Governor and Public Service Commission?  Of course they were.

This page from a Morgan Stanley presentation about the "inve$tment opportunitie$" to be had in the hugely profitable high voltage transmission line business indicates that one of PATH's "key challenges" was:

"Obtaining a CPCN in West Virginia or costly concessions with WV to receive the CPCN"

In other words, if they couldn't prove their transmission line was needed and obtain the necessary permit the honest way, they planned to buy it by offering economic inducements and "donations" to West Virginia by engineering another deal with the Governor whereby he would put pressure on state officials to approve an unneeded transmission project in exchange for financial "concessions" by PATH's corporate parents.

That's the lesson Allegheny Energy was taught during the CPCN process for their unneeded TrAILCo transmission line.  When the WV PSC was on the verge of denying Allegheny Energy's application for that project, Governor Joe Manchin stepped in at the urging of his good buddy, Allegheny Energy CEO, Paul Evanson.  What resulted was a backroom deal whereby Allegheny Energy, by virtue of its status as an incumbent utility in the state, was able to offer pay offs, such as having their West Virginia affiliates' absorb their customers' share of TrAILCo costs for approximately seven years, while other West Virginia electric customers of other utilities, such as AEP, paid for the line, along with electric ratepayers in 12 other states and the District of Columbia.

Watch this video of WV Consumer Advocate Byron Harris explaining how a "balance" was struck whereby the unneeded TrAIL project was granted a CPCN in exchange for "economic incentives."  Don't miss Byron's "deer in the headlights" look and stuttering when asked what part the Governor's Office played in this sale of West Virginia.  Perhaps Byron knows that what Governor Manchin did was illegal.  This video never gets old!   

Another pay off in exchange for the CPCN was construction and staffing of a new Allegheny Energy Transmission Headquarters in Fairmont.  If you have any doubt that Joe Manchin sold West Virginians to Pennsylvania corporation Allegheny Energy, this article and accompanying photo will put it to rest.  Although most of the article is now behind a paywall, I happen to have the money quotes (remember when the news used to be free?):

"The transmission headquarters was part of Allegheny Energy’s settlement with the Public Service Commission of West Virginia, one of a number of concessions the utility provided in return for PSC staff dropping its contention that the need for the Trans-Allegheny Interstate Line had not been demonstrated."

“I got a call one day from Gov. Joe Manchin. He suggested that maybe we locate the building in West Virginia,” said Allegheny CEO Paul Evanson at Wednesday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony for the transmission center.
Evanson said Manchin was very persuasive as he laid out the pros of locating such a facility in the state. After carefully considering the matter, Evanson said he told Manchin that the company would locate the new facility in North Central West Virginia.
A short time later, Evanson got “another call” from Manchin. The governor suggested Fairmont as the best location.
Evanson said there were several locations, including Morgantown, under consideration, but the company hadn’t made a decision. About a week later, Manchin called him again and asked if there had been any decision about Fairmont.
Evanson said he soon realized that Fairmont’s proximity to major power lines crisscrossing North Central West Virginia made it the best choice for the transmission center.
“Three phone calls and here we are,” Evanson said.
When Manchin stepped to the podium, he joked “that it really took four phone calls, not three.”

Four phone calls.  That's all it took to make the sale of TrAILCo's CPCN from the WV PSC.  The purchase of PATH's CPCN probably would have taken less, if not for the efforts of the citizens of West Virginia.

However, instead of this:

"A crowd of dignitaries laughed as they listened to Manchin’s remarks while assembled on the front porch of Allegheny Energy’s $52 million transmission facility."

the citizens of West Virginia had the last laugh this time.