As Yogi Berra once said, “it’s like déjà vu all over again.”  Once again, a transmission developer asks the Commission to put already hard-pressed consumers on the hook for a laundry list of “incentives.”  And once again, the Commission approves almost all of the list.  As I have said repeatedly over the past four years, it is long past time for this Commission to do its job of protecting consumers by cutting back on its unfair practice of handing out “FERC candy” without any serious consideration of the impact on consumers already struggling to pay monthly power bills. The statute simply does not mandate such lavish generosity to developer interests at the expense of consumers.  As discussed in great detail below, this list of incentives is especially difficult to stomach for consumers in Virginia, Maryland, and West Virginia given the egregious history of the Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline (PATH) project, about which I have written many times.

The purpose of the Public Service Commission is to ensure fair and prompt regulation of public utilities; to provide for adequate, economical and reliable utility services throughout the state; and to appraise and balance the interests of current and future utility service customers with the general interest of the state's economy and the interests of the utilities.

Thank you for contacting the Public Service Commission of West Virginia regarding the transmission line project. We are aware of plans for the proposed transmission line, but have not yet received a filing in this matter. We expect the developer to apply to the PSC for a certificate of convenience and necessity (under code section 24-2-11a) before beginning any construction. Once the PSC receives the application, there will be a public notice (the law requires newspaper publication in counties where the line is proposed to be located) and an opportunity for the public to comment and to file protests and to ask for the PSC to hold a hearing. We encourage you to share your comments once a case has been opened and is available for public input.

​This section of state code that got amended back in 2010.  It is WV Code §24-2-11a(c) available at this link:  

https://code.wvlegislature.gov/24-2-11A/


It says:  At least thirty business days before the deadline set by the Public Service Commission to file a petition to intervene with regard to the application, the applicant shall serve notice by certified mail to all owners of surface real estate that lie within the preferred corridor of the proposed transmission line. Notice received by a named owner who is the recipient of record of the most recent tax bill that has been issued by the county sheriff's office for a parcel of land at the time of the filing of the application is sufficient notice regarding that parcel for purposes of this subsection.

I have the right to intervene as an impacted citizen. I also have a right to intervene and participate in the case, not just file a comment.

You do have a right, as any citizen does, to ask to intervene in any case before the Commission.
However, in this case, there is no case before the Commission, so therefore we cannot take or act upon your request.
Until the company files a petition seeking our approval of the line, there is no case. That has not been filed by the company.
If such a request is filed, we will be happy to notify you and then you can petition to intervene.
In the meantime, I may suggest you file your protest with the company.
I hope this helps. Please feel free to call me at any time if I can be of assistance.

A pig in a poke is a thing that is bought without first being inspected, and thus of unknown authenticity or quality. The idiom is attested in 1555:

I wyll neuer bye the pyg in the poke
Thers many a foule pyg in a feyre cloke

I will never buy the pig in the poke
There's many a foul pig in a fair cloak

A "poke" is a sack, so the image is of a concealed item being sold.
​
Starting in the 19th century, this idiom was explained as a confidence trick where a farmer would substitute a cat for a suckling pig when bringing it to market. When the buyer discovered the deception, he was said to "let the cat out of the bag", that is, to learn of something unfortunate prematurely, hence the expression "letting the cat out of the bag", meaning to reveal that which is secret.

Although most real and personal property is assessed at the local level by county assessors with county commissions approving the final rates, the Board of Public Works approves the real and personal property values of public utilities whose properties stretch across two or more counties. Rather than have each of the 55 assessors determine the value, the property is appraised and assessed by the Tax Division.

Local transmission workers discuss where to place their ladder so they can climb up and squeeze electricity through the new transmission lines in your community.

Grain Belt Express provides open access delivery for all energy sources based on competitive contracts between electricity buyers and sellers. 

​The first paragraph of the Executive Summary states that in order to qualify for a loan, the
project must be eligible under Section 1703 of Title XVII (the Clean Energy Financing Program), which defines eligible projects as those that, “avoid, reduce, or sequester air pollutants or anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases [GHGs]; and employ new or significantly improved technologies as compared to commercial technologies in service in the United States at
the time the guarantee is issued” (Public Law [P.L.] 109-58, Section 1703(a)).
The DEIS makes this presumption: “The Project could also help reduce overall GHG emissions by allowing new renewable energy projects to access the electric grid, potentially leading to the replacement of existing fossil-fuel power plants, while providing additional power to expanding renewable energy markets.” (Table 3.1.1).
The DEIS further states that the No Action Alternative would not support attainment of the U.S. government’s established target to reduce GHG emissions by 50 to 52 percent from 2005 levels economy-wide by 2030 (The White House 2021). (Sec. 3.1.3).

“Kansans working to balance household budgets and run businesses want energy that’s affordable and reliable, and that’s what we are getting with Grain Belt Express, all without ratepayers being forced to pay for it,” said Kansas House Speaker Dan Hawkins.

“This announcement shows once again how much Missouri can contribute to big infrastructure projects like this transmission line, which will help bring energy savings and reliability to 39 municipal utilities across the state."

“People are trying to take approximately 5 acres of my property and giving me absolutely no information,”  she said. “They’ve called me, and they want to do a survey, but they won’t give me any information.”

“(PPL) was asking if (residents) would sign a document and if they didn’t sign the document, they couldn’t tell them about the project, I’m being told,” Walsh said. “Other people were being offered crazy low value for property.”
He said at least 10 people told him of instances like this....

Applying for CPCN/CCNs from the Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia state commissions is a threshold step for Valley Link during the pre-construction phase, because obtaining CPCN/CCNs will improve Valley Link’s ability to secure the needed land rights to support the Project Portfolio. Because the PJM Board only recently approved the Valley Link Portfolio Project on February 26, 2025, Valley Link has not yet initiated the CPCN/CCN process. Valley Link faces significant time pressure to initiate the CPCN/CCN process within the next few months because CPCN/CCN proceedings in these states can be lengthy.

Valley Link is committed to collaborating with residents, local governments and other stakeholders in the project communities at every stage of the process. Community engagement is crucial for making informed decisions that reduce or prevent potential impacts while delivering for the public essential infrastructure necessary to address large-scale reliability needs that the PJM grid faces both in the short term and for years to come.

On behalf of research teams at Data for Progress and World Resources Institute, I’m reaching out to ask if you would be willing to participate in a 30-min or 45-min confidential recorded interview to answer questions about your experiences with community engagement and transmission infrastructure projects. The opportunity to learn from your expertise with the PATH project would be a particularly valuable contribution to our research. 

We are inviting advocates both for and against transmission projects, policymakers, developers, community organizations, and other key stakeholders to these discussions. In the interview, we hope to learn about your familiarity with and views of community engagement efforts around transmission development, including what you view as working well or as areas for improvement. 
These interviews are part of a larger research project designed to examine barriers and opportunities for transmission deployment, including a specific focus on community engagement and understanding the role that community benefits (and tools like community benefits agreements) could potentially play in addressing some of these challenges, or if not, what their shortcomings are. We plan to synthesize what we learn from these interviews into a report which will also include evidence from case studies, focus groups, and survey data.
 
We would be grateful for the opportunity to include valuable insights from your unique expertise in our research. Your interview responses will be confidential and nothing you say will be attributed to you or your organization. Please reach out if you have any questions about the interview format.


If you’d like to participate in this interview, please let us know, and we would be delighted to set up a 30-min or 45-min Zoom discussion in the next few weeks.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

I’m not sure how I can help you with your project.  How many actual transmission opponents are you interviewing?  The fact of the matter is that once a transmission project is sited on private property, the impacted property owner will oppose it.  It doesn’t matter how many “benefits” the government or the transmission owner want to shower on others in the community who are NOT impacted.  For instance, if a transmission line is sited in my back yard and I will have to live with it in perpetuity, it doesn’t matter much to me if somebody wants to fund a new park across town, or in an adjacent community that is not impacted at all.  Community “benefits” are nothing more than a bribe to buy the advocacy of unaffected persons.  It doesn’t make the landowner whole.  “Benefits” to people who are not impacted do nothing to change opposition and only create arguments and bad feelings in local communities.  I wouldn’t throw my neighbor under the bus for my own personal gain, and I hope you wouldn’t either.

Maybe you should change your polling questions to ask people if they support a transmission line ACROSS THEIR OWN PROPERTY that will use eminent domain to take the land if the landowner refuses.  Or if a landowner is willing to sacrifice his home for the “benefit” of people who are sacrificing nothing for the effort.

The only opinions that matter here are the ones of impacted persons.

Have a great day!

P.S.  Transmission opponents are unlikely to give away our strategy to dark money transmission advocacy groups.

Thank you for your thoughtful response. I completely understand if you do not wish to participate in this research project. Thank you for sharing your perspective. I respect the time you spent writing this reply and wanted to provide more context to you about this work. 

As an independent non-profit research organization, we hope to present a balanced view of challenges and shortcomings when it comes to how companies have approached transmission development, as well as opportunities to ensure that landowners have a meaningful say in these projects, including when that means organizing to stop them or to improve the conditions under which they do get built. We are representing a variety of perspectives across nearly 100 participants in our interview and focus group research, and have invited transmission opponents to participate in these interviews ranging from directly impacted landowners to county commissioners that have spoken out against projects. Our research included focus groups with rural landowners to understand their views on the important questions that you raise -- such as how they would feel about transmission infrastructure being built across their own property and their views on the use of eminent domain. You make valid points we've also heard during our research about the perceptions of benefits and their limitations, which will inform the analysis in our report. 

In case it is of interest to you, we are also conducting 15-20 minute anonymous surveys as part of this project. We'd welcome your response if you would want to participate in this in lieu of an interview, but we also respect your decision to decline participation in the project. 

Once again, I wanted to thank you for your time and the care you put into your reply. Have a wonderful weekend!

“In the waning, chaotic days of the Biden Administration — when the former president’s mental decline had grown to such a severe state that we now know he was not actually running his own White House and often signed documents without even knowing what they contained — left-wing bureaucrats seized the opportunity to advance their radical ‘green agenda,'” said Attorney General Bailey. “In the shadows of this confusion, far-left deep staters advanced a $4.9 billion green energy federal loan guarantee boondoggle to bankroll the Grain Belt Express (GBE), one of the most egregious abuses of taxpayer dollars in recent memory.”

The first paragraph of the Executive Summary states that in order to qualify for a loan, the project must be eligible under Section 1703 of Title XVII (the Clean Energy Financing Program), which defines eligible projects as those that, “avoid, reduce, or sequester air pollutants or anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases [GHGs]; and employ new or significantly improved technologies as compared to commercial technologies in service in the United States at the time the guarantee is issued” (Public Law [P.L.] 109-58, Section 1703(a)).
The DEIS makes this presumption: “The Project could also help reduce overall GHG emissions by allowing new renewable energy projects to access the electric grid, potentially leading to the replacement of existing fossil-fuel power plants, while providing additional power to expanding renewable energy markets.” (Table 3.1.1). Coulda, woulda, shoulda. This is a wish list that is not backed up by facts. The DEIS does not name or study the projects that could use Grain Belt Express to access the electric grid and the DEIS determines they are not reasonably foreseeable actions and therefore are not included in the cumulative effects analysis. (Sec. 4.3.2.2).


Here’s the bottom line. Without signed legal contracts with generators, it cannot be presumed that Grain Belt Express will transmit renewable energy from wind or solar generators. Under its Negotiated Rate Authority from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Grain Belt Express may negotiate contracts with customers who will pay the company to use its transmission capacity, either generators or load serving entities.
Grain Belt Express has not made a compliance filing demonstrating to FERC that is has signed contracts with any generators, in Kansas or elsewhere, therefore any generator may negotiate a future contract, including those that use fossil fuels. It is just as likely that a new or existing gas- or coal-fired generator may sign a contract as a new solar or wind generator. Grain Belt Express may not discriminate against generation types when negotiating contracts and cannot evaluate connection requests using generation source as a factor. All sources of generation must be allowed to negotiate contracts under open access transmission rules.
Because potential generators have not signed contracts with Grain Belt Express, it simply cannot be determined that Grain Belt Express will reduce greenhouse gases as required to qualify for the loan. Furthermore, without signed contracts with generators, Grain Belt Express is just a transmission line. Transmission lines, by themselves, do not reduce greenhouse gases. A transmission line that is not connected to a generation source is just like an extension cord that isn’t plugged into anything. Grain Belt Express does not reduce greenhouse gases and therefore it is not eligible for the proposed loan.