"...we believe that the Commission’s Office of Public Participation is well positioned to play a leading role in ensuring that stakeholder concerns are heard early and are meaningfully addressed, and to develop principles and guidelines that strike an appropriate balance between addressing stakeholder concerns while also ensuring that transmission can be built at a speed and scope commensurate with the need to rapidly expand the transmission system and decarbonize the grid within the next 15 years, consistent with the United States’ goal of reaching 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2035.

In doing so, expanding the total land area required for electric generation (apart from transmission) by a factor of 13, with wind and solar taking up 590,000 square kilometers, an area roughly equal to the size of Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Tennessee put together.

Community attitudes are shaped by perceptions of project impacts on land, culture, landscape, aesthetics, and wildlife; noise, health, and safety; and economic factors such as landowner compensation, employment, tax revenues, and property values.

For some new projects, communities ask for financial assistance for a new fire station or library or park.

The Clean Line proposals traversed multiple states with some new rights-of-way

CleanLine Energy Partners participated in a public-private partnership with the U.S. DOE that provided financial support and federal siting authority through a provision in Section 1222 of the EPAct of 2005.  This partnership was revoked when the administration changed in 2016. Though this dissolution followed a series of setbacks for the project, the political risks of executive branch solutions are salient.

"I think members of Congress are overestimating the federal government's ability to approve transmission lines in a speedy manner while underestimating the controversy this will foment amongst constituents," said Tony Clark, a Republican former FERC chair.

But strengthening FERC's hand in permitting may not resolve those issues and could even create new ones, former FERC member Clark said. Intervenors will still be able to challenge new projects at the federal level, according to Clark. And allowing FERC to override states' decisions not to condemn private property in support of a transmission developer's plans could put the agency "in a difficult position."

"It looks to me like a nightmare scenario for FERC," Clark said.

Some market participants have also expressed concern with the anchor tenant program. Transmission developer ITC Holdings Corp. said the Senate improved the proposal by specifying that projects funded through the program should not conflict with projects emerging through the regional transmission organization stakeholder process. But the bill still risks subsidizing uneconomic projects, while overall program funding of $2.5 billion "is small," ITC's vice president of federal and regulatory affairs Nina Plaushin said.

Niskanen appreciates this opportunity to bring to the Committee’s attention some specific concerns regarding two issues: (1) how poorly landowners are treated under the Natural Gas Act when pipelines seek to take their property for interstate natural gas pipelines, and (2) the need for Congress to create federal electric transmission siting authority.

Dear GBE, 

Here’s the thing… I don’t support you. I think you are an opportunistic thief without a moral compass. I would never treat people that way. Don’t compare yourself to me. I made millions smile, but you have made millions cry. Your hundreds of threats of eminent domain to take private property has turned Missouri into The Unhappiest Place on Earth.

Never yours,
Walt Disney
Rolling in my Grave

Hello Folks!

When it comes to disaster for Missouri, we've got a lot in common!  I may have turned a whole town into an environmental disaster, but you da man, turning an entire STATE into an environmental disaster! 

I support Grain Belt Express because of its potential for both environmental and financial disaster for Missouri.  We disasters gotta stick together!

At first, everyone thought I was harmless, but when I got sprayed all  over the place to control dust, it soon became apparent that I was a bad idea, much like you.

Times Beach would be a great place to build GBE.  The landowners there no longer mind.

Love,
Dioxin Contaminated Motor Oil
Former Superfund Site

Dear Grain Belt Express,

I was once quoted as saying, "Our job is only to hold up the mirror - to tell and show the public what has happened." 

When the mirror is held to GBE, I'm afraid it looks like a speculative energy project without enough customers that is having way too much fun playing with its new eminent domain toy unwisely gifted by a misguided, and perhaps biased, politically-poisoned institution.

Last time I checked you didn't have enough commercial interest to make your transmission project economically viable.  But yet you seem to be in a big, big hurry to take land for a project you can't build.  Is there something else going on here?

Please stop using my name in your insultingly facile advertising.  As the former "most trusted man in America", I do not support you.

And that's the way it is,
Walter Cronkite
Reporting from the Great Beyond

Rumble, tumble, Invenergy!  You shake things up more than I do, and not in a good way.  That's why I support the Grain Belt Express!

Sincerely yours,
New Madrid Earthquake
Soon to be Born Again if They Keep Pumping Things Deep Underground

To Whom It May Concern,

On the off chance that your misguided advertising campaign actually produces more than a handful of self-interested "supporters," I advise that whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.  But I don't think you'll get much of a response from the Missouri people.  They know manure when they smell it.

I propose a grand deal... if you don't find any new supporters, then you abandon the Grain Belt Express.  What do you say?

In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made public relations hacks.

The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog,
Samuel Clemens (my REAL name)

Sirs:

A competent leader can get efficient service from poor troops, while on the contrary an incapable leader can demoralize the best of troops.

You have demoralized the people of Missouri with your selfish, greedy scheme.

General John J. Pershing
No Longer At War In The Afterlife

Lovely, Contentious, Disastrous GBE,

We support you and look forward to adding you to our repertoire.

All the best,
Fire, Disease, Flood, Bad Weather and Pestilence, Inc.

Dear Invenergy,

Stop it!  You're making things tough on us.  We need the cropland you're taking out of production to stage our own disasters.

Not a fan,
Plague of Locusts

Hey Hucksters,

You don't really think people are going to go out of their way to support massive eminent domain takings across Missouri so that you can build a power line without any clear benefits for Missouri, do you?  Your "Way of the American Genius" campaign is a ship without a rudder.

What are you going to do with your manufactured support?  Push it under the noses of Missouri utilities and hope they see the light and sign up to become your customer?  Don't you know that utilities want to build and own infrastructure of their own because it's highly profitable?  Should Missouri close its own electric generators that employ thousands in good-paying jobs and replace them with energy imported from other places?

Or is this campaign just cover so you can make up "supporters" and then try to leverage your kingdom of make-believe for political purposes?

Failure looks good on you,
John Q. Public
Scanning a QR Code Because I Have Nothing Better To Do

...condemn land and interests therein for any public use or purpose, and to acquire perpetual easements in, over, and across lands in which defendants have an interest, together with rights of ingress and egress to said lands.

The property interests and easement rights which Plaintiff seeks to condemn and are necessary for the Project include and are described as follows:
rights to develop, permit, construct, reconstruct, repair, improve, alter, replace,
operate, use, inspect, maintain and remove a transmission line, which transmission
line may include poles, towers and structures, such wires and cables as Grain Belt
shall from time to time suspend therefrom, foundations, footings, attachments,
anchors, ground connections, communications devices, and other equipment,
accessories, access roads and appurtenances, as Grain Belt may deem necessary or
desirable in connection therewith and to study or inspect in preparation therefor,
including survey, soil sampling, geotechnical evaluation, environmental tests,
archeological assessments, and transmission and interconnection studies. The
permanent rigbt-of-way may be used for the transmission of electrical energy and
for communication purposes, whether existing now or in the future in order to
facilitate the delivery of electrical energy. The easement rights include the nonexclusive
right of ingress and egress over the Easement Property itself in order to obtain access to the permanent right-of-way,
and over the Defendant's property adjacent to the Easement Property and lying
between public or private roads. Grain Belt shall, without being liable for damages,
have the right from time to time, including after the initial construction of the
transmission line, to clear the Easement Property of any improvements or other
structures to the extent that they interfere with Grain Belt's use of the Easement
Property as described herein, except fences (provided Grain Belt shall at all times
have access through any such fence by means of a gate); control, cut down, trim
and remove trees and underbrush from the Easement Property; and cut down and
trim any tree encroaching upon the Easement Property or the transmission line that
in the reasonable opinion of Grain Belt may interfere with the safety, proper
operation and/or maintenance of the transmission line.

...to construct and maintain a high voltage, direct current transmission line and associated facilities commonly referred to as the Grain Belt Express Project.

The use of the foregoing Property Interests, including any expansion of its facilities within the Easement Property by Plaintiff, upon condemnation thereof, does not impose an
unreasonable burden or impact on Defendants' property or Defendants' activities thereon, and
Defendants shall retain the right to use the Easement Property in any manner not inconsistent with the rights of Plaintiff described herein, including use of the Easement Property for agricultural or other similar purposes.

Appoint[s] three disinterested residents of Buchanan County, Missouri as the Commissioners to ascertain and assess the damages, if any, that the Defendants may sustain and the just compensation, if any, to which they may be entitled by reason of the appropriation of the Easement Property and
Property Interests;

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.