Two groups representing landowners are suing to block an electric transmission line planned for delivering wind-generated power across Arkansas from Oklahoma to Tennessee.

The federal lawsuit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Jonesboro by Golden Bridge LLC and Downwind LLC, the two landowner organizations, will test the legality of a decision by the U.S. Department of Energy to aid construction of the Plains & Eastern Clean Line through provisions of the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

The landowner groups are represented by Christopher L. Travis and Jordan P. Wimpy, both of the Gill Ragon Owen firm in Little Rock. The complaint lists as defendants the Energy Department and Ernest Moniz, the U.S. secretary of energy, as well as the Southwestern Power Administration and its administrator, Scott Carpenter.

The lawsuit questions the Energy Department's authority to approve the construction of one of the nation's largest electric lines without seeking state-level review. It also challenges its power to exercise the federal right of eminent domain to condemn and acquire private property under the Energy Policy Act. Landowners, it says, should have played a bigger role in the Energy Department's review of the project, which is being carried out by Clean Line Energy Partners of Houston.

CLEAN LINE OFFICIALS SAY ‘FULL STEAM AHEAD’

Late Monday evening, Clean Line officials said they had not seen the legal complaint against the DOE regarding their project and would not be able to provide specific comment. However, a Clean Line executive reiterated the company’s ongoing refrain that the Houston-based venture group has already invested nearly $100 million of private capital to develop the project and anticipates making more than $30 million in payments to Arkansas landowners for easements and upfront transmission structure payments.

In addition, Clean Line will pay Arkansas counties that host the electric transmission project a total of approximately $140 million in voluntary payments over the first 40 years of operation, which will support local schools, fire departments and other community services.

“It’s no secret that the United States suffers from an infrastructure deficit and that we must push through gridlock to move the country forward. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon to see legal complaints filed against the most important infrastructure projects,” said Mario Hurtado, Clean Line’s executive vice president of development. “In order to modernize the grid, enable the delivery of low-cost energy, create new jobs and enhance our energy security, the private and public sectors must come together to bring new infrastructure projects to fruition.”

Hurtado, who recently told Talk Business & Politics that the multibillion dollar project is expected to get underway in early 2017, added: “The Plains & Eastern Clean Line is the largest clean energy transmission project in America and is moving full steam ahead.”

"The Plains & Eastern Clean Line is a pro-jobs, pro-consumer, pro-environment public energy infrastructure project," said Mario Hurtado, executive vice president for development.

DOE executed the Participation Agreement, which creates a "Coordination Committee," which "shall be composed of two (2) representatives from Holdings and two (2)
representatives from DOE." One of Holdings' representatives is the chair of the Coordination Committee. Unless Clean Line has defaulted, the Coordination Committee requires a representative of both Holding and DOE to have a quorum. The Coordination Committee can only make "public announcements relating to DOE's involvement in the Project" if such public disclosure is approved by "one (1)
representative of each of Holdings and DOE on the Coordination Committee."

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.

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.

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

Liars overemphasize their truthfulness. “To tell you the truth…” “Honestly…” “I swear to you…” Oh, if only it were so! When people use these bolstering statements to emphasize their honesty, there’s a good chance they are hiding something. Learning to baseline someone’s normal behavior is important in situations such as this:  You want to listen for normal or harmless use of such phrases. There’s no need to add them if you really are telling the truth, so be on guard.

"The growth has been in some fits and starts, but we're at a point now where this is an essential project to continue to provide, really, the type of service, the level of service, that our customers expect from us," Fakult told the Asbury Park Press. "It reinforces the system in that area. It allows us to, again, provide better, more reliable, resilient service."

"The time is now," Fakult said. "It just needs to be done now."

Nearly 16 years ago, the utility scrapped plans for a 6.5-mile transmission line, to be run on 60-foot high steel poles, along the railroad tracks from Matawan to Middletown, after intense community opposition. Residents and some town officials, fearing a reduction in property values and worried about health risks, fought the project for a decade.

"To me, it is nothing but a resurrection of precisely the same plan that we fought and stopped," said state Assemblywoman Amy Handlin, R-Monmouth, a vocal opponent years ago. "It's the phoenix rising from the ashes, it's the ghost of battles past. It's not different."

This time, the utility proposes to run the wires atop slender single poles that average 140 feet tall rather than bulky towers used in the past, spokesman Ron Morano said.

The use of the NJ Transit corridor, which is already designated for public use and has existing electric infrastructure, as well as the slimmer monopoles, will help to minimize the disruption on the community, Fakult said.

Morano, the JCP&L spokesman, said the utility follows all safety and heath guidelines and will have an electromagnetic fields expert available at open house sessions. "We are successfully building transmission lines in other (areas) without any issues," she said.

PJM Interconnection, the organization that oversees the electric grid in 13 states and Washington D.C., has identified the Monmouth County Reliability Project as a necessary project to reduce the length and frequency of outages in Monmouth County, the utility said.

If not built, "over the long term, you start to see issues emerge," Fakult said. "When you start to see peaking conditions, you just don't have the contingencies that you need to run the system reliably."

As noted in the fact sheet, Energizing the Future is a transmission initiative through 2017 that involves upgrading and strengthening the grid to meet the future demands of customers and communities. Key factors driving that investment include enhancing system reliability by replacing existing equipment with advanced technologies; meeting projected load growth; and reinforcing the system in light of power plant deactivations, the fact sheet added.

The company plans to hold three open house events in neighborhoods near the proposed project to share information with the public and gather feedback. The company also is setting up a website at www.monmouthreliability.com.

The public relations firm WestRogers sent out an e-mail blast on March 25 with a press release touting a federal decision that appears to clear the way for a $2.5 billion transmission line that would bring wind power from Oklahoma, through Arkansas and southwestern Tipton County, and into Shelby County.

This Grass Looks Real

In grassroots organizing you drum up broad-based support for your issue.  A grasstops effort is more narrow, focusing on business, community or government leaders.  But what if you could create the appearance of citizen interest and get decision-makers to take notice?  It's called astroturf organizing, where you fake grassroots support.  Tactics include phone banks, "citizen" front groups, press release blitzes or rent-a-demonstrators.  Politicians are catching on to this latest turf war, so practitioners are looking for more subtle ways to simulate citizen concern.

In the release, there is ubiquitous use of buzz words like "jobs," "clean," "low-cost" and "renewable," classic public relations language.

Despite the flowery language in the release, there is plenty of opposition to the project.

“FirstEnergy already offers low-income customer and commercial lighting programs in West Virginia, and we are on track to achieve our 0.5 percent energy savings target by the end of 2016,” Todd Meyers, a First Energy spokesman, said in a statement. “We strongly believe that these and any future energy-efficiency programs are best managed by the utilities as overseen by the Public Service Commission of West Virginia, which balances the needs of both customers and the utilities.

“Local governments are better positioned to provide their residents with necessary core services such as police and fire protection, road maintenance, and the like,” he added.

FirstEnergy’s West Virginia utilities have gotten a reputation of offering fewer energy efficiency programs for Mountain State residents than the company offers for other states, such as neighboring Ohio and Maryland. But the utility argues it's a matter of cost in West Virginia.

"The reason is simple enough: surrounding states such as Pennsylvania and Maryland have state laws that mandate energy efficiency programs. At the same time, utilities operating in those states also recover all costs from their customers associated with operating these programs," Meyers said. "In Maryland, for instance, residential customers pay about $7 per month, each and every month, as part of their electric bill to support these programs, whether or not they ever participate or redeem a rebate.

"There is definitely a general misconception that these programs are free… they’re not," he added. "And there has been significant pushback over the years from businesses and residents in states with mandatory programs who don’t like paying the costs every month to subsidize other customers’ appliance purchases and other rebates."

Meyers also said Mon Power and Potomac Edison plan to file plans for Phase II Energy Efficiency Programs "to help customers achieve additional energy savings in the near future, with rollout occurring in mid-2017, contingent on PSC approval.”

Opponents used some of those arguments to successfully derail the Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline, a 290-mile line from Putnam County, W.Va., to Frederick County, Md., proposed by Allegheny Energy in 2008. The Greensburg company, acquired by FirstEnergy in 2011, suspended the project after it could not convince regulators the line was necessary.

PJM staff reviewed results of analyses showing reliability drivers no longer exist for the project throughout the 15-year planning cycle. The analyses incorporated the continued trends of decreasing customer load growth, increasing participation in demand response programs and the recent commitment of new generating capacity in eastern PJM.

While citizen groups have fought transmission projects — often successfully — by attacking the developer’s need to build them, the environmental regulations could usher in more projects and complicate opposition.

Changing drivers of transmission

Transmission companies see big potential for new projects, particularly from sparsely populated areas that generate wind energy to urban areas. “Just as trains carried cattle and other goods from the rural areas to urban centers, the Plains & Eastern Clean Line will carry renewable energy from the Plains of the Southwest,” states the website of one developer, Clean Line Energy of Houston, Texas.

Clean Line expects federal approval for its 700-mile Plains & Eastern Clean Line, designed to carry 4,000 megawatts of power from wind farms in the panhandle of Oklahoma. The line will terminate near Memphis, Tenn. Clean Line has four other projects in the pipeline.

“We anticipate a very busy 2016,” said company president Michael Skelly. 

...some wind mills and solar farms in areas with constant breeze and abundant sunshine

General Manager Bob Stevenson said Clean Line contacted the BPW about a month ago, offering the utility a draft letter of intent. Clean Line hasn't made a firm proposal, but Stevenson called prospective prices "very attractive." He declined to disclose them, citing confidentiality, but Lawlor estimated Grain Belt Express could deliver electricity in the 3- to 4-kilowatt-hour range.

Starting Line now hears about a number of people interested in running for Rick Olson’s house seat. That includes Beth Conley, Marc Wallace and Connie Boesen. Conley works at Clean Line Energy Partners, and has a history of working with wind energy projects.