Slick Willie is a term that, upon hearing it, is understood to mean something uncomplimentary towards the person to whom it refers.  Those who are called Slick Willies are cunning and deceptive people who are superficially appealing and polished, but who are shallow and glib, and able to deftly execute convincing arguments that favors the con man and defrauds the mark.

To my ear, that backstory "so" is merely a little geeky, but it rouses some critics to keening indignation. A BBC host says speakers use it to sound important and intellectual. A columnist at Fast Company warns that it undermines your credibility. A psychologist writes that it's a weasel word that people use to avoid giving a straight answer.

When Sabal Trail approached him, Dowdy agreed to a negotiated fee for the right-of-way and estimated crop loss because he knew if he balked, the government would help the company take it anyway. He agreed in good faith, as well. Sabal Trail promised that Dowdy’s land would be returned to its original state by early January, in time for the new planting season.

And this is where the dispute begins.

“I was assured that Sabal would adhere to Georgia Soil and Water provisions,” says Dowdy, “that they would adhere to guidelines for segregated top soil and sub soil…rebuild my terracing to insure erosion wouldn’t occur…and put everything back in pre-construction condition. They said they would do…in their words…everything it takes.”

Andrea Grover, Director of Stakeholder Communications for Sabal Trail, says the company “followed specific protocols in place for construction which include storm water, erosion and sediment control plans which all require best management practices or “BMPs.”

“Our representatives have worked with individual landowners over the course of the past 3 ½ years to address concerns as related to the project and its impact to agriculture,” Grover explains. “The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) is the lead agency which approves pipeline projects, and Sabal Trail’s work is limited to only the FERC approved areas and conditions for construction. Project inspection personnel and our contractors all have the appropriate level of certifications for storm water controls inspection in Georgia.”

While Sabal Trail management promised that Dowdy’s farm would be back in business by the first week in January, and ensured that the project right-of-way would be “restored to its previous condition and contours,” that wasn’t the case. Repairs continued into February—and, worse, were still in progress when a major late January storm hit the state.

“I had already reached out to Sabal Trail management at least five times in December to say I was seeing erosion issues,” recalls Dowdy. “They promised to fix it immediately, but they never did, so when the storm came, we were completely unprotected.”

Dowdy thought he had made some headway with Sabal Trail when the company, in an attempt to make peace with an unhappy landowner, offered to pay Dowdy to make additional repairs to his land.

“They asked me to put together an estimate for attempting to repair the land, including an acceptable value I placed on my wetlands, and additional future yield loss,” says Dowdy. “We made a verbal agreement and I began repairs as instructed. Sabal knew the costs and agreed to pay for the estimated costs of repair.”

“When it came time for them to pay though, they introduced a condition—in order to get my reimbursement, I would have to sign a document releasing Sabal from future long-term yield loss, wetland violations and compensation. Here I was repairing what they messed up at my own expense and then they want more.”

Dowdy says his lawyer advised him not to sign and, thus far, he has not signed nor has he received a penny of the promised reimbursement from Sabal Trail.

Next Step…Litigation?

Dowdy’s laundry list of what wasn’t completed correctly by Sabal Trail is long.

“Sediment barriers were placed wrong, no hay was spread, there were no temporary terraces or berms…water was moving off my land at a 10% grade and sediment was going right into the surrounding wetlands and waterways. If Sabal had been in compliance with BMPs, I wouldn’t have been replacing 15,000 cubic yards of topsoil as I am having to do after the storm.”

Grover says Sabal Trail did return to Dowdy’s farm, and others impacted by pipeline construction, after the late January storm event, to “inspect the construction areas to ensure soil erosion devices installed according to the BMPs are working properly or repaired if necessary.”

But by then, says Dewey Lee, UGA Professor and Extension Agronomist, even though Sabal Trail installed additional BMPs after the storm damage was discovered, it was too late.

Lee who has worked with Dowdy on conditioning his farmland for a decade, says, “In the restoration that Sabal did, it appears they did not follow regulatory protocols perfectly. It appears that the crew handling the reconstruction did not have a full understanding of what their responsibilities were. This ultimately caused erosion down Randy’s waterways and across his field.”

Like Lee, irrigation specialist, Rance Harrod, knows well Dowdy’s attention to detail when it comes to his land. Dowdy and Lee’s suspicions that co-mingling of the top and sub soils in the fields was confirmed just last week after an irrigation supply line to the pivot began leaking. It was Harrod, along with Dowdy and a Sabal Trail employee, who worked on the fix.

Dowdy says as soon as Harrod began digging, it was apparent that the Sabal Trail repair crew had paid little attention to BMPs when it came to replacing the soil.

“Sabal has created tremendous soil loss and erosion resulting in offsite movement into the wetlands, no question about that. Randy’s damages are almost incalculable,” Lee adds.

“I shared pictures of the problems I was seeing with the Georgia Environmental Protection Department to show them things weren’t being done to regulations, hoping that they would take it up with Sabal,” says Dowdy. “But they said they needed to see it at the time it happened…that a later complaint wasn’t enough.”

Dowdy recalls he asked the agent “well where were you when it needed to be inspected?” He says the agent told him they didn’t have enough manpower to be everywhere along a 500-mile pipeline at all times.

“The only people inspecting what Sabal was doing to my land was Sabal,” says Dowdy. “The way I see it, it was like the proverbial fox guarding the hen house.”

Like many policies that were proposed by the Obama Administration, the DOE/Clean Line agreement is currently tied up in the courts.  DOE is involved in a lawsuit, forcing the agency to address the lingering doubts regarding the legal justification for the department’s decision.

If these concerns are ignored and the project is allowed to move forward, not only are Arkansans facing the prospect of losing their property due to a decision by the federal government, but your department risks codifying into law the practice of federal eminent domain seizures.  This dangerous precedent is antithetical to your distinguished record as a champion for states’ rights in the face of federal overreach.

Throughout your career you have been a champion of states’ rights.  This Administration has promised to give a voice back to its citizens.  This is a good way to show that commitment.

We will continue working to halt the project, not only because it violates property rights of Arkansans, but also because it violates the rights of all Americans to have their voices heard at the state and local level.  We hope you can appreciate our concerns and work with us to fight against this lingering overreach of the Obama Administration.

In a statement provided Monday to the media, Clean Line officials said the APPROVAL Act “creates more red tape and kills jobs by attempting to pull back approvals the project has already received.” The Clean Line statement also included a note of support from a large national union.

Clean Line Founder and President Michael Skelly said much consideration was given to the project before it was approved.

“We are very confident in the nearly decade long process undertaken by the U.S. Department of Energy in order to decide to participate in the project under Section 1222 of the 2005 Energy Policy Act. This law was passed with bipartisan support, including then-Congressman John Boozman’s, and signed by President George W. Bush,” Skelly said in the statement. “The Plains & Eastern Clean Line is a pro-jobs, pro-consumer, pro-environment public energy infrastructure project that will help to create a secure energy future for the country, and we are ready to get to work.”

Plains and Eastern state that they will assume all market risk associated with the development and construction of the Project and that there will be no captive customers.

“At the same time that our country is focused on creating opportunities for American workers, Arkansas Congressmen introduced a bill that will kill thousands of American jobs and, specifically, hundreds of Arkansas jobs,” said Lonnie Stephenson, International President of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). “Whether the infrastructure project be a pipeline or an electric transmission line, the IBEW strongly disapproves of politics getting in the way of American job creation.”

The withdrawal of official support also comes not long after John Hobbs was voted in as a commissioner for Randolph County. Hobbs has been a vocal opponent of the Grain Belt Express.

Hobbs confirmed that the commission had rescinded the letter of support but declined to comment further on the matter.

Truesdell clarified that, although the commission has rescinded its official support for the wind energy transmission line, the attitude hasn't changed. The commission assumed a neutral stance on the matter around two years ago.

"The only thing that prompted action is that our legal counsel said that, if we wanted to be truly neutral, we should draft a letter to rescind the prior document," Truesdell said.


The move was meant to solidify the neutral stance of the commission, setting aside personal views the commissioners might hold, Truesdell said.

Randolph County Commissioner Wayne Wilcox said he was not present for the commission's vote to rescind the letter of support for the Grain Belt Express.

As was its position in Case No. EA-2015-0146, it is still Staff Counsel’s position that, not only must Grain Belt have the consent from each of the Missouri county commissions for its transmission line to cross the public roads and highways in their respective county before a Commission certificate for the line is effective, Grain Belt must have those consents before the Commission can lawfully issue the certificate, i.e., those consents are prerequisites to the certificate.

The UD and Princeton team showed conservatively that, with some upgrades to transmission lines but without any need for added storage, the PJM grid can handle over 35 gigawatts of offshore wind—that’s 35 billion watts—enough to power an estimated 10 million homes. They also found that the PJM grid could in the future handle twice that amount, up to 70 gigawatts, as wind forecasting improves, allowing the power operator to better predict and harness more wind.

The move Tuesday at the winter policy meetings of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners in Washington was "unusual" said Elizabeth Jacobs, a member of the Iowa Utilities Board and vice chairwoman of NARUC's Electricity Committee.

"It wasn't supposed to be directed at any one project," said Jacobs. Rather, she said the resolution "was supposed to be about defending state jurisdiction [over transmission siting] going forward."

But there was some confusion "that made people really nervous," in particular its specific mention of the Plains and Eastern Clean Line proposed by Clean Line Energy Partners LLC, she said.

"I think some people had concerns with language about NARUC taking all necessary actions" to challenge the line, Jacobs said, and thought "Let's think this one through a little more."

The resolution was proposed by Sam Britton, a member of the Mississippi Public Service Commission. He did not return a call seeking comment.

Britton had explained to the NARUC committee that the resolution was "resource neutral" and not anti-wind or anti-renewables, said one attendee.

WHEREAS, Provision “(d) Relationship to Other Laws” of Section 1222 states that “Nothing in this section affects any requirement of ... (2) any Federal or State law relating to the siting of energy facilities; or (3) any existing authorizing statutes,” and
 
WHEREAS, On March 25, 2016, the DOE announced its plan to own the portion of a proposed power line that would traverse the State of Arkansas and rely on Section 1222 to exercise a Federal right of eminent domain in that state; and
 
WHEREAS, DOE has stated that it does not plan to request a site permit from the State of Arkansas but will instead rely on the federal Condemnation Act, which it says authorizes DOE to exercise eminent domain authority over any property so long as DOE has the legal authority to acquire the property, and so long as the project will constitute a public use; and
 
WHEREAS, NARUC has a long-standing position that the siting of electric transmission facilities should be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the States, notwithstanding the limited “backstop” siting provision in Section 1221 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (which NARUC opposed); and
 
WHEREAS, Without taking any position whatsoever on the wisdom of constructing any transmission project in which DOE wishes to participate or the type of power envisioned to be transmitted over such project, NARUC wishes to state its position on the proper interpretation of Sections 1221 and 1222;

We have analyzed the phrase "withheld approval for more than 1 year." Read by itself, the phrase does not include the outright denial of a permit application within the one-year deadline. We have also considered the phrase in the context of the entire statutory provision in which it appears. A reading of the entire provision reveals that Congress intended to act in a measured way and conferred authority on FERC only when a state commission is unable to act on a permit application in a national interest corridor, fails to act in a timely manner, or acts inappropriately by granting a permit with project-killing conditions. The broader context of § 216(b) thus confirms that the meaning of "withheld approval for more than 1 year" is plain: it means that action on a permit application has been held back continuously for more than one year. The continuous act of withholding approval does not include the final administrative act of denying a permit. Because Congress's intent is clear, our review under Chevron proceeds no further. For these reasons, we reverse FERC's interpretation of the phrase "withheld approval for more than 1 year."

A group of state electric utility regulators tabled a resolution critical of the Department of Energy's plan to take an ownership stake in a 720-mile interstate transmission project from the Oklahoma Panhandle to Tennessee.

The galvanizing issue for some NARUC members is DOE's unprecedented use of its authority to take an ownership stake in a line under Section 1222 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

The Plains and Eastern line is ranked No. 9 in a list of 50 high-priority infrastructure projects circulating among governors, lawmakers and the business lobby. And the line could become a topic of debate if Congress and the White House develop economic stimulus legislation aimed at infrastructure development.

The 50-project document touted the line as a "national security project that can add resiliency to our electric grid," citing its ability to "move cheap, clean, wind power energy" that could power more than 1 million homes in the mid-South.

Mario Hurtado, executive vice president at Clean Line who leads the Plains and Eastern Clean Line project, welcomed the NARUC decision.

"Resolutions in a collegial body like this are supposed to be noncontroversial," he said.

"It's not really the role of NARUC to decide on projects. I think a lot of the commissioners were not comfortable passing judgement on single project in this informal association that's supposed be about broad policy," Hurtado said.

"To now to try to relitigate things is sort of like you're trying to start the clock again, and that's not really fair for investors," he said.

...the line could become a topic of debate if Congress and the White House develop economic stimulus legislation aimed at infrastructure development.

For Iowa's Jacobs, the siting issue is getting greater attention by regulators as "the citizens and the consumers are getting more and more involved in major infrastructure projects that deal with energy."

"Consumers would not feel comfortable that the federal government is making a decision that could impact them within miles of their home," she said. "We're hearing it more and more."

The trend in opposition "gives play to the old adage that all politics is local. That's really where we are right now. That whole populist sentiment is really strong out there," Jacobs said.

Jennifer Murphy, NARUC's assistant general counsel, emphasized that the tabled resolution does not negate the organization's opposition to even limited "backstop" siting authority granted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, also in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

"We have a resolution from 2009 that states our position on backstop siting. And until we have another resolution about backstop siting, that's our position on backstop siting," Murphy said.

Perhaps the new mantra is “we’re going to make transmission great again,” Skelly said.

The organization, an initiative of the Energy Future Coalition, has held regional transmission conferences, but this was its first national event.

The coalition was formed in 2002 by former Sen. Tim Wirth, a Colorado Democrat; Republican C. Boyden Gray, who served as White House counsel to President George H.W. Bush; and Democrat John Podesta, a former aide to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama who chaired Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

“I’d love to have more load growth. It ain’t going to happen,” Craig Glazer, PJM’s vice president for federal government policy, told the gathering.

Weak load growth will make it more complicated to finance upgrades for aging transmission, and the lack of a federal carbon tax or renewable mandate is making it difficult to integrate renewable generation, Glazer said.

Hoecker and Brown discussed FERC’s inability to gain “backstop” siting authority, saying it’s still very difficult to prevent individual states from blocking a project. The Energy Policy Act of 2015 amended the Federal Power Act to give FERC the authority to site electric transmission lines blocked by states, but court rulings have blocked the commission’s attempts to use it, prompting some in Congress to propose additional legislation strengthening FERC’s authority.

Brown said that Order 1000 hasn’t really helped SPP much with large regional projects.

“We need to decide what we want this grid of the future to look like,” Glazer said. For example, should it be a “localized grid” that can harness distributed generation? he asked. “There’s an added complication; it’s not even clear who is in charge,” Glazer said. FERC, state utility commissions and governors all have a say in siting decisions, he said.

If each governor is asked what infrastructure projects they want, the country will end up with a lot of state-based projects, not interstate ones, Clean Line Energy Partners President Mike Skelly said.

Perhaps the new mantra is “we’re going to make transmission great again,” Skelly said. The power to select infrastructure projects should not be taken away from transmission planners and placed in the hands of Congress, he said.

Skelly and others cautioned the Trump administration not to skimp on project reviews or stakeholder input. The key is that all projects must have “timelines” for regulatory approvals to avoid infinite delays, he said.

The executive director of the AFL-CIO’s Industrial Union Council, Brad Markell, said the labor movement agrees with the need for “hard timelines” to shorten the permit process.

Markell said that labor unions have been in contact with the Trump administration on potential infrastructure efforts.

“From our point of view, more power for the federal government and less power for the states [on electric infrastructure] would be a good thing,” he said.

Others deemed that unlikely. “I think we’re stuck with the system we have,” Glazer said.

Mary Anne Hitt, executive director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, said that — contrary to what conference participants may have heard — her organization doesn’t oppose all power lines, only those that appear aimed to “prop up fossil fuels.”

The environmental group opposed the abandoned “coal by wire” Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline (PATH) project in PJM. On the other hand, it has backed the Plains and Eastern Clean Line Project, designed to move renewable energy from Oklahoma to Tennessee.

Hitt said she was concerned that President Trump’s nominee for EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, opposed Clean Line in 2015 as Oklahoma attorney general.

Curiously, there are no sessions scheduled there addressing the unsettled question of whether the federal government has any legitimate interest in transmission siting.