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PATH files for delays in two states, opposition cries ‘foul’
The path to PATH is getting rockier by the day.
As of Nov. 9, PATH alerted the Maryland Public Service Commission that it will be filing a new application there by Dec. 31, and the regulatory staffs in both West Virginia and Virginia had recommended to their commissioners that the application be dismissed. Following those motions, PATH filed for a delay in the proceedings in Virginia and West Virginia, and the staff in Virginia reiterated in the strongest terms that the PATH application is incomplete, cannot be evaluated and should be dismissed outright.
PATH is the joint venture of Allegheny Power and American Electric Power to build a 275-mile 765,000-volt transmission line from a coal-fired plant in Putnam County, W.Va., to a planned new substation just south of New Market, Md. A little more than 10 miles of the line would cross Loudoun County north of Lovettsville.
The application to construct the 170-foot transmission towers across three states is dead in the water in one, and could be headed for rejection in the other two. PATH is asking for a delay in Virginia and West Virginia in order to gather new, perhaps more convincing, data that the lines are needed.
PATH applied last spring for permission to build the line in West Virginia, Maryland and Virginia, and started the one-year clock ticking for regulators in each of the states to make a decision.
Trouble started in early September when Maryland regulators dismissed the application on grounds that the applicant is not an electric company as defined by Maryland law. The commission there directed Potomac Edison, the PATH partner in Maryland, to refile within 30 days, or to let the commission know its schedule for refiling.
PATH has not yet done that, thus no hookup point is on the map in Maryland to feed electrons into regional transmission lines for a trip to buyers up and down the East Coast. PATH at this moment stops at the south bank of Potomac River in Loudoun County.
In the requests to delay the schedule, PATH pledges not to bypass the state regulators and go directly to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on grounds that the state missed the one-year action deadline – May 2010 in Virginia and June 2010 in West Virginia. Both requests also ask the states to delay only the “need” portions of the hearings and deliberations, but to keep the “non-need” parts of the hearings on the original schedule.
Mark Nowitski at Allegheny Energy agreed that this request to separate hearings on “need” and "non-need” issues can be read as a plan to go ahead with the Nov. 19 State Corporation Commission public hearing in Lovettsville – on the assumption that it will deal only with residents’ views on the visual impact of the line, where the line will go, and the possible health effects of electromagnetic fields.
John Flannery, attorney for the River’s Edge homeowners north of Lovettsville, said if the Virginia commissioners allow the delay, “they will have shown themselves to be owned by the power lobby and merely posing to be an impartial arbiter of what’s necessary and appropriate for Virginia.”
Opponents of the line who speak at the Lovettsville public hearing, Flannery said, will most assuredly talk about the need for the line, "about the pain PATH is causing by a line that no one needs.”
If Virginia and West Virginia approve the delay, PATH can wait until summer 2010 to introduce new data on demand for power and thus the need for the line. The new schedule sets a decision date of Jan. 25, 2011, in West Virginia, and Feb. 28, 2011, in Virginia.
NOTE:
Recent PATH filings in Virginia and West Virginia have hinted the company might bypass Maryland regulators, who rejected its application in early September, and seek approval directly from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The Federal Power Act of 2005 allows an applicant to do this if a state has failed to act on an application within one year of its filing. Both the Virginia Supreme Court and the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals have ruled that this provision of federal law does not apply to a state’s authority to make decisions on major interstate transmission lines within its borders. The Edison Electric Institute, the power industry’s lobbying arm, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the 4th Circuit decision, but at least for now, FERC does not have the authority to overrule a state’s decision.
Show Up and be heard!! Nov. 19th, 7 pm, Lovettsville Community Center!
Posted by NoToPATH
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