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Power line hearing to include move to dismiss project
The Nov. 19 State Corporation Commission Public Hearing in Lovettsville is still on the calendar, and its scope grew Nov. 10 when the commission’s staff added to the agenda arguments on motions to dismiss the entire application, and to change the hearing schedule.
State Corporation Commission Hearing Examiner Alexander Skirpan announced Nov. 10 that he will hear oral arguments on those two recently filed motions at the previously scheduled Nov. 19 public hearing in Lovettsville.
On Oct. 19, the State Corporation Commission staff filed a motion asking its commissioners to dismiss the PATH application as incomplete – since Maryland rejected the application for its part of the project in early September, the staff argued, the line has no known route and no terminus and cannot be evaluated.
On Nov. 26, PATH asked the commission to allow it to wait until summer 2010 to introduce data and arguments for the need for the line – data that under the current schedule must be filed by early December. PATH asked that the “non need” portion of the schedule remain as previously published: Citizens objecting to the route, the appearance and the possible health effects of the line will have to conclude their testimony by January 2010 if PATH's motion is approved.
Skirpan will hear arguments on those two motions at 6 p.m. Nov. 19 in the Lovettsville Community Center. The public hearing will start as scheduled at 7 p.m.
Lovettsville attorney John Flannery represents the River’s Edge Community Association that has filed a motion urging the State Corporation Commission to ignore PATH’s motion to change the hearing schedule and to dismiss the application outright.
Flannery urged opponents of the PATH plan to attend the 6 p.m. hearing “to keep the process honest,” and to stay for the 7 p.m. public hearing to add their voices to “bring down … this greedy Goliath, that would gladly despoil our health, safety and scenic beauty so it can turn a profit on ‘the transmission line to nowhere.’”
Flannery, and the staff at the State Corporation Commission, contend that since Maryland regulators in early September dismissed the PATH application for a transmission line and a new substation in that state, that the 275-mile transmission line stops at the edge of the Potomac river in Loudoun County – the PATH to nowhere. PATH recently announced it will file a new application in Maryland by Dec. 31.
PATH is a joint venture of American Electric Power and Allegheny Energy to build a 275-mile, 765-000-volt transmission line to move electricity from the coal-fired John E. Amos plant in Putnam County, W.Va., to a new substation south of New Market, Md. A little more than 10 miles of the line are mapped to cross Loudoun County north of Lovettsville, from Between the Hills to just west of Point of Rocks.
Opponents claim the project’s real purpose is to move cheap, coal-fired – and polluting – electricity to lucrative East Coast markets. The power companies contend that if the new line is not energized by mid-2014, the entire region will face energy shortages, brownouts and blackouts.
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