Cheap power to Northeast US: a mixed blessing

A major move to boost grid capacity is under way to bring more cheap coal-fired electricity to the high-cost Northeast. New transmission lines could lower utility bills for millions of consumers and avert blackouts that sometimes hobble the region.

At least eight lines, stretching some 2,000 miles through six states at an estimated cost of more than $9 billion, are under active consideration or have been formally proposed. But the plan faces rising resistance.

The move would send high-voltage wires and towers up to 200-feet high through some of the most scenic areas of the mid-Atlantic states, where they could conflict with views of national parks, dedicated conservation easements, and Civil War and other historic sites, It would change the Northeast's energy mix, boosting its reliance on coal-fired energy while undercutting state efforts to move to renewable power and cut greenhouse-gas emissions, critics say.

And for the first time, final say on these projects would lie not with the states, which have often balked at siting transmission lines, but with the US Department of Energy, which supports the idea. Two weeks ago, it unveiled its plan for "national corridors" for power lines to improve reliability and reduce grid "congestion."

"These draft [corridor] designations set us on the path to modernize our constrained and congested electric power infrastructure," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said in a statement at the April 26 unveiling of the corridors.

But critics say profits – not reliability – are the driving factor behind these projects.

"This is really all about transferring inexpensive coal power into areas of the country that have higher-priced electricity," says Mark Brownstein, a managing director in the climate and air program at New York-based Environmental Defense. "These parts of the country have taken a stand to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.... So these lines become pipelines that undo policy positions that the Northeast has taken."

In New York, regulators are already wrestling with a proposal to build a 190-mile power line, 73 miles of it through the valley of the Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River, a unit of the National Park Service. In Virginia, last Friday, another test case for these transmission lines fell into the laps of state regulators now reviewing a proposal by a division of Dominion Resources. The Richmond-based company, one of the nation's largest utilities, wants to build a 60-mile segment of a 330 mile-long line that would link West Virginia and Pennsylvania grids more closely to Virginia's. The new line could ease congestion when one region is trying to import more electricity than current lines can handle.

Current transmission lines jammed

With Midwest-to-East-Coast transmission lines often full during peak periods, power companies can't bring in all the cheap coal-fired power they would like from the Midwest, an Energy Department study found last year. The new lines would also support the expansion of coal power by providing a new market for approximately 6,700 megawatts of electricity from coal-fired power plants expected to come online by 2012 in western Pennsylvania, western Maryland, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia, the study said. If its newly proposed line isn’t built to bring in some of that power, Dominion warns that “rolling blackouts” could result.

But local criticism is building quickly. While Dominion's new proposal is being evaluated, recent past proposals would have cut swaths across the Appalachian Trail, narrowly skirting or going through 11 existing historic districts, one National Historic Landmark, 19 state and National Historic Sites and seven Civil War battlefields, including Manassas, Monocacy, Cedar Creek, according to the Civil War Preservation Trust.

"Our biggest concern is the likely possibility that these electric lines will be developed within the park viewshed," says Bryan Faehner, a spokesman for the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit group based in Washington. "It degrades the experience of park visitors who are going to places to be inspired, to know what makes our country what it is today – and then look across a national historic site and see a big power line."

The current plan would affect about 100,000 acres of land protected by conservation easements, opponents estimate. Although much of the line follows an existing corridor, critics say the new line's much taller towers – at least 120 feet high – would stick out above the tree line and could be visible from long stretches of the Appalachian Trail in Virginia.

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