Cheap power to Northeast US: a mixed blessing

At least eight transmission lines are planned to connect the region with Midwestern coal plants.

from the May 9, 2007 edition

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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.

"We can't have huge transmission power lines cutting through existing neighborhoods or over huge swaths of open space, especially historically significant land," Rep. Frank Wolf (R) of Virginia said in a recent statement. "Every area of the country could confront the same controversy we're seeing."

Mr. Wolf is working with a bipartisan group to reverse provisions in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that allow the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to preempt local and state zoning rules by creating two "national corridors," zones for transmission lines that encompass major chunks of 11 states. Both the mid-Atlantic and Southwest corridors (crossing Southern California and Arizona) are still officially "draft" proposals set to be finalized next month.

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