Federal power corridors prompt a backlash

Opposition rises to US grid policy; 2005 act cites national interests

If the Energy Department proceeds with its grid project, some of the transmission lines could be routed through Joshua Tree National Park. Environmental groups have filed lawsuits. (Hall Wells/Los Angeles Times)

WASHINGTON - There is wide agreement that the nation needs to upgrade the aging system that delivers electricity from power plants to consumers - a grid that already is overtaxed and facing a 43 percent increase in demand over the next two decades.

But opposition is growing to the way the Bush administration has interpreted Congress's instructions to improve it.

The Department of Energy is making it easier to build high- voltage transmission lines in vast tracts of the country, raising objections among environmentalists, lawmakers, and states that would lose the right to veto power lines within their borders.

The 2005 energy act gave the Energy Department the right to designate national-interest electric transmission corridors, where the federal government can step in to permit transmission towers and wires that have been rejected or delayed by states. In these corridors, the federal government can condemn private land along a power-line route.

Now the department has set up two corridors that cover huge swaths of territory. The western zone includes Southern California and western Arizona. The eastern zone cuts from New York to Virginia and inland across large sections of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio.

Transmission of electricity is critically congested at the core of each zone, the Energy Department says. The new federal authority in the corridors is attracting interest from utilities.

But critics say the zones are too large and were drawn to favor power from plants that run on fossil fuels instead of cleaner sources such as wind, solar, and heat from the Earth's interior, which also would need transmission if they were to be part of the energy mix.

The chosen contours of this plan, they say, will exacerbate global warming and pollution.

They have cited the potential effect on farmland and natural habitats. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has listed the eastern zone as one of its "11 most endangered places" because of Civil War battlefields, stretches of the Appalachian Trail, designated historic districts, and scenic rivers that could fall within power-line paths.

Bush administration officials like to compare their initiatives to President Eisenhower's creation of the interstate highway system, and they say it will help keep energy prices down.

"The grid is the ultimate balancing act. The larger the grid is, the easier it is to balance," said Kevin Kolevar, an assistant secretary of Energy who directs the three-year-old Office of Electricity Delivery and Reliability.

More than 157,000 miles of high-voltage wires in the United States send electricity to where it is needed. But the electrical grid as currently constituted is four separate regional sets of wires, with few connections between them.

Additions to this infrastructure have been slow, with 668 miles of interstate transmission built since 2000. Each state makes a separate decision on its part of the route.

Kolevar said the new zones were large to allow for flexibility in determining the sites for the lines, so that sensitive areas could be avoided. As for fossil fuels versus alternatives, the department is "generation-neutral. We really are," he said.

The crux of the problem lies with proposals for power lines that cross state borders, Kolevar said. States, he said, "can't take a Confederate point of view and not consider the needs of their neighbors."

There is one escape hatch for states in the corridors, he added: When three or more states form a compact for transmission planning, the federal government will cede its authority to that group. "We need to see these states coming together, binding themselves to one another," he said.

Environmental groups have filed separate federal lawsuits against the designation of each national interest corridor. Virginia recently sued the Energy Department in the Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee plans to hold hearings on transmission, and Chairman Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico, said he expects the corridors issue to come up.

The corridors were "the best thing we could think of," Bingaman said. "We're just now learning how it's going to work. We will look to see whether it's being implemented the way we intended."