Workshop enegizes protest against power line
CARMICHAELS – Rebecca Foley said she moved to Jefferson Township in Greene County from Virginia a number of years ago because she always dreamed of living in the country. Since then, she said she has been battling the energy industry that seems to have its sights fixed upon her historic home and wooded and agricultural property.
First it was a coal company, she said, that cut an access road through her woods and damaged the foundation of her home.
Now Allegheny Energy wants to build a tower as tall as 180 feet in her field and dissect her property with its proposed 40-mile 500 kilovolt Trans-Allegheny Interstate Line, or TrAIL, which would go through Washington and Greene counties to serve an East Coast power grid.
“It’s not fair. It’s just not fair,” Foley said, Thursday at a workshop held to help her and other residents opposed to the project make their voices heard.
Officials from Greene County and the grassroots Energy Conservation Council of Pennsylvania hosted the workshop at the Carmichaels and Cumberland Township Fire Hall to encourage residents to file protests with the Pennsylvania Utility Commission before its May 29 deadline and testify at hearings the PUC will conduct, but have not yet scheduled.
In addition, residents were encouraged people to express their opposition to the Department of Energy’s possible designation of a National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor by the DOE’s July 6 deadline.
People were also urged to contact federal legislators and ask them to repeal section 1221 of the federal Energy Policy Act of 2005 that authorizes the DOE to designate NIETCs.
Once a NIETC has been designated, the Energy Policy Act would give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission authority to approve the TrAIL if the PUC takes more than a year to approve the line after the application to locate or build the it was filed, or a year after a NIETC is designated.
Allegheny Power has already filed its application with the PUC and has asked the DOE for the NIETC designation.
“If this isn’t won in front of the Pennsylvania PUC, we’ve lost,” said Robbie Matesic, executive director of the Greene County Planning and Economic Development Department.
Foley said she and a busload of other residents traveled to Arlington, Va., on Tuesday and testified at a DOE hearing on the proposed NIETC.
She said it seemed to her that DOE officials who ran the hearing tried to pass the buck.
DOE officials said, “we designate corridors, but we don’t have anything to do with what they’re used for,” Foley said.
The draft NIETC would cover 50 of the 67 counties in Pennsylvania and all or parts of West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, New Jersey, Delaware, New York and the District of Columbia.
“This is a region. This is a huge draft corridor,” said Will Burns of Washington County and a member of the ECCP who made a presentation at Thursday’s workshop.
On its Web site, stopthetowers.org, ECCP has directions on how to contact the PUC and DOE.
Burns said U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Johnstown, co-sponsored legislation that would repeal section 1221 of the Energy Policy Act.
Murtha, state Reps. Bill DeWeese, D-Waynesburg, and Tim Solobay, D-Canonsburg, Sen. Barry Stout, D-Bentleyville, the Greene and Washington county commissioners and a number of municipalities in those counties have publicly opposed the TrAIL.
DeWeese also supports repealing section 1221 of the Energy Policy Act.
Pam Snyder, who chairs the Greene County board of commissioners, said the county’s planning and economic development department is open extra hours, until 8 p.m., on Tuesdays and Thursdays to answer residents’ questions about the project and help them file protests.
She also commended the ECCP for helping residents oppose the project.
“We have to stick together on this to have the end result we all want,” Snyder said. “I think the people’s voice needs to be heard. I think we’re going to be heard.”
Burns said a lot of the information he used in the presentation came from Allegheny Energy.
He said it is cheaper to generate electricity in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio than it is in Virginia and Maryland.
Electricity should be generated close to where it is needed instead of where it is cheaper to produce and transmitted to the demand areas along dangerous and disruptive power lines, Burns said.
The cost of building the TrAIL and two substations that Allegheny Energy wants to construct in Mount Morris in Greene County and the Eighty Four area in Washington County would result in higher electric bills in the state, he said.
“It’s clear. What’s going on in Pennsylvania will be billed in Pennsylvania,” Burns said.
He also disputed information from Allegheny Energy stating that power from the proposed 502 Junction substation in Mount Morris would flow back to the proposed Prexy Substation near Eighty Four to serve growing demand in Washington County.
The current electrical generation capacity in Greene and Washington counties is 2,612 megawatts an hour, Burn said, adding that the power comes from a number of plants in the region.
However, Burns said, Allegheny Energy’s information states that only 700 megawatts per hour is needed.
The TrAIL could transmit 4,000 megawatts an hour, he said.
“It’s design overkill,” Burns said. “You don’t build something you don’t need.”