"Federal power corridors prompt a backlash"
"by Judy Pasternak, Los Angeles Times | March 31, 2008
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....
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."
Nice that Congress is approving bills and laws when they have no idea what is in the shit, huh?
Yeah, the dictator will figure it all out!!!
Pfffffffftttt!
