ATC Requests NIETC Rehearing

November 2007: ATC joined the Southern Environmental Law Center, Piedmont Environmental Council, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and more than a dozen other groups to petition for a rehearing before the Department of Energy regarding their designation of National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors.

Get Involved 

• Make a contribution to the ATC for its continued work on this issue.
• Join forces with other groups working against national corridors and power line proposals such as the Piedmont Environmental Council, Pennsylvania Land Trust Association, or another local group in your community.
• Take steps to reduce your carbon footprint.  Visit www.Powerscorecard.org, www.energystar.gov, and www.dosomething.org for ideas on personal energy conservation.

More about NIET

In October, despite public opposition, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced its designation of the Mid-Atlantic National Interest Electric Transmission (NIET) corridor. The DOE received more than 2,000 public comments on the mid-Atlantic NEIT corridor, including opposition from the governors of Pennsylvania and Virginia.

This designation, allowed under a 2005 act of Congress, paves the way for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to issue permits for new transmission facilities within a NIET corridor if a proposed new transmission project does not receive site approval from a state within a year. The eastern corridor will be subject to the use of federal eminent domain without regard for previously protected places such as parkland, historic areas or conservation easements. The states’ previous authority to deny a transmission project was overridden by the statute that required DOE to craft corridors.

Some opponents are expected to go to court over DOE’s decision not to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) prior to designating the corridor, nor to consider its effects on rare and endangered plant and animal species (under the Endangered Species Act) or damage to historic properties and landscapes (under the National Historic Preservation Act) in this historically rich region of the USA. Particularly if approved under DOE’s “fast-track” approach, numerous, unchecked power-line proposals—installed incrementally but having a cumulative impact—could severely undermine the backcountry experience of the Appalachian Trail in the Mid-Atlantic region, as well as affecting some of the most extensively privately protected and culturally significant lands in the country.

The Appalachian Trail Conservancy submitted comments and a letter to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to oppose the designation of all or portions of eight eastern states as one of two National Interest Electric Transmission (NIET) corridors. The other designated corridor includes more than 45 million acres in southern California and Arizona.

Background Information

Read public comments about National Interest Electric Corridors.

In April, ATC joined a number of conservation organizations in writing a letter to a subcommittee of the House of Representatives Government Oversight and Reform Committee. The letter expressed concerns over the DOE’s process and unprecedented new authority. Particular concerns include a failure to consider alternatives to building power lines, including lack of consultation with affected states and stakeholders, and failure to subject its proposals to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for environmental-impact analysis. 

Electric Power Line Proposals Affecting the A.T.

Proposals in 2006 and 2007 by several power companies to construct major new lines that would cross the Appalachian Trail in Maryland, northern Virginia and in Pennsylvania will impact the footpath and affect its values as a national scenic trail. It now appears that each set of lines will cross the A.T. only once, a major goal of existing ATC policy. However, due to ongoing routing and design discussions, the full potential impacts remain unknown. It seems clear that those proposals will have major impacts on adjacent landowners, historic areas, conservation lands and neighboring Appalachian Trail communities as well as A.T. lands.

Allegheny and Dominion Power proposed a 500 kV line between West Virginia and northern Virginia. The Virginia State Corporation Commission, the traditional utility regulator, is considering Dominion’s proposal for the Meadowbrook to Loudoun line.  However, if the state does not approve Dominion’s plan, those utilities may rely on federal regulators' new authority to override the state.  While the plan includes crossing the A.T. on an existing power line right-of-way, the impacts on both sides of the Trail corridor will have severe implications to the A.T. viewshed and countryside. 

Farther north, AEP, the largest U.S. power generator, is now proposing a $3-billion, 550-mile line from West Virginia, to Frederick County, Maryland, and then northeast to Middlesex County, New Jersey—with 135-foot-tall towers all along the way. During briefings by AEP in Maryland and Pennsylvania, ATC learned that this 765-kilovolt (kV) line may cross the Appalachian Trail between Washington Monument State Park and South Mountain Battlefield at Fox Gap, but the final route remains undisclosed.

Other power line proposals are surfacing in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.

BACKGROUND: ATC, the Roanoke A.T. Club, and the National Park Service successfully forced a modification of American Electric Power (AEP) plans in the 1990s to construct a line with multiple crossings of the A.T. in southwest Virginia  (read background). Using laws that give special standing to national-park and forest units such as the A.T., as well as the forum provided by traditional state authorities, the ATC was able to avoid all but one crossing and force the route into an already impacted corridor.