Hortonville, a new power line ground zero

Senate committee plans oversight hearings

By FRITZ MAYER

HORTONVILLE, NY — The newest proposed power line route moves it away from the river, and right next to the little bucolic hamlet of Hortonville.

New York Regional Interconnection (NYRI) presented the new route to the state Public Service Commission (PSC) in a supplemental application filed on February 22. The earlier proposed lines had been further west, first along the Delaware River corridor and then along the route of the Millennium Pipeline.

Jim Scheutzow, supervisor of the Town of Delaware in which Hortonville is located, said if the line is erected as proposed, the high-voltage lines, strung along 140-foot towers, will run within throwing distance of the town hall. It’s a prospect that has residents’ attention.

A map of the latest route has been pasted to a wall in the town hall. “People have been coming in for the past few days,” Scheutzow said. “There’s a lot of concern.”

Scheutzow said that he has been in contact with state senator John Bonacic’s office about the matter, as well as U.S. Congressman Maurice Hinchey and U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer. Nobody wants a power line in their back yard, but Scheutzow, like others who oppose NYRI’s plan, said that the company has not adequately demonstrated a need for the line. He also said that if the line is needed, there are better routes, such as one along the New York State Thruway.

The thruway option

When the PSC informed NYRI in the summer of 2006 that the company must study alternative routes for the power line, one of the options they said should be studied is the thruway route. In the supplemental filing, however, a study of the thruway route was not included. Officials from the company explained that they did not study it because of a federal regulation prohibiting the siting of a power line along the thruway if there is a “feasible alternative.” NYRI argues that the routes they have suggested are just such feasible alternatives.

However, three U.S. Congressmen from New York, Hinchey, John Hall and Michael Arcuri, have written to the PSC saying NYRI’s decision to not study the thruway option was not acceptable because “the federal regulation, which NYRI cites, clearly states that whether a ‘feasible alternative’ exists is a determination which must be made by the federal Department of Transportation.”

The letter asks the PSC to deem the NYRI application incomplete until such time as it receives a study of the thruway option, which would be lengthy and expensive to perform.

Oversight hearings

Even if the PSC were to grant NYRI the permits to build the power line, the project would not likely move forward because of the law passed in New York preventing NYRI from using eminent domain to obtain the land necessary to build the line. However, under provisions of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which provides for the creation of National Interest Electricity Transmission Corridors, the federal government could override the state government on the eminent domain issue.

In another battle on that front, 14 U.S. senators, including Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer of New York, and Arlen Specter and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, have written to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources to request an oversight hearing on the way the corridors have been established.

The senators maintain that the law intended to designate only small swaths of land as corridors. Instead, the two corridors that have been designated as such cover 116,000 square miles, and “portions of 10 states, 22 congressional districts, and affect more than 72 million people.”

According to EnergyWashingtonWeek, an online national energy newsletter, the committee has indicated it will move forward with the requested hearing. The newsletter quoted a Democratic staff member of the committee as saying that the committee needs to examine the siting authority provisions of the act, along with several other provisions it contains.