Capon Valley Coalition

Here are links to more transcripts of hearings.

Day 2 — Jan. 10, 2008

Day 3 — Jan. 11, 2008

Day 4 — Jan. 12, 2008 (Yes, this is a Saturday, but the Commission met.)

Day 5 — Jan. 14, 2008

Day 6 — Jan. 15, 2008

Day 7 — Jan. 16, 2008

The West Virginia Public Service Commission is posting on its Web site transcripts of its evidentiary hearings into Allegheny Power’s plan to build the TrAIL power line through the Capon Valley.

This link will take you to the 283-page transcript for Day 1, Jan. 9.

AP reports today on the Channel 8 Eyewitness News:

CHARLESTON, W.Va.
What is expected to be a lengthy evidentiary hearing on a proposed 1.3 billion-dollar multistate power line continues today.

Allegheny Energy must convince the state Public Service Commission that the line is necessary before it can proceed.

Opponents of the project started pecking away at it yesterday . Opponents ranging from the Sierra Club to the commission’s staff peppered PJM Interconnection executive Steven Herling with questions aimed at undermining the justification for the project. (Emphasis is ours.)

While a subsidiary of Allegheny Energy would build the 240-mile line, it’s designed to solve future reliability problems for PJM’s transmission grid in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Herling testified that PJM needs the line to avoid severe reliability problems in the future.

The hearing expected to last about 11 days.

Bri West of the Piedmont Environmental Council, one of the few people with the time, energy or know-how to read through every page of every Allegheny Power document filed in the TrAIL power line case, finds a gem in the TrAIL documentation.

[The Consumer Advocate Division of the WV Public Service Commission] cut a deal that will raise the rates of most of the people in West Virginia in order to benefit a small crowd of landowners. But in fact, those landowners don’t even really get “free electricity” because in exchange they will receive reduced compensation value for their properties (see details below).

The Consumer Advocate should be caring for all of the people in the state – Not trying to appease TrAILCo. …

17. Component of Fair Market Value. The Parties agree, and each Agreement will
specify, that TrAILCo’s obligation to pay the Transmission Credit and the aggregate amount of
such payment while the Facilities are emplaced on the Subject Property to which the
Transmission Credit relates, are a component of the agreed upon fair market value paid by
TrAILCo for the Legal Interest that TrAILCo is required to obtain in the Subject Property in
order to construct and operate such Facilities. The person or entity owning each parcel of
Subject Property shall have the option of rejecting TrAILCo’s offer of the Transmission Credit
as a component of fair market value and elect to receive the agreed upon fair market value paid
in cash upon acquisition of the Legal Interest in the Subject Property by TrAILCo. The Parties
further agree and recommend that TrAILCo’s payment of the Transmission Credit is and should
be considered as a component of TrAILCo’s operation and maintenance costs and recovered
through TrAILCo’s transmission revenue requirement as in effect from time to time in a tariff on file with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission or its successor (“FERC”), and the CAD will support any TrAILCo effort to seek the recovery of its payment of the Transmission Credit
in TrAILCo ’ s transmission revenue requirement.

This email circulated through the Capon Valley community yesterday, and the author, Jim Kocton, agreed to let us print it. Well worth reading.

The Consumer Advocate Division (CAD) agreement with TrAILCo has the effect of providing momentum for TrAILCo’s case with very little down-side for TrAILCo. It seems inevitable that, even if a transmission line certificate were granted, that the restrictions on right-of-way clearing and herbicide use would be made conditions of the Certificate. Hence, all that was really gained was free electricity for landowners who agree to a right-of-way.

This provides an additional incentive for people to settle with TrAILCo.
But TrAILCo also gets the support of CAD who agreed to support TrAILCo’s claim (before FERC) that these costs were operating expenses for the line, and therefore subject to rate recovery.

This means that all other ratepayers will be gouged even more for this line.

Not only will we have to pay for the construction and operating costs, now we pay the electric bills for those landowners. What is worse, if these costs are considered eligible for rate recovery, then TrAILCo also gets their “incentivized rate of return” which means that we pay the landowners’ electric bills AND we also pay TrAILCO’s additional 14 % on top. TrAILCo stockholders get even richer with this deal and ratepayers get gouged even
more.

How is this “Consumer” advocacy?
Jim Kotcon