Capon Valley Coalition

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.