[Morgantown] Council Sends PSC Letter Opposing TrAIL (Dominion Post)
The Dominion Post reported today:
By J. Miles Layton, The Dominion Post, Morgantown, W.Va.
Jun. 2–Morgantown City Council has sent a letter to the state’s Public Service Commission expressing its opposition to the Trans-Allegheny Interstate Line.
“Collectively we felt we must speak up because of the impact it could have on the area surrounding Morgantown,” Mayor Ron Justice said. “Council wanted to be able to go on record with a position and felt this was not in the best interest of Morgantown.”
Allen Staggers, Allegheny spokesman, said the city is entitled to its opinion.
“We’re disappointed,” he said. “Their letter will be on the record and the commissions will give some consideration to it.”
If approved by the PSC, the project would start in Pennsylvania, pass through West Virginia and continue to northern Virginia.
The letter said TrAIL is wrong for West Virginia and Monongalia County.
“The City urges you to defer TrAIL planning for further consideration and creative revamping,” wrote Dan Boroff, city manager, in the letter dated May 12. “In today’s world, building a bigger road rarely solves a transportation problem. In the same vein, building a larger transmission system will not make West Virginia’s problems more manageable. On the contrary, it will make living in the area more unsafe, more unhealthy, more costly, and less beneficial.”
Staggers countered that the power line by itself will not create a power-generating ghetto in the region.
“There’s no evidence that that approval of the line will prompt the location of coal generation power production in the Monongahela Valley,” he said.
The letter said council believes the TrAIL plan is ill-advised for the following reasons:
Allegheny officials recognize that TrAIL will allow their company to raise rates on West Virginia customers to levels consistent with rates charged to customers throughout the power market in which their energy is sold.
Concentrating the production of coal-generated power production in the Monongahela Valley, primarily in locations 25 miles or less from Morgantown, will create a power ghetto in the area with increased air pollution, water pollution and health problems for area residents. The air quality in this area is already near or at nonattainment levels.
The construction of TrAIL and the increased power production in the valley will diminish property values and diminish the attractiveness of the area to businesses, services and institutions seeking a quality of life for their employees.
The TrAIL plan will relieve East Coast metropolitan areas from sharing the responsibility for their own power generation and conservation. This point has been repeatedly made during TrAIL hearings, and it is an important consideration for the future well-being of the economy.
The TrAIL plan also creates a power delivery system to multiple destinations that is vulnerable at any single point along the transmission lines to terrorist activity.
Staggers said the line is good for West Virginia and is a necessary part of the nation’s electricity grid. The company has a legal responsibility to maintain reliability and deliver electricity to its customers, he said. Infrastructure additions are part of that obligation.
West Virginia and other states in the region could see blackouts and brownouts as early as 2011 if the line is not built, Staggers said.