WASHINGTON (Monday, June 18) - Thirteen National Wildlife Refuges, five National Park service units, and dozens of other areas set aside for conservation purposes in southern California, southwestern Arizona, and southern Nevada could potentially be crisscrossed by high-voltage power lines, according to a plan released by the Department of Energy in response to a provision found in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. According to a new analysis by The Wilderness Society, the threatened areas include: California's Joshua Tree National Park and Carrizo Plain National Monument; Nevada's Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area and Desert National Wildlife Range; Arizona's Kofa National Wildlife Refuge and the Sonoran Desert National Monument; and many areas in the three states that are proposed for protection under the National Wilderness Preservation Act.
"The transmission corridors process has the potential to be a true disaster for public lands," said Nada Culver, the Wilderness Society's senior counsel. "The Department of Energy has taken a huge swath of the Southwest and essentially declared it an energy corridor. Every square acre within this area is fair game. They could carve broad power line corridors through some of the West's most scenic and historic landscapes."
The Wilderness Society analyzed Department of Energy maps issued in accordance with Section 1221 of the Energy Policy Act, which gives the Secretary of Energy authority to identify public and private lands as "National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors" (NIETCs). The Department of Energy has interpreted the language as giving the agency the power to designate whole regions of the country-even entire states-as potential energy corridors. So far, two huge areas have been proposed: The Southwest NIETC encompasses huge swaths of Southern California, Nevada, and Arizona that are included in The Wilderness Society's analysis. The Mid-Atlantic NIETC includes hundreds of square miles in eastern Ohio and all or substantial portions of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., and led to this so-called "corridor" area being named last week by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as one of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.
"The National Trust included this issue on our 2007 list of America's Most Endangered Historic Places because these high voltage transmission lines could have truly devastating impacts on historic landscapes and resources," said Elizabeth Merritt, Deputy General Counsel for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. "In trying to solve the problem of energy congestion, Congress gave the Department of Energy extraordinary authority to override state regulations, avoid environmental review, and cast aside the legal safeguards that are in place to protect these resources. This ill-conceived authority will endanger countless resources, and set a dangerous precedent for overriding the laws that protect our nation's historic and cultural resources."
Once the areas are identified, authority for approval of projects within the transmission corridors can be issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), through an abridged approval process with watered down environmental review, which can be used to bypass and even override state and local authorities. Companies can also be permitted to use the government's eminent domain authority to condemn private land to ensure new transmission lines are built or existing lines are expanded and can also override federal, state or local agency denials of authorizations by appealing directly to the President. There are no exceptions for places already identified for protection, such as wilderness, wildlife refuges, parks, and historical sites. Two members of Congress (Representative Frank Wolf R-VA and Representative Maurice Hinchey D-NY) will be offering an amendment (H.R. 2641) to the FY08 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill to stop these designations for one year. They have also introduced separate pieces of legislation that would remove Section 1221 from the Energy Policy Act, limit the federal government's ability to condemn private land, require public comment, and/or require consideration of ecological values.
"Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this provision is that once designated, any electricity transmission project proposed within the corridor could be approved on anyone's lands, even over the objections of local authorities and citizens," said Culver. "There are essentially no limits on whose property or what special places can be trampled in the name of transmission."
Download a fact sheet on the NIETC process. [pdf]
Overview, state-by-state breakdowns and maps are available at wilderness.org/nietc.
