Posted on 07/28/2009 3:34:14 AM PDT by shove_it
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- The Sierra Club has joined other environmental groups in intervening in Virginia proceedings to try to block a high-voltage multistate transmission line.
The Sierra Club, represented by Earthjustice, said it filed papers Monday with Virginia's State Corporation Commission.
SCC spokesman Ken Schrad says Monday was the deadline for intervening in the $1.9 billion line proposed by Pennsylvania's Allegheny Energy Co. and Ohio's American Electric Power Co.
The Piedmont Environmental Council and the National Wildlife Federation also have filed notices of participation.
The 765-kilovolt Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline, or PATH, would run across parts of northern Virginia and eastern and southern West Virginia, ending at a substation near Kemptown, Md.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
When they lose, toss them, and their lawyers, into a compound without whatever it was they were protesting. For life.
Depending on where you live, your opinion may vary. What generally isn’t known is that West Virginians will have to help pay for a transmission line that mostly serves the midatlantic states. Add to that about half of the 30% of the electrical capacity that is provided by combustion turbined power plants was taken off line by utilities due to high natural gas prices. What that means is there’s not that much demand for coal fired plant electricity from WV in the midatlantic states now since oil prices came off the $147/bbl price.
West Virginia currently doesn’t have to inspect cars for emmissions. With that transmission line in place, there’s more potential for expansion at the John Amos power plant and concurrent polution of the Kanawha River valley. There’s already been times of pollution issues from that plant. Drops in the air quality would at some point prompt the EPA to require emissions testing of automobiles in WV.
WV has never had an issue with widespread grid related power outages like the Northeast. Why would someone in WV want that exposure?
The transmission line is an attempted profit grab by the utility. Because of several factors, the planned date of construction has slipped. The real point is it isn’t economically justified with current fuel prices.
Let me add that with the planned nuclear plants for Virginia and other seaboard states, there’s no reason to expect that the midatlantic states will be short of power in the future. The PATH folks are just trying to get there first.
ping for comments
The Greenies will go after those nuke plants like demons. Nukes are like holy water to them.
It has already started. T Boone Pickens has pretty much dropped his wind farm BS because of the transmission line fiasco.
I think that’s slacked off. The plants I heard about will be built on existing sites. That means the siting stuff was done long ago. An intrevenor isn’t going to have the same opportunities they had before the existing plant was built.
These people are idiots. I’m a big fan of electricity and use it almost every day. Electricity has improved my quality of life tremendously.
I’ll believe it when I see it. These green nuts are capable of anything.
They are the NO in innovation.
The Sierra Club can suck my — never mind.
The power line, should the Sierra Club fail to stop it, will end in Maryland.
Maryland “Freak State” PING!
Indeed!
LLS
California environmentalists have already brought a lawsuit against a proposed transmission line from a solar power plant in the desert. There is no form of power generation that is acceptable to them despite their supposed support for wind and solar.
The wackos would have been bouncing off the walls if there was any hint of developing any generating capacity. Already they've got their knives out for the nuclear plant proposed for the Piketon area. And Obama's DOE just quashed a loan guarantee application from USEC to build a centrifuge enrichment plant on the same site, something that Odouchebag promised to support when he campaigned here. Yet they gave a loan guarantee to a project in Chicago (imagine that!) for a 10 MW solar plant that has a cost of $6000 per installed kilowatt., When you factor in maybe a 20% capacity factor (which is optimistic for a solar plant in Chicago), the cost per produced kilowatt goes up by a factor of five. So you can see where Odumb$hit is putting the government's (our) money.
Labor troubles clouding solar industry’s sunny future
Greenerworking.com
June 25, 2009 by Tom GuayCalifornia’s burgeoning solar industry suddenly finds itself facing a challenge that’s worse than a week of rain — winning labor union support.
Companies that agree to hire union workers seem to sail through approval hearings. Those that buck the union system get hammered with environmental impact reviews, costs and delays.
The New York Times reports that when solar power developer Ausra wanted to build a solar plant, it was challenged by labor lawyers who were terribly worried about protecting the environment and animal habitats.
Ausra didn’t want to hire union workers.
But an even larger solar plant proposed by BrightSource Energy sailed through the approval process, with enthusiastic support from the same union group, the California Unions for Reliable Energy.
BrightSource had agreed to hire union workers.
The NYTimes story warns that the battle over hiring union workers to build California’s solar power operations is expected to spread to all renewable energy projects.
The California Unions for Reliable Energy touts itself as specializing in conventional and renewable energy projects, “while protecting the state’s air, land and water from pollution.”
The NYTimes article is here.
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