Sen. Harry Reid Wants to Take Your Land and Give It to the Power Companies

/ Bill

Here’s a recent news clip from the Wall Street Journal:

AUGUST 10, 2009, 7:12 P.M. ET
Sen Reid: FERC Needs Ability to Condemn Land,Site Power Lines

By Siobhan Hughes    OF DOW JONES NEWSWIRES LAS VEGAS (Dow Jones)–U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., on Monday offered his strongest call yet in favor of empowering federal regulators to decide where to build new power lines, saying that the authority was necessary to overcome roadblocks.

“I will not be satisfied with an energy bill unless it has a strong component that allows transmission,” Reid said at a clean-energy summit that he sponsored. He accused the scores of regulators who have a say over where power lines are located of having a “stranglehold” over electricity. He said that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission needed the ability to seize land, if need be, in order to get power lines built.

Without new power lines to connect to customers, developers will not build new wind and solar facilities. That is a major reason that lawmakers such as Reid are intent on making it easier to build transmission lines, which typically get slowed amid opposition from residents who do not want to live near power lines.

Harry Reid doesn’t like us peons out here in flyover country.  We are just “roadblocks.”  Note that Reid made his statements at a “clean energy summit,” whatever that is.  You can bet it was attended by lots of Big Wind lobbyists including lobbyists for AEP who want to hide their power line plans behind “green energy.”

Watch carefully what the US Senate does in the next year with the new energy bill now in Sen. Bingaman’s Energy Committee.   Right now, WV, VA and MD are protected from federal interference by the Federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision last February.

Sen. Reid, Sen. Bingaman and AEP CEO Mike Morris have pledged to overturn the Fourth Circuit decision in the new energy bill and restore FERC’s ability to take your land and give it to the power companies.  If they succeed, the WV PSC will have no power to stop PATH.