Monday, November 24, 2008
Editorial: Transmission lines are vital infrastructure
Big-picture concerns, not local opposition, must guide the route of big power lines.
From the RoundTable blog
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State Attorney General Bob McDonnell made the right decision when he declined to get involved in an appeal of the Trans-Allegheny Interstate Line to the Virginia Supreme Court, and he made it for good reason: The attorney general's duty is to the Virginia consumer, and "there is no single 'Virginia consumer' position for this office to represent," as spokesman Tucker Martin put it.
There are supporters and opponents of the 500-kilovolt powerline proposed to run from Western Pennsylvania to Loudoun County.
Allegheny Power and Dominion Virginia say the line is needed to supply the growing demand for electricity in Northern Virginia. Opponents say the power line will only make it easier for the utilities to make money.
The Virginia State Corporation Commission approved the line, and Pennsylvania regulators have also given it the OK.
Such approval is nearly always controversial. No one likes big power lines marring the landscape, but these transmission lines are a vital part of the national electricity infrastructure.
It's not always easy to see such big-picture concerns in the face of intense local opposition.
That's why the energy bill passed by the General Assembly in recent years allows the state to overrule local governments on decisions about where energy infrastructure is located.
That's also why the federal government has regulations allowing it to override state regulators in designated "national interest electric transmission corridors."
Unfortunately, McDonnell's decision to stay out of the fight over the SCC's approval of the Trans-Allegheny Interstate Line doesn't mean he's giving up the fight, which he joined with Gov. Tim Kaine, over the designation of such a corridor in the Northern Shenandoah and Northern Virginia.
It's ironic that the state of Virginia understands the need to have the ability to override parochial concerns about energy-generating and transmitting facilities at the state level but is blind to that same need at the federal level.
In any case, McDonnell was correct not to throw the weight of the attorney general's office into the fight against the SCC's approval of the line.
Now if he could just rethink the fight against the federal pre-emption.
