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DOE report good news for NYRI
By Brendan Scott
August 9, 2006
 Times Herald-Record

That New York City sits in one of the worst chokepoints in the nation's power grid might come as no surprise to anyone aware of the blackouts and brownouts that have lately bedeviled the Big Apple.

But the declaration of that simple fact by the U.S. Department of Energy yesterday could have dramatic implications in the fight over New York Regional Interconnect's controversial power line project.

The assertion, which came as part of a national study of electric transmission bottlenecks, carries NYRI one step closer to winning new federal powers to bypass state regulators and, among other things, seize property by eminent domain.

The DOE's report, ordered by last year's landmark Energy Policy Act, cites numerous trouble spots in the country's power grid, including New England, southern Arizona and the San Francisco Bay area.

But the agency said Southern California and the Atlantic Coast between New York City and Washington, D.C., suffer by far from the nation's worst electric transmission bottlenecks. Those areas will likely become the proving grounds for new federal laws to ease construction of major power lines.

"We feel the need to act immediately on those areas of greatest concern," said Kevin Kolevar, director of DOE's Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability.

The goal is to get electricity from rural inland areas, where it's more plentiful, to the coastal areas where it's not. That's what NYRI proposes to do with its 1,200-megawatt power line, which would stretch from outside Utica to New Windsor.

Yesterday's report advances the company's pursuit of new powers laid out in the Energy Policy Act, which would allow it to bypass Albany and seek approval in Washington. There, it would presumably be less vulnerable to local opposition.

A NYRI spokesman passed up a chance to comment on the DOE report, saying only that the company would continue seeking state approval.

Now, federal officials will take up the question of whether NYRI offers the best way to secure the region's energy grid.

Meanwhile, the project's opponents will argue that the road to reliable energy does not run over the farms and forests of upstate New York. Opponents vowed to lobby federal officials to dismiss the 190-mile power line as a solution to the East Coast's energy woes.

"The federal energy policy shouldn't be to raise our electric rates and blight our lands so that other areas can have cheaper power," said Langdon Chapman, counsel to state Sen. John Bonacic, R-C-Mount Hope. "That's just bad policy."