Members of Kansas’ congressional delegation celebrated the federal government’s decision to remove a proposed electric transmission line route from a program offering assistance for power infrastructure projects.
But the project will still move forward.
The U.S. Department of Energy earlier this year announced a list of preliminary “National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors” to offer financial assistance and permits to transmission line builders in areas with little infrastructure.
One of the corridors the agency initially proposed was the Grain Belt Express, a5,000-megawatt transmission line expected to run from Kansas to Indiana proposed by Chicago-based Invenergy.The Grain Belt route was dropped from the program when the Department of Energy narrowed the proposed corridors Monday.
But the Department of Energy’s decision Monday will not keep the Grain Belt Express transmission line from being built. While the agency’s program helps obtain permits for transmission projects that can’t get state approval, Invenergy has already obtained state approvals for Grain Belt.
Grain Belt Express is expected to run from southwest Kansas carrying renewable energy through Missouri and Illinois before ending at the Indiana border. To do so, the line has to cross thousands of properties and needs easements on landowners’ properties across three states.
Invenergy says it has obtained the vast majority of those easements through voluntary negotiations with landowners.For the rest, the project was granted the right of eminent domain, a legal mechanism that allows utilities and governments to take land or easements from unwilling landowners and compensate them.
Here we go! Property rights being violated for power transmission for the greater good. Hopefully bitcoin fixes this issue of people just stripping you of your property to build a power transmission line.
In Missouri, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley has taken issue with a $4.9 billion loan the Department of Energy offered to the Grain Belt project.
Hawley wrote a letter to U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm saying the Grain Belt line would wreak havoc on landowners.
“Your decision to commit funding to the Grain Belt Express via conditional loan comes after repeated refusals to engage with my constituents,” Hawley said, “who live in constant fear of their land being confiscated.”