Clinton, Schumer say DOE ignoring power line foes (eminent domain fight)

[UpInArms]

Source: Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer on Friday accused the U.S. Department of Energy of turning a deaf ear to critics of a proposed 200-mile stretch of 150-foot-tall electrical towers that would cut through scenic regions of upstate New York.

The two New York Democrats expressed concern over the location of a planned DOE meeting next week for public comment on implications of a new law that allows private property to be taken by federal eminent domain for construction of electrical power lines.

The June 12 meeting will be held in Rochester, an upstate New York city that is about 130 miles from the area of the proposed power line. The line would be erected between Utica and the town of New Windsor in Orange County by a private company called New York Regional Interconnection (NYRI).

Much of the 1200-megawatt line would go up along unspoiled slopes of the Catskill Mountains and parts of the Upper Delaware River corridor that are protected under a federal wild and scenic river designation. Other parts would run through settled communities, including back yards.

"Placing this hearing over 100 miles away, in Rochester, rather than in the area that would be impacted by NYRI's proposed route is bizarre and unfair," Schumer, who called upon the DOE to schedule a meeting along the proposed route, said in a statement released to Reuters.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN0825706020070609

[rodeodance]

1. oh those bushies know how to get their way!!

[sillyphoenix]

2. This may be a bit tinfoil-ish

But could this be petty revenge for New York voting Democratic in... oh, every election in the past forty years? I would put nothing, but nothing, beneath the current regime.

However, if it does get built, we could always splice a cable from the power line into a flux capacitor. The line power is, incidentally, pretty close to the 1.21 gigawatts needed to power a time machine ;-) Then somebody can just go back in time and prevent Bush from being elected :D

[krispos42]

6. I don't think it's tin-foil-ish

IIRC about 10, 12 years ago, a magazine, I think it was Harper's, did a comparason between the average federal dollar amount that the various congressional districts got. Under a Democratic Congress, it was like 95 cents in a Republican district to a dollar in a Democratic district. Under a Republican Congress, that went down to like 75 or 80 cents in a Democratic district to a dollar in a Republican district.

[krispos42]

3. Well, how else are we going to build up our infrastructure

Admittedly, the DoE seems to be going out of there way to be assholes about it, but...

This is the kind of stuff that we need eventually. If we want things like plug-in cars, we have to replace much of the energy from gasoline with electricity.

This is going to be especially true if we want to stop using natural gas and home heating oil for our furnaces and water heaters. Once we expand wind and solar power, once we develop commercial nuclear fusion, the electrical grid has to be upgraded and expanded to handle the extra wattage to heat our homes and water.

[ordinaryaveragegirl]

4. Bushco tactics at work AGAIN...

"We're bigger than you, so we'll put our power poles wherever we damn well please."

What Schumer said is right, they really should give the people more of an opportunity to voice their oppositin to all of this, but that's not how * and his type work, as we well know. That is a BEAUTIFUL part of NY state, and it would be a shame to see it spliced through with huge towers. I hope Schumer and Clinton can get this worked out somehow.

[Nikki Stone1]

5. Doesn't Hillary live in upstate New York?

?

[Igel]

8. Skaneateles.

I think that's the spelling. Fingerlakes.

And I think I'd have called Rochester 'west New York state'.

[ElizabethDC]

11. No, she lives in Chappaqua, in Westchester County

just outside of NYC.

[enough]

7. Small-Government Republicans.

[terisan]

9. Federal Eminent Domain for such projects was initiated by Cheney and his secret energy panel

It is cheaper to destroy scenic areas. As America uglifies, Halliburton moves its execs to Dubai.

[Igel]

10. For crying out loud.

When California needed more transmission lines and power plants, they managed to do it. Of course, it was essential that it either go through farm land or poor neighborhoods, nothing that upper class whites might possibly want to see. Must not disturb the masters.

In NYC, when they needed more power, they had a choice: More transmission lines or more power plants. They went for transmission lines, pissed off middle and upper class whites, and that got skewered. So power plants, then. They were clean, and to be distributed not based on social or income factor, but simply by geography and power consumption. Middle and upper class whites pitched a fit, and they all got put in poor and minority areas.

Note that the area that the transmission line would go through is (1) white and (2) frequented by middle and upper class whites. Therefore there's an outcry.

Fine. Don't put in power transmission lines--in fact, *remove* the ones they have there now so the area can revert to its Neolithic glory. Sounds good to me, I don't live in the neighborhood any more.

The people that peed their pants in anger and rage when their middle and upper class lives were disrupted by the power outage a few years ago can shit their pants the next time it happens. They wanted power lines, demanded power lines, blamed everybody but themselves for the mess, and now want to *own* the power problem.