U.S. senator from Kansas calls Department of Energy transmission program ‘a dangerous overreach of federal authority’
BY: ALLISON KITE
Kansas Reflector
Members of Kansas’ congressional delegation celebrated the federal government’s decision Monday 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, a 5,000-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.
U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican, said the program “represented a dangerous overreach of federal authority,” and on Monday took credit for the Department of Energy’s removal of the Grain Belt route.
“We are glad to report that we won this battle, and Kansans voices were heard at the highest levels,” he said.
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.
“This designation was not required for the project to continue to advance toward construction,” said Patrick Whitty, senior vice president of public affairs for transmission at Invenergy.
Whitty said in a statement that Invenergy, too, asked that the Grain Belt route be removed from consideration for the Department of Energy program and was pleased the agency listened.
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.
Grain Belt’s ability to use eminent domain has drawn the ire of Republican lawmakers and farm groups who fought to undermine the project at the Missouri General Assembly for years.
Now federal lawmakers from Kansas, including Marshall, Sen. Jerry Moran and Rep. Tracey Mann are railing against the project.
Mann called Monday’s announcement a “huge win for Kansans.”
“Kansans made it clear from the very beginning that we were not interested in the federal government seizing our private land,” Mann said.
Moran said the decision to allow projects like Grain Belt Express “should be left up to Kansans, not Washington.”
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 will 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.”