NYRI says it plans to file completed application next month
NORWICH – A spokesman from the public relations firm representing New York Regional Interconnect Inc. said Thursday that the power line developer will likely re-submit its long-awaited permit application with the state sometime in the next month.
NYRI’s first permit filing, known as the Article VII, was denied by the state’s Public Service Commission in July 2006 because it lacked required impact studies and information in 10 areas. NYRI was ordered to produce the required information before its application would be reviewed. In the over year-and-a-half that’s passed since, NYRI has promised and skipped two previous dates for the re-filing.
“Probably in the first half of February, the whole supplemental filing, completing the Article VII, will be made that will include alternative routes that NYRI studied,” company spokesman David Kalson, of RF Binder Partners in New York City, confirmed in an e-mail. “The PSC of course has to decide on the route.”
If the application is deemed complete, a series of evidentiary hearings would then be scheduled.
If the PSC does not make a decision on NYRI within a year, the federal government can take over the review and grant a permit since most of the state and NYRI’s route are within a National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor.
As part of its supplemental filing, in March NYRI agreed to develop alternative routes for the PSC.
In a Jan. 7 article in Electric Power Daily, an on-line newsletter on Platts.com, a global energy informational website, NYRI attorney Leonard Singer said the company “will also propose ‘selective undergrounding’ of the line” in certain areas.
In the same article, Singer also said NYRI is “100 percent confident” that a state law blocking NYRI’s use of eminent domain would not prevent the PSC from granting the company eminent domain authority.
“We’re 100 percent confident that (the court ruling) does not take away PSC authority,” said Singer.
NYRI petitioned the PSC to declare the law unconstitutional after failing to overturn it in federal court. PSC spokeswoman Anne Dalton said the agency is reviewing the petition and submitted comments and will make a ruling at one of its regularly scheduled meetings in the near future.
“We’ll respond to the petition,” said Dalton. “There is no time clock, per se, no drop dead date to do it.”
Dalton would not comment on whether or not the PSC has the authority to override state law.
NYRI is proposing to build a $1.6 billion power line from Oneida to Orange County in an effort to bring electricity to energy-constrained areas in Metropolitan New York. The 190-mile line would bisect 44 miles of Chenango County.
In a recent report, the state’s wholesale electricity grid said that while more energy capacity is needed downstate, NYRI’s power line “need not be implemented” so long as already scheduled projects are completed.
If approved, Singer told the Platts.com reporter the company needs the right of eminent domain – the right to take private property at fair market value from its owners without negotiating – for the “5 percent to 10 percent” of owners that won’t sign over their land in standard negotiations.
NYRI officials claim they only need rights to take over “rural land” and not actual buildings, since most of its route is on railroad right of ways.
“The real issue is not about condemning buildings, which wouldn’t be necessary, although the popular misconception is that homes would be condemned,” Kalson said in December. “The real issue is about putting lines over farm lands and such. NYRI doesn’t anticipate having to take down any houses or buildings.”
However, droves of homeowners along the route have said that even if the line doesn’t technically condemn their homes, it renders them unlivable because of what they claim are the potential health risks and visual disruptions living near or under them poses. For those same reasons, the homes will also be virtually impossible to sell, hosts of homeowners have argued.
Others say NYRI’s assertion that it won’t need to take homes in false, considering it needs 1/8 of a mile wide – 663 feet – clearance on either side of its proposed power line, according to its permit application. Some homes, like those along the New York Susquehanna & Western railroad tracks in Woods Corners in the Town of Norwich, rest only 50 or 60 feet from where the line would go.
NYRI’s first permit filing, known as the Article VII, was denied by the state’s Public Service Commission in July 2006 because it lacked required impact studies and information in 10 areas. NYRI was ordered to produce the required information before its application would be reviewed. In the over year-and-a-half that’s passed since, NYRI has promised and skipped two previous dates for the re-filing.
“Probably in the first half of February, the whole supplemental filing, completing the Article VII, will be made that will include alternative routes that NYRI studied,” company spokesman David Kalson, of RF Binder Partners in New York City, confirmed in an e-mail. “The PSC of course has to decide on the route.”
If the application is deemed complete, a series of evidentiary hearings would then be scheduled.
If the PSC does not make a decision on NYRI within a year, the federal government can take over the review and grant a permit since most of the state and NYRI’s route are within a National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor.
As part of its supplemental filing, in March NYRI agreed to develop alternative routes for the PSC.
In a Jan. 7 article in Electric Power Daily, an on-line newsletter on Platts.com, a global energy informational website, NYRI attorney Leonard Singer said the company “will also propose ‘selective undergrounding’ of the line” in certain areas.
In the same article, Singer also said NYRI is “100 percent confident” that a state law blocking NYRI’s use of eminent domain would not prevent the PSC from granting the company eminent domain authority.
“We’re 100 percent confident that (the court ruling) does not take away PSC authority,” said Singer.
NYRI petitioned the PSC to declare the law unconstitutional after failing to overturn it in federal court. PSC spokeswoman Anne Dalton said the agency is reviewing the petition and submitted comments and will make a ruling at one of its regularly scheduled meetings in the near future.
“We’ll respond to the petition,” said Dalton. “There is no time clock, per se, no drop dead date to do it.”
Dalton would not comment on whether or not the PSC has the authority to override state law.
NYRI is proposing to build a $1.6 billion power line from Oneida to Orange County in an effort to bring electricity to energy-constrained areas in Metropolitan New York. The 190-mile line would bisect 44 miles of Chenango County.
In a recent report, the state’s wholesale electricity grid said that while more energy capacity is needed downstate, NYRI’s power line “need not be implemented” so long as already scheduled projects are completed.
If approved, Singer told the Platts.com reporter the company needs the right of eminent domain – the right to take private property at fair market value from its owners without negotiating – for the “5 percent to 10 percent” of owners that won’t sign over their land in standard negotiations.
NYRI officials claim they only need rights to take over “rural land” and not actual buildings, since most of its route is on railroad right of ways.
“The real issue is not about condemning buildings, which wouldn’t be necessary, although the popular misconception is that homes would be condemned,” Kalson said in December. “The real issue is about putting lines over farm lands and such. NYRI doesn’t anticipate having to take down any houses or buildings.”
However, droves of homeowners along the route have said that even if the line doesn’t technically condemn their homes, it renders them unlivable because of what they claim are the potential health risks and visual disruptions living near or under them poses. For those same reasons, the homes will also be virtually impossible to sell, hosts of homeowners have argued.
Others say NYRI’s assertion that it won’t need to take homes in false, considering it needs 1/8 of a mile wide – 663 feet – clearance on either side of its proposed power line, according to its permit application. Some homes, like those along the New York Susquehanna & Western railroad tracks in Woods Corners in the Town of Norwich, rest only 50 or 60 feet from where the line would go.
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