ALBANY – The Public Service Commission and other active parties will have four additional days to file direct testimony in the Article VII review process of New York Regional Interconnect, based on a ruling of the administrative law judges assigned to oversee the proceedings.
The schedule change comes at the request of the Department of Environmental Conservation, which was granted by Administrative Law Judges Michele Phillips and Jeffrey Stockholm following a pre-trial conference held on Dec. 16. The decision was handed down in a procedural ruling issued on Dec. 22.
In the statement, the judges reported that, based on oral testimony presented, they had “determined that the requested four-day extension was reasonable.”
The parties will now have until Jan. 9 to file testimony against the proposed 400 kilovolt direct transmission line. They are expected to address not only NYRI’s proposed 190-mile primary route, which would bisect seven Chenango County townships on its way from Marcy to New Windsor, but also alternative routes identified last month.
The new timeline will also push back the deadline for the filing of rebuttal testimony by all parties from Feb. 18 to Feb. 23. The evidentiary hearings, originally slated to begin Mar. 3, will begin a day late. They are still scheduled to be finished by Mar. 25.
Stockholm and Phillips have designed the schedule so they may make a recommendation to the PSC within one year of the date on which NYRI’s Article VII application was deemed complete. In doing so, they hope to avoid their decision being pre-empted by the Federal Energy Regulation Commission.