Open Letter to Our Elected Officials and Regulatory Agencies

PATH is a joint venture of Pennsylvania-based Allegheny Energy and Ohio-based American Electric Power. A 765,000-volt line would stretch, over 180 feet in the air, from an Allegheny substation near St. Albans, W.Va., through West Virginia and Frederick and Loudoun Counties in Virginia, to a proposed substation near Kemptown, Md. This line is not needed and is a bad idea:

☞ The need for the line is based on models that fail to take significant factors into account, including a documented reduction in the growth of electrical demand forecasts used in projection models.

☞ PATH’s purpose is to transport low-cost power generated by atmosphere-polluting coal-based plants in West Virginia to lucrative markets in New York, New Jersey and Eastern Maryland.

☞ Allegheny and AEP planners have failed to meaningfully examine alternative renewable and other generation methods closer to markets, energy saving technologies, and available transmission alternatives.

☞ The concept of generating power for a market hundreds of miles away through its complex, property-destructive and vulnerable grid of transmission lines is based on private company profit motives and generous rates of return on construction investment granted by the Department of Energy, not on how best to provide clean, reliable service.

☞ PATH would increase electrical costs to the Virginia and West Virginia residents that the transmission line would not directly serve, but would harm in terms of environmental damage, significant loss of property values, and increased health risks to children and others.

Regulatory Agencies will consider this proposal in terms of its unproven benefits against human costs by forcing construction of the transmission line through powers of Eminent Domain. Who are those who will pay the price for the alleged benefit of the many?

☞ The hundreds of home and landowners in the path of power company-selected routing,

☞ The thousands of neighboring citizens in communities whose quality of life will be affected by the eye sore towers and lines, the vegetation-stripped easements and rights of way, and the degradation of community scenic, agricultural, recreational and other tangible economic values.

☞ The millions of people in the path of the plume of pollution created by the coal fired plants, stretching from West Virginia to Pennsylvania and up to Maine and beyond.

☞ The billions of people in the world affected by the global warming impacts of climate change and rising sea levels resulting from unnecessary green house gas emissions.

Who decides that all these people must pay the price of a scheme such as the PATH applicants propose?

☞ PJM Interconnection, a company that coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity in all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia, and consists solely of the electrical generation and transmission member companies that stand to gain the most from the project.

☞ State regulatory agencies who have become jaded by past “Not In My Back Yard” objections of residents, but who fail to adequately analyze the stated transmission needs, or require and evaluate comprehensive environmental impact studies, or carefully consider realistic alternatives, including policy changes and technology approaches.

☞ A Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that, with little or no public engagement:
   1. Simply validates the PJM and utility transmission proposals,
   2. Fails to understand that such a multi-state, nationally significant transmission line project is, and must be, within its arena of concern,
   3. That it has the obligation and opportunity to adopt a comprehensive, progressive, and cost-effective national approach to electricity generation and consumption efficiency, and
   4. Fails to reject the destructive transmission systems that utilities propose in order to make more money.

It’s time to draw the line and say NO to PATH and to the wholly inadequate planning, investment, and regulatory system that has supported it. It’s time to evaluate and plan an electrical system as a whole for the Nation. It’s time to look at the technologies already at hand and ready to use that will provide reliable and clean electric energy to promote sustainable economic growth. And it’s time to look at the real costs of the PATH system, and who benefits and who pays.

Stop PATH!

Please sign this letter by filling in your information below and we will send it on your behalf.