Schumer says bill will stop NYRI plan
By Brendan Scott - Times Herald-Record, July 03, 2007
Washington - New York's senior senator is about to crank up the juice in the cross-state battle to block the proposed power line known as New York Regional Interconnect.
Breaking months of silence on the issue, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer says he will unveil legislation today to rein in a two-year-old federal law that could let NYRI and other power lines short-circuit state regulators and win approval.
The law, passed in 2005 as part of the massive Energy Policy Act, gives Washington the final word on power lines proposed for two vast energy corridors spanning some of the nation's most power-hungry cities.
Critics say it virtually guarantees that power lines like NYRI can overcome any level of opposition.
Local lawmakers, including Reps. Maurice Hinchey, D-Hurley, and John Hall, D-Dover Plains, have led a bipartisan effort in the House to repeal the law. But a lack of Senate support and two failed attempts to gut the corridor program threatened those efforts.
Schumer's approach seeks a middle ground. It would preserve the corridors, which the energy industry says are necessary to avoid future energy woes, while making it harder to override state decisions on power lines.
The bill, which Schumer says might be folded into a new national energy policy that congressional Democrats are crafting, would make three key changes:
oStrike the feds' ability to grant power-line companies the power to take private land.
oReverse the federal rule that allows power-line developers to treat inaction by state regulators as a denial and appeal to the feds.
oRequire power-line companies to prove a state denial lacked merit before they can mount an appeal.
Schumer says he's confident such changes would "close the door" on NYRI, which has been opposed by Gov. Eliot Spitzer and most upstate leaders.
"I certainly don't want one single farm or one single house to block needed electricity," said Schumer, a Brooklyn Democrat. "But to allow a company to come in and roll over all local concerns is wrong and unfair."
Schumer is expected to formally announce the legislation today during a visit to a Scotchtown home that sits along the power line's 190-mile path.
|
