FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:		 August 1, 2008 9:45 PM

Contact:  William DePaulo, Esq.   	304-342-5588/304-541-1984
		James Kotcon, Ph.D.		304-293-8822/304-594-3322

SIERRA CLUB TO APPEAL AUGUST 1, 2008 PSC DECISION APPROVING TRAILCO ELECTRIC TRANSMISSION LINE

The Sierra Club is disappointed with, and will appeal to the West Virginia Supreme Court, the decision issued today by the PSC approving TrAILCo's proposal to build an interstate electric transmission line across West Virginia.  TrAILCo’s lead witness on the first day of hearings admitted in his testimony that planning for the line was initiated solely as a means of responding to directions from unidentified FERC officials in 2002 to "move large amounts of coal from west to east." The economic motive to provide the infrastructure for the construction of four new coal fired electric generation plants, at a cost of nearly $4 billion, was cited by TrAILCo’s experts as the major element of the of the economic justification of the $1 billion electric transmission line.  

The line is not needed now nor will it ever be needed in the future to supply electricity to West Virginia -- which exports 60 million of the 90 million gigawatt hours of electricity it produces each year.  Moreover, the line results in a gross imbalance between electric needs and environmental degradation.  Virtually all of the immediate environmental degradation will be absorbed directly by citizens of this state, while the electric benefits will be conferred on the citizens of Maryland, DC and Virginia whose share of the environmental cost is de minimus.  The long term impact of vastly increased CO2 emissions, certain to result from the increased use of coal fired electricity, will be absorbed by all.  

Moreover, the line will perpetuate the already grossly disproportionate dependence of West Virginia consumers and businesses on what is certain to be much higher cost coal generated electricity, once a cap and trade system is adopted to allocate to coal costs as a result of trading of CO2 credits.  The impact of the failure to diversify West Virginia's energy sources – currently 95% of electricity is generated from coal -- will permanently cripple economic development in the state and reinforce the position of West Virginia citizens as among the lowest income earners in the country. 

The purported justification based upon enhanced "reliability" was effectively rebutted by electric grid experts at the January hearings, and that rebuttal was the basis for the well reasoned opposition to the TrAILCo line expressed in the post-hearing brief filed by the PSC Staff. 
 
To be sure, TrAILCo itself recognized on January 19 that it had failed to carry its evidentiary burden.  The recognition of that failure in the public hearings was obviously the motivation for the extensive communications with PSC's staff attorneys and section heads -- conducted behind closed doors and with no public participation -- documented in the nearly 3,000 pages of materials released to the Sierra Club pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act.  The Sierra Club’s effort to insure that the documentation was included in the evidentiary record of this proceeding was rejected.

The result of TrAILCo's extensive ex-parte contacts was straight forward -- the PSC's Staff executed the legal equivalent of a logic defying back flip.  In the April 15 Joint Stipulation filed with the Commission the PSC Staff announced its decision to withdraw its opposition to the TrAILCo line for very meager economic incentives that in no way altered the evidence in the record regarding electric need or environmental degradation.  

Indeed, the alternate line route proposed in the April 15, 2008 Joint Stipulation was, by TrAILCo's own analysis, much worse than the originally proposed route.  The rerouting of the electric line was transparently motivated solely for the purpose of securing the litigation advantage of substituting a new group of unsuspecting land owners -- who'd had no reason to intervene before -- for the landowners affected by the original proposal, a far more vocal group whose opposition was effectively mooted by TrAILCo's last minute bait and switch, and the PSC Staff's enabling flip-flop on the evidence. 

The Sierra Club will pursue all legal remedies in an effort to halt this environmentally destructive, electrically unnecessary and economically unfeasible electric line.