The Potomac Appalachian Transmission Highline (PATH) is a proposed $1.8 billion 200-plus mile long 765 kV extra high voltage electric transmission line linking the Amos substation (located adjacent to the nearly forty year old 2,933 MW coal-fired John E. Amos Power Plant located in western West Virginia) with a new substation proposed to be built in Frederick County, Maryland. PATH has been recommended by PJM Interconnection, the regional transmission organization. PJM is a consortium of power companies, transmission companies and other interested utilities. PATH is a joint project of AEP and Allegheny Power.
Transmission
The Piedmont Environmental Council has some experience dealing with Dominion and transmission line proposals through our region. In 2006 and 2008, utilities proposed two unnecessary high-voltage transmission lines that would connect to the oldest and dirtiest coal-fired generation in the United States. Learn more about the TrAIL line (approved and built) and the PATH line (turned down). More recently, a series of projects has been proposed, each with its own set of details and impacts.
Transmission Lines: Why We Fight
This summer, an unwanted clear-cut tore through the edge of the woods at Rick and Virginia Dorkey’s cattle farm near Bealeton, in Fauquier County. Construction crews put up a line of gigantic metal towers on the farm, jutting far above the trees. It’s impossible not to see them. The massive structures dominate the views across hayfields and pastures.
Federal Court Strikes Down Transmission Line Corridors
In 2007, the U.S. Department of Energy designated two National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors (NIETCs), where energy companies were granted unprecedented access to federal eminent domain authority for the fast track siting of transmission lines. These “corridors” spanned 100 million acres, and the larger of the two, in the eastern part of the country, extended from New York to Virginia and included six of PEC’s nine counties: Clarke, Culpeper, Fauquier, Loudoun, Madison and Rappahannock.
The Death Knell for PATH?
The Death Knell for PATH? Only time will tell.
On Feb. 28, 2011, the regional electric grid manager, PJM, issued a statement saying that it has ordered development of the PATH transmission line to halt.