An Unjustified Power Play on Power Lines
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When great writers imagine America's most treasured places, they don't use titles such as "A Power Line Runs Through It." Yet that is exactly what is in store for some of this country's historic and recreational treasures under the 2005 Energy Policy Act ["Dominion Could Take Case to U.S.; Law Lets Firms Bypass State on Power Line Plans," Metro, April 26].
The law includes a radical tilt in favor of power transmission companies against local residents who oppose power lines that could scar some of their last, best places.
A proposed power line route in Upstate New York pushed American Rivers, the conservation organization I head, to designate the Upper Delaware River one of "America's Most Endangered Rivers of 2007."
The power line plan could permanently mar the Upper Delaware, one of America's earliest-designated wild and scenic rivers and a recreational resource that is one of the region's most powerful economic engines. As in the Northern Virginia fight, local residents are united in opposition to the plan, but the scales are badly weighted against the people who will bear the brunt of the power line's impacts.
America needs a reliable electrical grid, but cutting states and local communities out of decisions that affect them isn't the way to accomplish that.
REBECCA WODDER
President
American Rivers
Washington
