by Allison Kite, Kansas Reflector
Developers of the Grain Belt Express transmission line have asked the federal government to narrow a 780-mile route energy officials proposed as a transmission corridor of “national interest.”
The Department of Energy is working to designate “National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors” in parts of the country where officials have found consumers are harmed by a lack of electric transmission and where additional lines would boost reliability and cut costs.
One of those corridors runs through Kansas, Missouri and Illinois before ending at the Indiana border, encompassing the route of the Grain Belt Express high-voltage transmission line being built by Invenergy, a Chicago-based clean energy developer.
The corridor proposed by the Department of Energy is five miles wide, but Invenergy has called on federal officials to reduce it to 0.5 miles, arguing in a blog post on the Grain Belt Express website that the narrower route “will balance the needs of states to access additional power while also addressing the concerns and uncertainty stakeholders along the path of the project are expressing.”
Over the years, as Invenergy has worked to develop the Grain Belt Express, it has battled rural neighbors and lawmakers over its ability — granted by state energy regulators — to use eminent domain, a legal tool that can be used in infrastructure projects to acquire property or easements from unwilling landowners and compensate them.
According to the Department of Energy, designating national interest corridors will allow federal energy officials to grant the right of eminent domain to projects, even when state regulators have denied a permit.
The idea of federal officials granting eminent domain has riled some conservative lawmakers and farm groups, who have been frequent critics of the practice.
In a statement Thursday, the Kansas Farm Bureau took credit for persuading Invenergy to request that the Department of Energy narrow the proposed corridor.
”We oppose the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission being given backstop authority to override decisions made by our state regulators,” said Kansas Farm Bureau president Joe Newland, “and we oppose the use of eminent domain within these corridors.”
Newland encouraged Kansas Farm Bureau members and landlowners to share their concerns and opinions as the Department of Energy takes feedback from communities before finalizing the corridor designations.
U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, introduced legislation earlier this month that would prohibit the use of federal funds in projects using eminent domain to build transmission lines and bar the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from overruling state regulators’ siting decisions.
Invenergy has long maintained that it makes efforts to reach voluntary agreements for easements on landowners’ property before acquiring them through eminent domain. Owners who refuse to participate and whose land is condemned through eminent domain are still compensated.
Also Thursday, the Kansas Corporation Commission, the state agency that regulates utilities, approved two feeder lines that will deliver energy from wind and solar farms in southwest Kansas to the larger Grain Belt Express transmission line.
“This development milestone provides yet more certainty,” said Invenergy’s director of transmission development, Kevin Chandler, “of the economic development and energy reliability benefits that Grain Belt Express will soon deliver for Kansas.”
Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: [email protected]. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and X.
