In March, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) introduced legislation, called the SITE Act, which will allow thousands of miles of high-voltage transmission lines to be sited over state and local objections, and allow developers to take privately owned lands through eminent domain. The stated goal is to enable the development of vast quantities of heavily subsidized wind and solar power in rural areas and transmit it to cities where the electricity is needed to meet unrealistic and costly electrification mandates, such as those in California and New York.
The New York Times, for one, is celebrating. Forcing rural states, which many Times readers deride as “flyover country,” to supply the electricity needs of coastal urban ones is seen by the Times as rural states’ obligation. In a May 4, 2023, editorial, the Times wrote, “To tap the potential of renewable energy, the United States needs to dramatically expand the electric grid between places with abundant wind and sunshine and places where people live and work.” Authority for siting new transmission lines would be under the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which already has authority over siting of new natural gas pipelines.
That same editorial also stated, “The federal government — the mechanism Americans have created to act in the interest of people in America as a whole — is where those decisions should be made.” Given the actions taken in the past by the Bureau of Land Management, which has prevented ranchers from grazing on millions of acres of federally owned lands; the Forest Service, which last year began a prescribed burn on a windy day, despite please not to, and caused the largest wild fire in New Mexico’s history; and the Environmental Protection Agency, which considers every stream, pond, and arroyo to be a regulated wetland, many in rural states would likely disagree.
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