The item on the agenda of the December meeting of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission looked innocuous, filled with the dry, abstract language of most of the commission’s action items. It was an uncontested “settlement agreement” among a bunch of parties on an electric transmission issue going back some 15 years. The action marked the official obituary of the Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline, aka PATH.
It may have looked banal but the settlement was a concrete illustration of how difficult and confounding siting new interstate high-voltage electric transmission has become, even in a powerful regional transmission organization and with heavy federal support.
FERC Commissioner Mark ChristieCommissioner Mark Christie was the only member of the five-person commission to speak about item “E-4” on the formal agenda, noting that it would be easy to consider it a “nothingburger.” FERC’s summary of the action says the settlement agreement “provides a process for the cancellation of the PATH Companies’ formula transmission rate and will facilitate the final wind-down and termination of the PATH companies.”
But, Christie added, the item concealed a troubling case, far from insignificant. Instead, he quoted Linda Loman, Willie Loman’s wife in Arthur Miller’s legendary play Death of a Salesman, “Attention must be paid.”
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