Full Title: Transmission Siting and Public Lands: Options for Improvement and the Gateway West Case Study
Author(s): David Solan
Publisher(s): Energy Policy Institute and Center for Advanced Energy Studies
Publication Date: January 1, 2011
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
The proposed Gateway West transmission project illustrates many of the difficulties that are prevalent in siting transmission lines in the western United States. A joint project of Idaho Power and Rocky Mountain Power, the proposed Gateway West line would run more than 1,100 miles between Wyoming and Idaho, traversing both private and federally-owned public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The project has been subject to a number of delays in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process. Despite the scoping process being completed on schedule in the summer of 2008, BLM has yet to issue the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS). The DEIS was originally scheduled for release in 2009. It has since been rescheduled three times, with a present target of the first quarter of 2011. BLM is not likely to meet this target. As the NEPA process falls further behind schedule, the timetable for anticipated construction of the project also stretches out and its future is uncertain.
There are opportunities to improve the siting process as it relates to public lands. The options presented in this study are aimed at federal agencies, state and local governments, and utilities and project proponents. The options are also presented within the current planning,
permitting, and siting framework.