By Tom Kleckner

A U.S. House of Representatives committee last week approved legislation that aims to stop Clean Line Energy Partners’ plans to build a 700-mile HVDC transmission through Oklahoma and Arkansas.

The House Committee on Natural Resources advanced the Assuring Private Property Rights Over Vast Access to Land (APPROVAL) Act by a 19-11 vote June 15. The bill is sponsored by Rep. Steve Womack, one of the members of an all-Republican Arkansas congressional delegation that is united in opposition to the Clean Line project.

The bill would amend the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to prohibit the secretary of energy and federal power agencies from using eminent domain for transmission rights of way without first receiving approval from a state’s governor and regulatory body. It also restricts the transmission line’s siting to existing federal right of way or land managed by federal entities.

Womack said the bill is “another positive step toward passage in a long and hard-fought battle to allow states to retain the historic precedent of authority for interstate transmission projects.”

“It is our firm belief that the [Energy Department] has overstepped its bounds, and reversing this decision through the passage of the APPROVAL Act remains a top priority,” Womack said, speaking for the rest of his state’s delegation.

Houston-based Clean Line issued an opposing statement, saying that if the bill became law, “it would kill jobs by creating significant barriers to the many businesses in Arkansas … that build American infrastructure, as well as raise electric power costs.”

“Denying American consumers access to the lowest-cost clean energy resources is never good policy,” added Clean Line, which noted more than $100 million in private funds have been invested in the project.

Clean Line’s Plains & Eastern Clean Line is a $2.5 billion, privately funded project that is supposed to deliver 4,000 MW of wind power from the Oklahoma Panhandle through Arkansas to the Mississippi River. The line would interconnect with the Tennessee Valley Authority near Memphis, after first dropping off 500 MW at a converter station in central Arkansas.

Clean Line proposed the project in response to the Energy Department’s 2010 request for proposals for transmission projects under Section 1222 of EPACT 2005, which authorizes the department to participate in “designing, developing, constructing, operating, maintaining or owning” new transmission.

The department approved the project in March, saying it would participate through the Southwestern Power Administration, a federal agency that markets hydroelectric power from 24 dams in six states. (See DOE Agrees to Join Clean Line’s Plains & Eastern Project.)

The Arkansas Sierra Club said it opposes Womack’s bill.

“The Clean Line project has been in the works since 2010 and has undergone a very thorough and expensive public permitting process in accordance with federal law,” said the Sierra Club’s Arkansas director, Glen Hooks. “Rep. Womack’s bill seeks to change that law after the permitting process has been underway for years. That’s not only bad for our state’s air and economy, it’s blatantly unfair to the company.”

Arkansas Sen. John Boozman has filed a matching bill that is co-sponsored by the state’s junior senator, Tom Cotton. The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources held a hearing on the bill in May but has taken no action on it since then.

“Arkansans should be heard in discussions that impact their lands,” Boozman said in a statement released by his office. “Our bill restores the role of states, which in the past had the freedom to approve or reject electric transmission projects. These decisions should not be made behind the closed doors of a federal agency in Washington, D.C.”