By Tom Kleckner

Two Arkansas landowner groups have filed suit to block Clean Line Energy Partners’ planned 700-mile HVDC transmission line, questioning the legality of the project’s approval and its right to use eminent domain (3:16-cv-00207-JLH).

The groups, Golden Bridge and Downwind, filed their complaint Aug. 15 in U.S. District Court in Jonesboro, Ark., listing the U.S. Department of Energy, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz and the Southwestern Power Administration (SPA) and its administrator, Scott Carpenter, as defendants.

In March, the Energy Department approved Clean Line’s $2.5 billion Plains & Eastern Clean Line project, which would deliver 4,000 MW of wind power from the Oklahoma Panhandle to the Tennessee Valley Authority near Memphis, Tenn. (See DOE Agrees to Join Clean Line’s Plains & Eastern Project.)

The department said it would participate in the project under Section 1222 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPACT), which authorizes it to take part in “designing, developing, constructing, operating, maintaining or owning” new transmission. The department will do so through SPA, a federal agency that markets hydroelectric power from 24 dams in six states.

The lawsuit questions the process by which the Energy Department approved the project, saying it acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” in giving “undue consideration to nonstatutory, policy considerations.” The landowners said the department and SPA approved the project’s construction and operation, “completely [ignoring]” existing Arkansas siting laws “and without the necessary approval of the appropriate Arkansas siting authorities.” They are asking the court to declare the federal agencies’ use of eminent domain in violation of EPACT and force the department to withdraw its approval of the project until it is in compliance with state-level siting requirements and federal laws, including the Fifth Amendment.

A Golden Bridge spokesman told local media the landowners should have been given a “significant opportunity to engage on a meaningful and substantive level.”

“Unfortunately, it is not uncommon to see legal complaints filed against the most important infrastructure projects,” Clean Line said in a statement. The Houston-based company called on the private and public sectors to “come together to bring new infrastructure projects to fruition.”

Clean Line said it has invested nearly $100 million of private capital in the project’s development and it expects to make more than $30 million in payments to Arkansas landowners for easements  and building transmission towers on their property. It said it was “very confident” in Section 1222’s validity and the “extensive process” behind the Energy Department’s decision to participate.

The Plains & Eastern Clean Line project has also drawn opposition from Arkansas’ all-Republican Congressional delegation. Rep. Steve Womack advanced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives in June that would amend EPACT to require approval from a state’s governor and legislators before using eminent domain. The state’s senior senator, John Boozman, has filed a matching bill that hasn’t moved since May. (See House Panel OKs Bill Targeting Clean Line Project.)

Clean Line expects to begin construction on the project as early as next year.