Chronicle of a Transmission Line Siting

Cross-Sound Cable Co. shows how transmission siting is much harder to do now than in the good old days.

Opposition to electric transmission line projects designed to upgrade the nation's infrastructure can come from a number of sources: the host municipality, adjacent municipalities, the state's executive branch, the legislative branch, commercial entities, ad hoc or long-standing environmental groups, and/or organized citizen groups. The issues raised can require expertise in an array of thorny legal and factual issues not traditionally encountered in straightforward siting proceedings of the past. Siting a transmission line project today can require strategic analysis and the assembly of a multi-disciplinary team of lawyers and consultants to help safely guide the project around and over the challenges that may be encountered.

The efforts of Cross-Sound Cable Co. LLC to site and construct a 330-megawatt electric transmission line buried under the seabed of Long Island Sound from New Haven, Conn., to Long Island, N.Y., illustrate the new siting reality. The Cross-Sound project and legal team were required to address issues well beyond the regulatory/siting matters that used to be the norm in siting a transmission line, requiring expertise in aquaculture, jetting, computer modeling of sedimentation and tides, municipal rights, land use under the water, state's rights and federal constitutional issues.

Along the way, the project would pit Connecticut's governor against the state's attorney general and legislature, both of which tried to bring a halt to the project.

'Straightforward Process' Hits Turbulence