On October 5, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced that nine federal agencies would be expediting the review and approval of seven electricity transmission projects across the country including five in the West. The new transmission lines, when completed, will support Department of the Interior (DOI) approval of 22 major renewable energy projects on public lands in the western United States. However, according to the Wildlife Management Institute, there are questions about expediting an approval process that can take up to 15 years, and some of the projects face local opposition. In addition, the potential cumulative impacts to habitat when combined with other energy development on public lands are being considered.

"The president has been committed to moving forward with an electrical grid system that is modernized and carries us forward into the 21st century," Salazar said. "We know that solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear, clean coal and natural gas all play a role, but it is absolutely critical that we have the infrastructure in place to deliver power to our homes, our businesses and our economy."

In 2009, nine agencies, including the Department of Energy (DOE), White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), DOI, Department of Agriculture (USDA), Department of Commerce, Department of Defense, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Electric Regulatory Commission (FERC), and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, signed a memorandum of understanding with the goal of streamlining the review process for transmission, as well as establishing a consolidated environmental review and a single point of contact for federal authorizations, among other things. An interagency group was formed to identify the federal entities crucial to the process and then a Rapid Response Team for Transmission was created to improve federal coordination and target timely reviews for transmission lines. With the announcement of the pilot projects that will be fast tracked, the team will assign project managers to each transmission project, to coordinate and schedule target dates for agencies to reach review milestones. The agencies hope to learn how to coordinate permitting to ensure the projects move forward swiftly.

The seven pilot projects are:

• Idaho Power's proposed 500-kilovolt power line that will run 300 miles from Oregon to Idaho.
• Idaho Power and Rocky Mountain Power's 1,150 miles of high-voltage lines across Wyoming and Idaho.
• Xcel Energy and partners' 345-kilovolt CapX2020 line that will run 125 miles from Minnesota to Wisconsin.
• Portland General Electric's proposed Cascade Crossing Transmission Project, a 210-mile, 500-kilovolt line in Oregon.
• SunZia Transmission LLC's two 500-kilovolt transmission lines totaling 460 miles in Arizona and New Mexico.
• TransWest Express LLC's 700-mile, 600-kilovolt transmission line in Wyoming, Utah and Nevada.
• PPL Electric Utilities and Public Service Electric and Gas Company's 145-mile, 500-kilovolt Susquehanna to Roseland Line in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

The projects are in various stages of permitting and the Administration is touting their ability to create jobs. The Susquehanna/Roseland project that will deliver power to Pennsylvania and New Jersey is the most advanced and is expected to generate 2,000 jobs in the area. The 700-mile-long TransWest Express line from southcentral Wyoming to a substation near Las Vegas, Nevada, could create more than 1,000 jobs during construction and tie into the country's largest wind project in Wyoming, Salazar said. The individual projects are facing some criticism, though.

"The Obama Administration has failed to protect three popular national park sites in New Jersey and Pennsylvania with today's decision to include the controversial Susquehanna/Roseland power line project on its list of fast tracked transmission projects," said Bryan Faehner, the National Parks Conservation Association's Associate Director for Park Uses. "Susquehanna/Roseland proposes to build massive 200-foot towers and power lines across the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, the Middle Delaware National Scenic River, and the Appalachian National Scenic Trail in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Building massive power lines across these parks will harm the very resources they were designated to protect."

The potential implications of the transmission line development, coupled with the pending Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) on solar power and the fast-tracked wind development in other areas, are being closely watched by conservation organizations. A supplement to the draft solar PEIS is anticipated later this month and is intended to establish a framework for developing large utility-scale solar energy projects on public land. The goal is to institute landscape-level planning using the best-available science to promote the development in "solar energy zones" comprising approximately 677,400 acres?more than 1,000 square miles in six western states. DOI stated that these sites will be managed with a preference for solar energy generation in the areas best suited for solar development.

"We support the Interior Department's goal of increasing clean energy development on federal lands as a way of cutting pollution and bringing new jobs to the West. However, it is important that the new jobs created by energy development don't come at the cost of existing jobs in the outdoor industry," said Steve Belinda, on behalf of the Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development (SFRED) coalition when the first draft was released earlier this year. ?"Many of the areas left open to development and transmission in the preferred alternative of the agency's original draft solar plan could negatively impact hunting and angling opportunity by reducing habitat and local water resources."

The rapid movement on renewable energy and transmission line development has the potential to impact vast landscapes. As of late 2010, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) had more than 100 ap?plications pending for utility-scale solar energy projects in Arizona, California, Nevada and New Mexico. These involve about 1.05 million acres of land. In addition, the BLM manages 20.6 million acres of public lands with wind power potential in 11 western states, and the U.S. Forest Service assessed ap?proximately 170 million acres of national forests and national grasslands. The fast-tracked transmission lines, when combined, will extend roughly 3,000 miles. How all of the projects will interface and impact native wildlife populations and their habitat remains to be seen. (jas)