As the developers of the controversial, 67-mile transmission line, are set to begin land surveys in the near future, attorneys representing property owners living along the route are appealing the recent court decision allowing the developers to access private property.
The recent federal decision, issued last Friday, grants the developers, Public Service Enterprise Group, permission to enter private property and remain on the property “to the extent reasonably necessary” to perform surveys or gather other information related to the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project. The ruling, comes as the proposed transmission line is being considered by the Public Service Commission. Previously, the Power Plant Research Program, which is part of the Department of Natural Resources, said the surveys were necessary.
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“The Court sees no reason to second-guess the PPRP’s determination that conducting these studies would be in the public interest,” the court ruling read in part.
“The crux of the issue is the judge got it wrong,” said Joanne Frederick, who is a landowner, and the president of STOP MPRP.
“We’re rushing through this process and its the little guy that pays the price, that has to give up their land rights and possibly their land,” Frederick said.
While PSEG has not provided a clear timeline of when the surveys would begin, attorneys representing landowners have filed a notice of appeal in the case.
“At a very high level, we’re arguing that there are constitutional considerations with respect to these access rights,” said attorney Harris Eisenstein with Rosenberg Martin Greenberg.
“The Preliminary Injunction has sweeping provisions and consequences. PSEG may “enter” and “remain on” private property owned by the Respondents from now until whenever PSEG’s “application for a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity, currently pending…before the Maryland Public Service Commission, is granted or denied. This means that, for the months or years that the CPCN application is pending, PSEG can repeatedly access Respondents’ properties on just 24 hours’ notice,” court documents said.
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Eisenstein also said they filed a motion to stay the preliminary injunction.
“With respect to the motion to stay, we’re asking the court to press pause and not enforce the judgment the injunction today, because if the injunction is enforced now, the case is effectively over,” Eisenstein said. ” PSEG will be permitted to do its studies and surveys, just as we wrote in our papers, well before the Fourth Circuit has an opportunity to decide the appeal.”
It is not clear how long an appeal will take. Eisenstein said it could take months or even years.
A spokesperson for PSEG said they did not have a comment on the filings due to ongoing litigation. They said they will respond as directed by the Court. Additionally, the spokesperson said this week, as directed by the Court, we are serving landowners with the Court’s order by certified mail.
PSEG and PJM, the regional grid operator, have long argued the proposed transmission line is necessary to ensure grid reliability as energy demands continue to grow. They have also argued it is necessary amid growing supply and demand issues, especially as power plants like Brandon Shores and Wagner were set to retire.
While the need for the transmission line will be considered at the Public Service Commission, residents, lawmakers, and even Governor Wes Moore have voiced their concerns about the project.
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“There are real flaws and real problems and I have said this long before, I have a very real issue with this project and how it was maintained,” Governor Moore said Tuesday. “I don’t see how there are not changes to this, this moves forward. I saw the judge’s ruling but it does not change my opinion on it, I think this thing has very real problems.”
While the power plants are now set to stay on the grid longer than planned, a new report by Monitoring Analytics, an independent external market monitor for PJM, said, “The basic conclusion of this analysis is that data center load growth is the primary reason for recent and expected capacity market conditions, including total forecast load growth, the tight supply and demand balance, and high prices.”
“It is misleading to assert that the capacity market results are simply just a reflection of supply and demand. The current conditions are not the result of organic load growth. The current conditions in the capacity market are almost entirely the result of large load additions from data centers,” the report continued to say.
“The people across the entire nation should be very concerned that we are on a slippery slope here that eminent domain can be used to apply to private enterprise. That’s terrifying and that’s why we’re standing up and fighting,” Frederick said.
