The glacial movement of regulation

The glacial movement of regulation

By Sherry Robinson

In 2009 SunZia Southwest Transmission Project held a public hearing in Deming to gather feedback on its plan to build a high-voltage transmission line from Lincoln County into southeastern Arizona. Its goal was to sell New Mexico wind energy in California. If planning and permitting went smoothly, the company could start building that year and finish in 2013.

The project would stretch from 515 to 550 miles, from an estimated $1 billion to $2 billion-plus and from 2006 to 2022 and counting.

In recent weeks SunZia secured state approvals in New Mexico and Arizona. If the federal Bureau of Land Management signs off next spring, the company could start building in 2023. If it does, the line will be a monument to perseverance and compromise. Its participants (MMR Group, Shell WindEnergy, Tri-State Transmission and Generation, Salt River Project and Tucson Electric Power) can write the book on regulatory obstacles.

What took so long? Right of way is a slow process. So is environmental study. Some people don’t want to look at a wind generator or transmission tower. Government agencies don’t talk to each other. Routing is a nightmare. As an Arizona environmentalist wrote in 2011, “We know we need renewable energy and transmission lines, but there is just no environmentally acceptable route for SunZia in southern Arizona.” He could add central New Mexico to that statement.

The BLM, which shepherded the process, wrote the environmental impact statement, which took years. SunZia hit a wall in 2013 when the federal Department of Defense objected to the route across the north end of White Sands Missile Range. The DOD wanted SunZia to move the line north of the missile range or bury it. SunZia insisted that burial would add $500 million to the project cost. In the years it took to resolve, then-Congressman Martin Heinrich, a Democrat, accused the DOD of moving the goalposts, and then-Congressman Steve Pearce, a Republican, accused SunZia and its supporters of threatening national security. SunZia negotiated with a succession of five missile range commanders.

Meanwhile, in 2015 newly elected State Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn, a Republican, suspended SunZia’s right-of-entry permit and asked for more public comment as his office studied the project’s impact on 89 miles of state land. With that, SunZia returned to Plan A, crossing the missile range, but agreed to bury about five miles.

An independent study by the MIT Lincoln Laboratory concluded that the missile range and the transmission line could co-exist, Heinrich wrote in 2016. And an army official said, “The SunZia powerline makes America stronger.” That was still not good enough.

In 2018, the state Public Regulation Commission rejected SunZia’s application for line location permits. There simply wasn’t enough agreement among all the players for the PRC to say yes. The military still wasn’t happy about the line crossing the missile range, and Socorro residents worried about the impact on their migrating birds, reported the Albuquerque Journal.

SunZia went back to the drawing board and came up with a new route, north of the wildlife refuges and the missile range and near another planned transmission line. In 2020 SunZia was willing to reopen the cumbersome National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) process, reasoning that even though it would add four years, it might ease state approvals.

Mind you, this glacial process was little affected by the Obama administration’s attempt to streamline the process in 2011. SunZia was one of seven pilot projects selected. To date, only two projects reached the finish line; one was abandoned, another is partially complete, and three are nearing construction, according to the online Energy & Environment.

“We just can’t take 10 or 16 years to build a really good transmission project,” Ken Wilson, of Western Resource Advocates, told E&E. “If that continues to be the norm, we’re not going to have an environment to worry about.”

This article originally appeared on Carlsbad Current-Argus: The glacial movement of regulation