Mr. Hancock:
I'm sure that you know that 99% of the electricity produced in West Virginia comes from coal. There are some of us in WV who have seen enough of the greedy and rapid exploitation of our (and your) natural resources and the deterioration of our collective environment. I'm sure that you know the consequences of mountain top removal (MTR). If not, come to West Virginia, and I will show you around.
I am descended from a coal mining family, and I am proud to be a West Virginia NIMBY. The PATH line is nowhere near our home, but I will fight tooth and nail to prevent the continued rape of our state so that those in other states do not bear the consequences of electrical energy generation whatever that source. The PATH line is nothing more than a "coal by wire" line as its original proponents envisioned.
What you are promoting is more destruction of our mountains by MTR, more polluted streams, more land subsidence, lower air quality throughout the northeast, and more illness for those living near the generation and disturbed sites.
There are better alternatives. Perhaps you could lead the way in exploring those.
Thanks for the opportunity to express my intense desire to keep our state whole.

The state really needs to start making the case for projects like these. They let a local minority of citizens screw everything up for all the other residents of Maryland. We need to do what's best for the state to help it grow. These power lines should be built.

I completely understand the opinion of NIMBY groups. However, projects like these are a necessary evil to help the rest of the state thrive. The same thing goes for rail projects, highways, and water lines. Many of these have been derailed by NIMBY groups too. We need to stop living in the short term local narrow view and start thinking about long term state-wide growth.

Projects such as this should be granted emminent domain.

It is not an issue of the substation being built, but the proximity to the surrounding homes. There were valid and humanistic reasons for the PATH project not being built there, yet you chose to highlight only the most extreme "terrorist" opinion. I am thinking that you do not have all the facts in order. Please listen to both sides of the case before publishing such biased material. Thanks.

1)Allegheny has not proven the need for PATH as yet either in Maryland, Virginia or West Virginia.
2)How about Allegheny's guaranteed 14.3% ROI on this now $2.1billion deal!!!
3)They(Allegheny) are proposing to build this monster power sub-station right in the middle (in a one mile diameter)of 1300 homes in Mount Airy when there are any number of other suitable sites available.
4)Very little (12%) of the power is planned to be used in Maryland, with next to nothing in Frederick County.
5)Lastly, they have spoken with "folked tongue" to our citizens as well as to our elected officials concerning their proposal.

Mr. Hancock - I'm not sure in the space allotted I can list all the errors (both of omission and commission) and misstatements in your blog entry. But I'll try:
- You make no mention of the rate increases that Maryland residents (along with 12 other states and DC) will see to pay for PATH;
- You make no mention of the 1300 homes within one mile of the proposed site;
- You make no mention of the substation's design to include bays for THREE NEW LINES to come out of it (one 765-kV and two 500-kV) (which were acknowledged at the very planning commission meeting you dismiss, and one of which appears in the latest planning documents from PJM, the regional transmission organization);
- You make no mention of your own governor's support for the development of off-shore wind farms precisely to serve the communities you claim are facing shortages;
- You say PATH will bring in "badly needed power;" no, it's not. If we're suffering a "power shortage," why did AEP - one of the two companies partnering on this project - lay off and/or buy out 10% of its entire workforce because of falling demand less than six months ago? (This one's really easy to document, you know!)
- Did you deliberately ignore the Montgomery County Council's hearing on Pepco's dismal performance in providing reliable power this summer? It had everything to do with lack of maintenance and manpower, not "blackouts from lack of electricity."

I could go on, and on, and on, but before you sneer about NIMBYs, let me point out something: Those opposing this project have to know the applicant's arguments in depth in order to prove or disprove the companies' claims of "need." You, on the other hand, demonstrate that you're perfectly willing to take as gospel what these companies tell you, even though they have hundreds of millions of dollars of pure profit at stake. From your blog entry, it appears you never even bothered to contact any of the opponents, even though they have websites, email contacts and phones, to challenge them to prove their case to you.

I don't normally direct personal criticism at a journalist; I know the field is struggling, and there's far too much to cover and not enough people to do it. But this is a perfect example of WHY newspapers are struggling; not only do you have nothing enlightening to add to the conversation, you're actively participating in spreading the corporate line.

In response to the comment posted by Bob McLearen on Sept. 24... One question is: Where will the large amount of power coming to the proposed Kemptown Substation near Mount Airy, MD be used? The Kemptown Sub. is decidely NOT the end point for the new system. Information on the Internet reveals a longstanding and ongoing plan to install a 765 kV transmission line from Kemptown to the Deans Substation in Middlesex County, New Jersey ( http://www.aep.com/newsroom/resources/docs/AEP_InterstateProjectRouteMap.pdf OR http://www.aep.com/about/i765project/docs/AEP_I-765.pdf); ostensibly the new 765 kV towers and lines would be built next to the existing 500 kV towers that currently run northward across I-70 and thence around the west side of Mount Airy to where they turn to the east and corss over MD-27 just north of Mount Airy and would continue in a north to northeasterly direction toward New Jersey. I seem to recall other information showing that a new 765 kV (or twin 500 kV) line would also be extended from Kemptown southeasterly toward Baltimore (into BGE's service area), which I think was what the post by "PowerMAD" mentions. Mr. McLearen's question as to how much of the power will be used in Maryland is a valid concern for electricity customers in our State. Actually, the information on the Internet shows the overall plan to be on a massive scale that is NATIONWIDE (NIETC) with a stated intent of addressing a large number of areas where there is 'congestion' and unreliability in the electrical grid with a goal being to prevent the extensive power blackouts that occurred in the Mid Atlantic region a number of years ago.

The "extensive power blackouts that occurred in the Mid Atlantic region a number of years ago" had absolutely NOTHING to do with the amount of transmission capacity. Suggestion that they did is blatant fear mongering on the part of the power companies. We do not need additional transmission lines to prevent blackouts, brownouts, or increase "reliability". In fact, new transmission lines like PATH will serve only to make our grid less reliable. When the entire east coast is dependent upon just one high voltage transmission line hundreds of miles long and local generation has been priced out of business, the risk of blackouts increases. Recent major blackouts have been caused by human error, and a grid that is even more interconnected increases the geographical area affected when human error occurs. PATH will also increase the payload of a possible, simple terroristic action of taking down just one tower in the sparsely populated hills of WV, which would blackout all the population centers on the east coast. If these areas no longer have localized generation to rely on, they will be without power for quite a while while repairs are made.

PATH is NOT a good idea for a lot of reasons, reliability being only one of them.

BTW, Mr. Hancock, the blackout of 2003 - which the power companies point to as proof of the need to improve reliability of the grid - actually demonstrated something else. Go to this link: http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-9/iss-5/p8.html. It's "What's wrong with the electric grid?" and it appeared in the Oct/Nov issue of Industrial Physicist magazine - not light reading, but reasonably understandable by laypeople.

The article is about that blackout, and it makes a number of important points, two of which are particularly germane to your understanding. First, the blackout was caused by human error (lack of maintenance of rights-of-way, AND operator failures that led to the cascade of outages). Second, the addition of long-distance transmission will make the grid MORE unreliable, not less.

Mr. Hancock adopts a tone in this column suggesting that any time someone adopts a "NIMBY" attitude towards something, they are irrational, uninformed, and selfish. Perhaps he should consider that fact that there are times when intelligent, well-informed citizens can plainly realize that a proposed massive industrial complex doesn't belong in the middle of a residential residential neighborhood. The Kemptown substation, as proposed, is not sited for a rural location, but right in the middle of a densely populated suburban Baltimore-DC community. If PATH is needed as proposed, which in itself is debatable, then such a substation belongs well west of Frederick and not in many families backyards. If Mr. Hancock believes it unreasonable to not wish to live next to this thing, then I trust he is shopping for a home that backs up to it. He should certainly be able to get a good deal, since the substation appears to already be hurting nearby property values. It is also a low, cheap trick to use the terrorist example as cited in the column to paint neighbors as irrationally fearful. This is an extreme case of using something out of context to twist it to his means. The argument of vulnerability when examined in context, while perhaps not the biggest issue with the substation, is not farfetched when this will be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, substation ever built by any power company.