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Witness Testimony
Mr. Richard Blumenthal
Regional Energy Reliability and Security: DOE Authority to Energize the Cross Sound Cable
I appreciate the opportunity to speak on the topic of "Regional Energy Reliability and Security: Department of Energy Authority to Energize the Cross Sound Cable." The Subcommittee's interest in the critical issues of energy reliability and security is timely and appropriate. The Cross-Sound Cable, along with a panoply of other proposed cables and pipelines, threatens to divide us and endanger vital common interests. These pet projects of major energy companies, if spared careful long-range planning and vigorous scrutiny, may wreak havoc in Long Island Sound. We must seek regional cooperation -- not confrontation and conflict. We share critical environmental and consumer values, much as we share Long Island Sound, a precious and precarious natural treasure. Connecticut has been willing to assist Long Island in addressing its electricity shortfalls. We have actively sought to upgrade the existing 1385 cable from Norwalk to Northport in order to stop damaging pollution caused by the present damaged oil-leaking cable. This upgrade will significantly increase the amount of electricity available to Long Island from this cable line. We are also building a 345 KV transmission from Bethel, Connecticut on the border of New York to Norwalk, Connecticut, the site of the 1385 cable. Finally, the Connecticut Siting Council and the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection approved permits for the Cross-Sound Cable, provided it met strict safety and environmental protection standards. This subcommittee should work to develop legislation that encourages public officials to build consensus and to jointly and fairly share the burdens and benefits of siting efficient and environmentally-sound generating and transmission facilities. It should not support hasty, ill-considered suggestions to jettison a carefully crafted and well established state-federal permitting program that has worked effectively for decades. Regional cooperation and long-range planning to provide safe, efficient and reliable electric power is obviously a desirable goal, which I fully support. Three core conditions are essential to any regional plan or system: 1. The plan must recognize that states are best positioned and equipped to evaluate and assess all of the environmental and economic impacts of specific projects. 2. Insofar as a plan imposes direct or indirect costs on ratepayers in one state to help support reliability elsewhere, the benefits of the plan should be shared by ratepayers in both states. The system must be totally transparent and accountable to the states, not just federal regulators. Indeed state consent and advice must be at its core. Consensus is a key precondition, achieved by state agreement and support, not federal edict or preemption. 3. Any plan must respect the fact that states own -- indeed, actually hold legal title to -- the seabed of Long Island Sound in a public trust, as they have since the founding of the Republic. This public trust means that the federal and state governments must seek to minimize or eliminate environmental disruption or damage. The Cross Sound Cable, unfortunately, has so far failed to meet any of these three core conditions. It poses real dangers to Long Island Sound and to economically critical shipping and navigation. It effectively robs Connecticut ratepayers to subsidize Long Island's failure to plan and meet its energy needs, and it attempts to wrest legal control of the Connecticut seabed away from its protection as a "public trust" under state and federal law. In fact, the Cross-Sound Cable, in its present state, suffers from numerous critical flaws, including the following: · It creates a serious and substantial hazard to economically critical shipping and navigation. · It poses a severe threat to the environment by the need to blast the seabed in order to place the cable at the federally required depth. · It is patently illegal. · It costs Connecticut ratepayers millions of dollars to unfairly subsidize Long Island ratepayers and the cable owners. · It undermines incentives for Long Island to meet its obvious and growing energy needs, while Connecticut is taking the tough steps needed for safe and reliable electric supply. · It provides negligible reliability benefits to Connecticut. Shipping and navigation in New Haven Harbor is critical to Connecticut's economy. About 75% of our critical supplies of gasoline and fuel oil arrive by this route. In 2002, the United States Army Corps of Engineers (Army Corps) approved the first ever longitudinal laying of cable in a navigational channel -- in the center of New Haven Harbor's federal navigation channel only after Cross-Sound agreed to a number of conditions. The conditions were to mitigate the possibility that a ship might accidentally drop an anchor onto the cable -- such incidents have occurred many times in Long Island Sound, some disastrously -- or some other navigational accident. The Army Corps, therefore, ordered the cable sunk a minimum of 6 feet below the Long Island Sound seabed, a depth that Cross-Sound accepted as both feasible and appropriate. This depth requirement is not arbitrary. It is needed to ensure navigational safety in the most important energy supply port in the region. In an emergency, a large tanker needs to quickly reduce speed by dropping its anchor, which drags on the seabed floor for several hundred yards. If the anchor snags the cable, it may damage the tanker or alter its course, in addition to severing or disabling the cable. Following this determination of the Army Corps, the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, acting under state and federal law, approved a permit allowing the construction of the cable as long as the construction was consistent with the Army Corps six foot depth requirement. Cross-Sound, after agreeing to meet this important safety condition, failed to do so, claiming that unanticipated obstructions prevented its compliance with the permit requirement. These supposed unanticipated obstructions included bedrock ledge --well and widely known for many years. In fact, in 2000, an Army Corps official had specifically warned that, "It's also likely that the applicant would encounter ledge just below certain reaches of the channel." In other words, the supposed unanticipated obstructions were known and willfully disregarded. Connecticut refused to issue a permit to operate the cable because it failed to meet the federal safety standard. Connecticut's Department of Environmental Protection has treated Cross-Sound Cable like any other applicant that fails to meet permit conditions required to safeguard the environment and public safety. Despite Cross-Sound's efforts, the Army Corps has steadfastly refused to weaken the 6 foot requirement. Turning to the second problem -- environmental damage -- the company concedes that the only way to bury the cable to a safe depth in the harbor would be by blasting the bed of the Sound, drilling holes in the bedrock, filling them with explosives such as dynamite or ammonium nitrate fuel oil and detonating it. In addition, the National Marine Fisheries Service has required as part of its permit for the Cross-Sound Cable that such cable be buried at least 4 feet below the sea floor in order to minimize adverse impacts to essential fish habitat. The cable does not currently meet this requirement. As to the illegality of the cable, the violation is clear. The relevant Federal law - section 404 of the Clean Water Act - appropriately gives Connecticut the legal authority to protect its coastal waters by setting conditions before issuing permits for cable construction. As I have explained, Cross-Sound agreed to and then failed to meet a critical condition - burial at least six feet under the seafloor. Under the Federal Power Act, the Secretary of Energy has the legal authority to override this law, but only in a genuine emergency. In the past, when the Secretary has invoked this power briefly in a genuine emergency, I have not opposed it. Unfortunately, after the August, 2003 blackout ended, Secretary Abraham attempted to use it as an excuse to order the indefinite routine operation of the Cross-Sound Cable. He did so knowing that the cause of the blackout related to the Midwest power grid, and that no evidence has ever existed that the presence or absence of the Cross-Sound cable connection had anything to do with the blackout. Only after I challenged his order in court, and only days before I was scheduled to seek a stay of his order from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, did Secretary Abraham rescind his illegal and unjustified order, effectively conceding its illegality. The evidence is also painfully clear regarding the economic damage the Cross-Sound cable inflicts on Connecticut ratepayers. Routine commercial use of this cable costs Connecticut consumers an estimated $36 million annually, due to the increase in the clearing price of electricity delivered into Connecticut caused by the retransmission of electricity from Connecticut to Long Island over the Cross-Sound cable. Long Island's power generation costs are generally higher that those in Connecticut. Electricity generally flows to the highest priced area. In this instance, cheaper Connecticut power will flow through the cable to Long Island, increasing demand and pushing up the state's electrical rates. As demand rises, power is sought from less efficient plants, called peaking plants, that generate electricity only when the need for power is at its height. Those plants are generally the most expensive to operate, thereby accelerating the upward pressure on prices in Connecticut. Even worse, some of the peaking plants are among the worst polluters, inflicting further damage on Connecticut citizens. Our experience to date fully supports these concerns. While the Cross-Sound Cable was operating, 99% of all transmitted electricity flowed from Connecticut to Long Island. Future forecasts of energy needs show that this pattern will continue. The economic impact on Connecticut is even more unfair because Long Island's current power deficit is entirely of its own making. LIPA has failed to develop and build new generating and transmission facilities -- not one major plant in more than 10 years -- or develop any long term plans. LIPA admitted that it seeks to increase power transmission to Long Island in order to avoid building needed generators on Long Island. LIPA looks to everyone else to site its power plants -- a classic NIMBY approach. Astonishingly, as Connecticut seeks to upgrade the Norwalk to Northport cable and thereby increase the amount of electricity available to Long Island on an emergency basis, LIPA has refused to pay for its share of the upgrade. As a condition for payment, LIPA insists that this cable be used for routine electricity supply for Long Island, exacerbating the reliability problems that already exist in southwestern Connecticut. Upgrading the Norwalk to Northport cable is essential to stop its leaking of chemicals into the Sound and to repair its severed sections, assuring that it can operate at full capacity when necessary. We have supported replacing and upgrading this vital link. LIPA has shunned its responsibility to do the same. In contrast to LIPA, the State of Connecticut has recently developed more than 2,000 megawatts of additional electrical power and is upgrading approximately one hundred miles of transmission lines to more efficiently move electricity throughout the state. The idea that Connecticut ratepayers should be effectively compelled to subsidize LIPA's arrogant improvidence is completely unacceptable, even outrageous. Finally, in spite of all the sound and fury, the sad truth is that while use of the cable would save money for New York at Connecticut's expense, it would not significantly improve Connecticut's power reliability. After months of careful study, the Connecticut Siting Council found that it would enhance electricity reliability in Connecticut by less than two-tenths of one percent, an utterly negligible change. No one has ever seriously contested this figure. Recent claims that the cable has been repeatedly used to provide necessary "voltage stabilization" to Connecticut are also completely misleading. In fact, voltage stabilization is available to Connecticut from numerous generators and substations. The Cross-Sound cable adds no appreciable reliability for voltage stabilization to other presently existing sources in Connecticut. Voltage stabilization was amply available before Cross-Sound and remains sufficient after its shut-down. No one disputes the Secretary of Energy's existing legal authority to act quickly in a real emergency to prevent a blackout on Long Island. In fact, Cross Sound seeks to operate the cable routinely, moving electric voltage to Long Island and money to itself. It offers no answer to Long Island's self-inflicted problems. Congress should learn from our experience with the Cross-Sound Cable and enact common-sense energy policies that would require public officials to build consensus and jointly and fairly share the burdens and benefits of siting efficient and environmentally sound generating and transmission facilities. Related Documents |
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