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The American Transmission Company has been trying to build a high-power transmission line between Middleton and Iowa for about two decades.
The unthinkable has happened. The next NFL season will not feature Tom Brady.
And now for something even more improbable: the American Transmission Company (ATC) may finally have met its match. Through two decades of existence and dozens of big power line projects, ATC has never been denied. They build and build and build, and profit and profit and profit. As a regulated utility they’re guaranteed a 10 percent return, so they have an incentive to build power lines, and the bigger and more expensive the better.
That certainly has been the case with the Cardinal-Hickory Creek line, which would run from Iowa to Middleton. After much controversy, ATC and its partners ITC Midwest and Dairyland Power won approval for the line, which was designed to bring in power from western states. Those approvals included ones from Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission and from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to cross a refuge at the Mississippi River.
And last year they started to build.
In fact, the company estimates they’ve already sunk $161 million in building the line starting at either end. But the problem comes in between. The line needs to cross the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge.
Last month a federal judge said that ATC could not cross the river through the refuge. “Simply put, the court ruled that the huge high-voltage transmission line and 20-story high towers are not ‘compatible’ with the purpose of a protected National Wildlife Refuge,” explained lead attorney Howard Learner. Learner runs the Environmental Law and Policy Center, which is representing the Driftless Area Land Conservancy, the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation and two other plaintiffs in the suit.
This is no small hurdle as it means that ATC would have to go about 30 miles downstream to Dubuque (which has already rejected a line through their city) or about the same distance upstream at Prairie du Chien. Either way it would mean that this would be a very different route, certainly requiring new environmental impact statements and a new round of reviews and approvals.
But that’s not stopping ATC. They continue to build. Why? Well, Federal Judge William Conley put it bluntly in his blistering decision, issued on Jan. 14, siding with the ELPC and its clients. He called ATC’s gambit “an orchestrated train wreck.”
Here’s what Conley wrote: “The Utilities are pushing forward with construction on either side of the Refuge, even without an approved path through the Refuge, in order to make any subsequent challenge to a Refuge crossing extremely prejudicial to their sunk investment, which will fall on their ratepayers regardless of completion of the CHC project, along with a guaranteed return on the Utilities’ investment in the project.”
In other words, Conley called them out on their game. ATC is trying to put his court in a bind by ignoring the fact that they now have no way to cross the river, sinking hundreds of millions of dollars in building the line on either side of it, and then inciting public pressure to force a reversal of his decision later on. And, even if they ultimately must abandon it altogether, they still could get their 10 percent profit on the wasted effort.
“Because the transmission companies cannot cut a wide swath through the middle of the protected Refuge at Cassville, their current routes in Wisconsin and Iowa amount to two very costly transmission line segments to nowhere,” Learner told me.“The transmission companies, nonetheless, are being arrogant bullies by clear-cutting and bulldozing through people’s property and waterways to the very edges on both sides of the protected National Wildlife Refuge. They want to keep charging consumers money as they run up the costs, and are causing unnecessary destruction to property and ecological values.”
Wisconsin’s Citizens Utility Board (CUB) agrees. On Jan. 28, CUB Executive Director Tom Content sent the PSC a letter asking them to order ATC to halt construction and to reopen the case to consider what should happen next. “Each day that the Utilities continue with construction is a day they are knowingly and intentionally spending Wisconsin customer dollars not just imprudently, but recklessly,” Content wrote.
And, Content noted in his letter, it gets even worse. Because ATC has no plausible way to cross the river now, it means that the regional benefit of bringing in power from the west is cut off. That, in turn, could mean that the entire cost of what ATC builds in Wisconsin could be borne not by customers throughout the Midwest, but by Wisconsin ratepayers alone. That would be a triple whammy for Wisconsinites: get stuck with an ugly scar across the sensitive Driftless area, pay ATC and its partners a tidy profit for that privilege, and get to pick up the entire costs while we’re at it.
As of this writing the PSC has not responded to CUB’s request. Commission Chair Rebecca Cameron Valcq, a career-long utility regulation lawyer appointed by Gov. Tony Evers, and Commissioner Ellen Nowak, a pro-utility holdover appointee of former Gov. Scott Walker, have been solidly, even militantly, behind this project. The third commissioner, Tyler Huebner, another Evers appointee, has recused himself because he once lobbied for the line.
But, on the other hand, CUB’s case seems irrefutable. If this PSC refuses their request that would be beyond irresponsible. And once again we’d have to wonder what Evers was thinking when he made those appointments.
A lawsuit charging that former Commission Chair Mike Huebsch had a conflict of interest when he voted for the line is working its way through a separate court. If ELPC is successful on that one it could mean that the whole thing would be taken out of the PSC’s hands and given over to a special master to decide.
So, what’s the bottom line? Has ATC finally lost a game? It’s not certain yet, but think of it this way. It’s the fourth quarter and they’re down a couple touchdowns. If Tom Brady were quarterbacking for them they might yet pull it out. But he’s retired.
Dave Cieslewicz is a writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. He also blogs at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos.
