Clean Line puts electric line on hold

Clean Line Energy Partners announced Thursday it is withdrawing its application to the Iowa Utilities Board to build a transmission line across the state, pending a court challenge to the project in Illinois.

Houston-based Clean Line has been working for years to get approval for the Rock Island Clean Line project, a 500-mile line stretching from northwest Iowa across 16 Iowa counties, including rural parts of Linn, Black Hawk, Benton, Buchanan, Cedar and Jones counties.

The line is to deliver 3,500 megawatts of wind-generated power from northwest Iowa wind farms to Illinois and Eastern states - enough energy to power 1.4 million homes per year.

The $2 billion project calls for erecting towers to carry high-voltage overhead lines through 1,540 parcels of land. It has drawn opposition from rural landowners and others.

The Illinois Commerce Commission granted permission for the line in 2014, but the case is tied up in the courts. An Illinois appellate court reversed the commission's decision in August, and last month the state's Supreme Court agreed to review the case.

Clean Line officials said Thursday the timing of the Illinois court case and the schedule set out by the Iowa Utilities Board led to the withdrawal.

'Under the IUB's timeline, we would have been required in January to identify specific parcels for eminent domain application in several counties, and we did not wish to do that at this point,” Clean Line Energy Vice President Hans Detweiler said in an email.

'We prefer to get resolution of the Illinois approval first, and then revisit the Iowa process.”

The Iowa Utilities Board approved a procedural schedule in August that would have required all the parcels pegged for eminent domain to have been identified by May.

That schedule was prompted by a state law signed last spring that would have required a decision in the case by May 27, 2018. The schedule contemplated a hearing on the application in January 2018.

A Clean Line filing with the utilities board Thursday said it did not expect the Illinois Supreme Court to issue a decision before next May.

It added it would not be an 'efficient utilization of resources” to go forward, including submitting documents related to eminent domain proceedings, until the case is decided.

Critics of the project hailed the decision Thursday but were nonetheless cautious.

'I think that we have to be guardedly optimistic because we've been in this for three-plus years,” said Carolyn Sheridan, president of the board for the Preservation of Rural Iowa Alliance.

Still, she called the decision 'a very Merry Christmas for Iowans.”

Opponents have worried that land would be condemned for the project, and they've worked to convince landowners not to sign leases for the line.

Sheridan said they have been successful in limiting the number of leases.

Clean Line officials, though, said even with the withdrawal Thursday, the need for such a transmission line remains.

'Projects backed by private investment like the Rock Island Clean Line address our country's continued demand for electric infrastructure,” Detweiler said.

Company officials have said the Rock Island project would bring about a $7 billion investment in new wind farms and save millions in energy costs.

What happens from here appears to depend largely on what the Illinois Supreme Court does.

The company's Iowa application was filed two years ago, but Detweiler said that much of that time has been taken up with procedural matters and that a new filing does not mean it would take another two years to get to this point again.