Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
The Jefferson County Planning Commission continues working on an ordinance that aims to regulate high-voltage transmission lines at the local level in the interest of public safety – a measure that is expected will be challenged in court.
The measure, which is really an amendment to the transportation/ utility element of the Land Development Code (LDC), has undergone several revisions to date, the latest at a workshop on Thursday, Jan. 9.
At which workshop the planners heard proposed language from Attorney David Collins, the county commission's legal counsel in its attempted negotiations with NextEra/Gulf Power, the utility company that is seeking to install a 161kV transmission line across Jefferson County – part of a greater project that will run 176 miles from Columbia County to Jackson County.
Among the language additions that Collins proposed for inclusion in the amendment:
• The applicant must submit an explanation or evidence to the Jefferson County Commission why the transmission line can't go underground. “Costs are not considered an explanation or evidence,” the recommendation states.
• If said explanation or evidence satisfies the Jefferson County Commission as to the unfeasibility of burying the line, the applicant must submit a plan and/or evidence that construction and usage of the above-ground transmission lines addresses the safety concerns and inherent dangers of the transmission line.
Regardless whether the transmission line is located above or below ground, the applicant must submit a remedial plan – “including acceptance of proportional liability.” • The plan must also include “sufficient liability insurance coverage, or self insurance, by placing sufficient funds into the registry of the courts to cover the costs, damages, and other harm to the county, should an accident involving, or caused by, said transmission lines.
Collins didn't mince words about why he was seeking the additions.
“The reason I'm suggesting that you beef up safety is because the court is less likely to strike down a local laws that deals with safety when it comes to state preemption,” he said.
Otherwise, Collins said, local governments were barred from making laws that were inconsistent with state exemption.
Collins said he didn't take issue with state exemption per se. It was often the case that state exemption was necessary, given the state's diversity and multiplicity of local governments, he said. Allowed to act independently absent state oversight and its imposition of uniformity, Florida could well become a patchwork of contradictory regulations that were largely parochial in nature, Collins said.
The problem with state preemption relative to transmission lines specifically was that the state had acted to pervert the process and fashion a law that took local governments out of the equation when it came to regulating transmission lines solely to benefit the utility companies, he said.
Transmission lines were inherently a dangerous commodity, Collins said, citing the devastating wildfires in California as an example of disasters attributed to power lines. And right now, he said, no laws existed to hold large corporations accountable if their lines created disasters. What he wanted, Collins said, was to have a local law in place in the eventuality of a disaster occurring locally.
His rationale for the recommended language was that he expected litigation, Collins said.
“I'm suggesting that the ordinance include the safety language because I'm anticipating litigation if NextEra doesn't negotiate with the county or relocates,” he said.
He also wanted to be prepared in the event the lawsuit ended up in federal court, he said.
“I anticipate taking this to a federal judge and the judge saying, 'Mr. Collins, don't you understand state preemption?' And I will say, we worked on this law to protect the safety and fiscal interest of our county. And yes, we're doing it in anticipation of a NextEra lawsuit. We have no secrets here.”
Although the project is rightfully Gulf Power's, Collins generally attributes it to NextEra, which is the parent company of Gulf Power and Florida Power and Light Company (FPL).
Formally called the North Florida Resiliency Connection, the proposed 161kV line is supposed to connect the FPL Raven Substation in Columbia County to the Gulf Power PC Sinai Cemetery Substation in Jackson County.
The Jefferson County Planning Commission's next workshop on the transmission line amendment was scheduled for 6 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 23.