The highly-organized opposition to proposed 765kV transmission lines from the Lower Colorado River Authority’s TSC Bell County East site to Big Hill in the Permian Basin are girding-up to face the Goliath of Big Energy during merit hearings slated for next week, according to an update on May 31 from Friends of the San Saba River’s (FOSS) Dave Clark.
Clark reports the hearings will begin at 9 a.m. each day from June 8-12 and affected landowner-intervenors will be able to participate in-person or by video conference, while the public will be able to watch the hearings live on YouTube.
Based on recent similar cases, the hearing will consist of cross-examination of the Oncor and LCRA TSC witnesses, the PUC staff engineer witness, and other intervenors or experts that have been designated for cross-examination.
The cross-examination of the Oncor and LCRA TSC witnesses will happen first and last approximately three days. The cross-examination of the PUC staff engineer will last approximately one day, and the cross-examination of the other witnesses will also last a day.
The Oncor and LCRA TSC witnesses will likely testify together as a panel consisting of four or five witnesses.
After the hearing, the parties will file written closing arguments consisting of initial briefs by June 19th and reply briefs by June 26th.
Clark goes on to report there are approximately 600 landowner intervenors in this contested case, which is comparable to the number of intervenors in the recent “Dinosaur” case.
However, the volume of direct testimony and discovery is significantly higher in the BCE case according to a recently filed motion:
- Over 700 filings of direct testimony have been submitted in the BCE case consisting of 38,600 pages. The Dinosaur case had 500 direct testimony filings consisting of almost 9,600 pages.
- In the BCE case, 133 Request for Information (RFI) Discovery filings were submitted to Oncor and LCRA TSC consisting of over 2,300 questions. This compares to 41 RFI filings in the Dinosaur case consisting of 825 questions.
- Finally, there are 81 law firms are involved in this case compared to 50 firms in the Dinosaur case.
According to Clark, the hearings will be overseen by three administrative law judges assigened by the state, and they will issue a written Proposal for Decision roughly 60 days from conclusion.
The final decision then rests with the Public Utility Commission, expected to issue a ruling on or about September 22, roughly 180 days after Oncor and LCRA TSC filed their applications.
- Oncor’s ratepayers will pay for this public relations campaign.
- Oncor waited until all Intervenor testimony was filed for the last 765kV case (Bell County East) and waited until the deadline passed for serving discovery on Oncor.
- Oncor’s public relations campaign is nothing more than Oncor’s attempt to silence landowners who are trying to stop Oncor from destroying their property in the Hill Country, Central Texas and West Texas.
Oncor’s public relations campaign proves that Oncor has really been driving the PUC and ERCOT to push ahead with these 765kV transmission lines using a decades old routing methodology that is horrible for landowners and that will destroy a significant part of the Hill Country and Central Texas.
