Columbia Daily Tribune: Grain Belt supporters make late push for project
By JODIE JACKSON JR.
Sunday, June 28, 2015
CENTRALIA — As the owner of a trucking and ready-mix concrete company, Cindy O’Laughlin said she is keenly aware that rural Missouri needs jobs, tax revenue and incentives for businesses and residents not to leave their communities.
Those are the primary reasons that O’Laughlin, who owns Leo O’Laughlin Inc. in Shelbina, supports the Grain Belt Clean Line Express. The proposed $2 billion, 780-mile transmission line would carry wind-generated electricity from Kansas through Missouri and Illinois to Indiana.
The project needs regulatory approval in Missouri and Illinois. The staff of the Missouri Public Service Commission has recommended rejecting Clean Line Energy’s application for a certificate of convenience, the document that is necessary to start the project in Missouri.
Clean Line officials, along with business partners and supportive landowners, gathered Thursday at Hubbell Power Systems in Centralia to tout the benefits of the project. The PSC is expected to make a decision on the Grain Belt transmission line project in the coming weeks and has stopped collecting public comment and evidence in the case.
“A project of this size hasn’t come through in 10 or 15 years,” O’Laughlin said. There’s no guarantee that her company would be awarded a bid for part of the job, but the project potentially could create work for her 40 employees.
“We just want an opportunity,” O’Laughlin said. Her company has locations in Shelbina, Macon and Marceline — along the Highway 36 corridor — in counties that have dwindling tax bases, she said.
The counties and communities along the proposed Grain Belt transmission route, which bisects the southern portion of Randolph County, need tax revenue for schools, ambulance and library districts, and other entities, O’Laughlin said. Without projects like Grain Belt, she said, it’s not clear what will generate that revenue.
Thousands of property owners oppose the proposed project. Many cite concerns over land condemnation and eminent domain authority for Clean Line Energy if the PSC approves the project.
Randolph County resident Donna Inglis said Thursday that she supports the Grain Belt Express, which would cross through her 125-acre farm. She said the company has offered more compensation — which she had not accepted — than three pipeline companies that have easements on her farm.
“Our neighbors and some friends are opposed to it,” she said. Inglis said some people have been “fear-mongering” to flame opposition to the project. “That doesn’t set well with me.”
