CITIZEN POWER ALLIANCE

There is wide agreement that the nation needs to upgrade the aging system that delivers electricity from power plants to consumers - a grid that already is overtaxed and facing a 43 percent increase in demand over the next two decades.
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But opposition is growing to the way the Bush administration has interpreted Congress's instructions to improve it.

The Department of Energy is making it easier to build high- voltage transmission lines in vast tracts of the country, raising objections among environmentalists, lawmakers, and states that would lose the right to veto power lines within their borders.

The 2005 energy act gave the Energy Department the right to designate national-interest electric transmission corridors, where the federal government can step in to permit transmission towers and wires that have been rejected or delayed by states. In these corridors, the federal government can condemn private land along a power-line route.

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