Comment EI-23615
Received or sent (printed as 6/10/2016)
Dear STB, I stumbled across news of the proposed Great Lakes Basin Transportation rail line and the STB scoping quite by accident. As a teacher with a MS in curriculum and instruction I had been volunteering my skill set to help inform communities of the eminent domain for private gain case of Clean Line Energy Partners, LLC (CLEP). CLEP is proposing a multistate HVDC electrical transmission lines. I have nested 4 years of my life researching and sharing information with the Missouri Public Service Commission Iowa Utility Board, DOE and Illinois Commerce Commission. I view my efforts as protecting land owner rights from precedent setting LLC threats. It has become a full time unpaid job. My husband and I farm a few hundred acres and rent most of it but I am looking toward the future of my children and neighbors in the farming community, many landowners of which are quite elderly. Mid March 2015 I received a text asking me about GLB. A landowner in a neighboring community was aware I’d been involved with eminent domain and reached out to me. The last three months I have devoted hours into gathering and disseminating information. I have done my due diligence in trying to protect the land entrusted to my family during my life time. None of the land we farm is on the preferred route as designated by the GLB website but we do farm within the 60 mile corridor being scoped. I stumbled across the GLB proposal but many hundreds of thousands of people in the EIS study corridor are unaware of the proposal. I submit the landowners, many of which make their living and pay taxes from their land have not been provided with necessary information. The landowners are the ones who best know where the environmental challenges are located. They know their soil and its drainage issues. Doing an EIS without directly notifying each landowner and including them makes no sense. Might I also add that the potentially impacted landowners have not been afforded due process and even if they stumbled across the GLB proposal can not get reliable information regarding a determination of need and use. Who determined a private group of investors yet to be disclosed have the right to build a rail way when there is no proof of need or financial means? I have done my due diligence and yet feel the frustration in the lack of information. How is it my job and the job of those potentially impacted who bear the burden of risk? Where are the answers we seek? Please deny GBL. GLB should never have been given a waiver of the 6 months and should have had to submit an application which would hold them accountable for the contradictory information they have been putting forth.
Submitted by: Susan Sack · Block RICL/Block GBE · Mendota, ILLINOIS
The Board publishes this comment in its environmental-comment table for this proceeding. It is quoted here as printed; nothing is inferred from it, and it states the commenter's own position in their own words, not this record's.
Permanent address docketyard.org/d/FD-35952/comment/EI-23615 · back to the docket sheet