Press Releases

U.S. Senators John Boozman and Tom Cotton – along with Congressmen Rick Crawford, French Hill, Steve Womack, and Bruce Westerman – are questioning the timing of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) release of its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the Plains and Eastern Clean Line Transmission Project.  In a letter sent Wednesday to DOE Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, the members expressed concern because they have yet to receive answers to the questions asked in a September letter about the department’s potential partnership with the Clean Line project. 

“The Department should not have issued the FEIS before responding to our September 14 letter, which specifically urged that ‘in your initial response to this letter, please provide an anticipated timeline for a comprehensive response and production of requested information.  If the Department can more quickly produce a complete response through a series of partial productions and responses, please provide an anticipated timeline for such productions and responses.’  This request, to date, has also been disregarded,” members wrote in the letter. 

Read both letters in their entirety here.

Members also requested a meeting with Secretary Moniz and urged that DOE not issue a final decision on the project until the Secretary completely and thoroughly responds to the September 14, 2015, letter.

DOE is considering the use of Section 1222 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (P.L. 109–58) to partner in an energy transmission project in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee.  Throughout the history of electric transmission siting, transmission projects have been reviewed and approved at the state level.

Congressman Steve Womack has represented Arkansas’s Third Congressional District since 2011 and serves on the House Appropriations Defense, Financial Services and General Government, and Labor-Health and Human Services subcommittees and the House Committee on the Budget.

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