. . . Now what do you do?

First, you have to face the fact that an electric utility has a right under Texas law to condemn land for transmission line right-of-way (ROW). There are only two major issues: routing and money.

The utility will identify several plausible routes for the lines.

If the utility does not offer you what you think it is worth to string a line across your property, you can take your case to the court in your county with jurisdiction over eminent domain cases (usually a County Court at Law). The way the question will be put is: how much less you could sell your property for, taking the line into account?

Second, there are two bodies with considerable say over whether this line will be approved. The first is, of course, the Public Utility Commission of Texas. Utilities in Texas must have the PUC's permission -- what's called a "certificate of convenience and necessity" (CCN) -- to construct a transmission line. The Commission doesn't go about things exactly the same way as anyone else. While it gives "civilian" participants some slack, its business is very technical, its jargon odd, and its procedures sometimes daunting. I hope to make things a little easier.

The second important body is a semi-private entity called the "ERCOT ISO." For immediate purposes, you only need to know that it is responsible for judging whether a particular line is necessary to ensure reliability. If it does, the Commission's rules require that it decide -- up or down -- within 180 days after the application is filed. (For other transmission projects, the deadline is one year.) That tight a schedule means a lot of things have to happen very fast (at least, fast as lawyers calculate time). In one recent ISO-endorsed project, the hearing on the merits (what in regular courts would be called the trial) was set about four months after the initial filing.

Briefly, these are the steps:

Find out what's going on.
Decide if you want to intervene.
If you decide to intervene, put together your case.
Be prepared to negotiate with the utility -- and maybe with your neighbors as well.

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