Last week's significant blackout stretching across Southern California, Arizona, and Mexico serves as a stark reminder that the productivity and energy security of our nation remains highly vulnerable to the shortcomings of an aging energy infrastructure.

Not unlike the August 2003 blackout that left approximately fifty million people across the eastern United States and Canada without power, last week's blackout is said to have started when a single transmission line in Arizona tripped off line. This time a utility worker's misstep, instead of an improperly-maintained tree, is to be blamed for shuttering businesses, stores, restaurants, and schools, while causing endless traffic gridlock throughout the Southland. This cascading outage left approximately four million people across two states and northwestern Mexico in the dark. Without the Pacific Ocean serving as a barrier to the further spread of this disturbance, the economic impact and scope of this outage may have been significantly greater.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct 2005) was designed to prevent August 2003 from ever happening again. Along with a significantly overhauled electric reliability regime, EPAct 2005 also set forth a federal backstop siting regime intended to spur the development of needed new transmission infrastructure in the areas that need it most, while preventing individual states and NIMBY activists from throwing up roadblocks to energy infrastructure that clearly has interstate (and often national) implications. Unfortunately, the EPAct 2005 National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor (NIETC) process has been stymied in the courts and has failed to even reduce these roadblocks or get any new transmission built.

Ironically, the first potential test of the oft-challenged NIETC process was set to involve a proposed transmission line from Southern California into Arizona. While the first stages of the NIETC siting process were initiated with respect to this project, the effort was later withdrawn. If this previously-proposed line had been built as initially planned, it quite possibly could have mitigated or even completely averted last week's significant shutdown of the power grid. It is again clear that we need to fix the byzantine process that halts many transmission projects before the first pole is sunk into the ground. The transmission system is truly interstate in nature, and the events last week and back in August 2003 prove this without any doubt.

While it is appropriate to applaud the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for now exploring the opportunity to resurrect the dormant NIETC siting tool through the delegation of all EPAct 2005 transmission siting authority to FERC, this approach would only serve as a band-aid where significant surgery to the NIETC provisions is necessary.

On a substantive basis, while the proposal to have FERC evaluate and designate corridors only on a case-by-case basis should alleviate the 9th Circuit's concern in California Wilderness Coalition v. DOE, it will not be sufficient to sidestep the Piedmont Environmental Council v. FERC limitation on the NIETC process only applying where a state has failed to act on a transmission siting request within one year.

DOE solicited comments on this new proposal to be submitted by last Friday. One such comment came from Senator Jeff Bingaman, the Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. While he noted his ongoing support for an enhanced federal role in the siting of electric transmission infrastructure, he cautioned DOE to not sidestep the political bargain reached to bifurcate federal siting authority roles in EPAct 2005. This letter will likely carry great weight during the DOE's analysis.

This blackout should give Congress license to urgently redress the country's transmission siting challenges. The needed surgical approach to transmission siting under EPAct 2005 would instead grant FERC the primary siting authority that it currently enjoys - and masterfully employs - with respect to interstate gas pipelines. Consistent with Chairman Bingaman's comments, it is true that FERC cannot unilaterally heal the wounded language of EPAct 2005 through a delegation of authority from DOE. However, FERC will be able to immediately make strides in siting transmission, given its significant energy project siting experience, as soon as Congress grants the agency with the primary siting authority it needs in order to facilitate the development of a 21st Century electric grid. Congress can - and should - make this a top priority given the fact that more electric transmission is needed to enhance America's energy security and broaden its access to diverse energy resources.

Electrons are neither Republican nor Democratic. Instead, they serve as an essential fuel of American commerce and industry and the jobs concomitant thereto. While States' rights are important to uphold, they should not be retained in instances where interstate commerce is handicapped as a result. Our electric grid has developed into one of the most complex interstate - and international - machines on the planet. Our legislators and regulators should come to terms with this fact and facilitate the modernization of the North American transmission grid consistent with this reality.