granted PSEG a preliminary injunction

Despite fierce opposition from Maryland landowners, workers for a New Jersey based power company can access private land to survey for the proposed Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project power line, a federal judge ruled.

U.S. District Judge Adam B. Abelson, in a 52-page opinion handed down Friday, dissected the landowners’ arguments one-by-one, including their assertion that the power company could not be granted access rights because it was not a “body politic or corporate having the power of eminent domain.”

Abelson also rejected the landowners’ attempt to dismiss the lawsuit that was filed in April by PSEG — the Public Service Enterprise Group — against more than 100 landowners along the 67-mile power line route who had refused to allow environmental surveyors on their property.

Attorneys for the landowners were still evaluating the ruling from the U.S. District Court for Maryland and determining next steps, said Joanne Frederick, one of the landowners and head of the group Stop MPRP. The groups of property owners are likely to make their decision “in the coming days,” Frederick said.

A PSEG spokesperson said landowners can expect to receive copies of the judge’s decision by certified mail within a week, but William J. Smith declined to comment on when the power company might begin notifying landowners of its intent to conduct surveys on their property.

“We appreciate the Court’s careful consideration of the facts and application of the law in this matter. We are currently reviewing the decision for the next steps in the process,” Smith wrote in a statement.

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The Piedmont project was selected by the electricity grid operator serving Maryland — PJM Interconnection — to fulfill a need for more transmission infrastructure amid power plant retirements and a surge in demand for electricity. PJM declared PSEG as the “designated entity” to develop the new line that would connect Allegheny Power System’s Doubs substation in Frederick County to Baltimore Gas and Electric’s Conastone Station in northern Baltimore County.

But now it is the Maryland Public Service Commission that must decide whether the power line should be green-lit. Maryland officials, namely the Maryland Power Plant Research Program (PPRP), concluded that various types of environmental surveys are needed for the PSC to decide whether to issue a certification for the project, called a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity.

Even though state officials knew some property owners were denying access to surveyors, PPRP said it “saw no option other than to direct PSEG to obtain access to properties in order to conduct ‘field studies'” of potential environmental and socioeconomic problems with the proposed route. That led to the PSEG lawsuit to force landowners to allow access.

In response to the PSEG lawsuit, the landowners argued that the company was not a “body politic or corporate having the power of eminent domain,” but would only get that power after it received the certificate from the PSC allowing the project to go ahead.

Abelson disagreed.

“That is clearly not what the General Assembly had in mind,” he wrote in his decision.

It would not make sense for the surveys to come only after the PSC made its final decision on whether the power line should move forward, since it needs the surveys to make that decision, Abelson said.

“The Court sees no reason to second-guess the PPRP’s determination that conducting these studies would be in the public interest,” Abelson wrote.

Abelson said that the company showed it would suffer “irreparable harm” without the ability to do the surveys, and that an injunction allowing the surveys is in the public interest.

“If the project is delayed, PSEG is likely to lose any revenue it would otherwise have received had PSEG been able to meet the June 1, 2027 in-service deadline” for the power line, Abelson wrote. “In the absence of conducting these surveys, PSEG risks a level of delay that will almost certainly entail some prospective financial harms.”

Abelson’s preliminary injunction lets PSEG representatives enter a property and “remain … to the extent reasonably necessary to make surveys, run lines or levels, or obtain information relating to the acquisition and future use of the properties in connection with the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project.” It requires that the company provide at least 24 hours of notice of its visits by “taping a notice on the front door.”

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Frederick called the prospect of that happening “terrifying.”

“Speaking as a landowner … the fact that someone can simply walk up to your front door, post a notice and have unfettered access to your property? That is not acceptable,” she said.

“People are being asked to compromise their constitutional rights, or violate a federal court order,” Frederick said. “People across Maryland are being put in an untenable position.”

At least one county sheriff — Carroll County Sheriff Jim DeWees — told the Baltimore Sun after the ruling that he does not plan to enforce the court order.

“I’m still going to stand with the landowners … I’ll stand with them until the bitter end and use whatever authority I have as the sheriff to stop it,” DeWees told The Sun, which first reported the ruling.

In his ruling, Abelson noted that state law provides that anyone obstructing authorized surveyors can be “punished as for contempt of court.”

Frederick argues that PSEG is using its June 2027 deadline from PJM to expedite the proceedings, and infringe upon the rights of landowners.

“It’s not the landowners’ fault that this timeline is short,” she said. “We’re being asked to forgo our property rights because someone else is late.”