Southwest Power Pool seizes Kansas farmland for transmission lines that serve California, not the Midwest

The Southwest Power Pool, a regional grid operator that coordinates electricity across 14 states in the Midwest and West, is pursuing billions of dollars in new transmission lines through Kansas farmland using eminent domain. The infrastructure, however, is increasingly designed to serve markets in the Western United States and Canada, not the rural communities where the lines are being built.

“Their plan is to deliver a secondary and a tertiary market to the West Coast, California, Oregon, Washington,” Virginia Macha, founder of Stand for the Land Kansas, said on The Kim Monson Show. “They’re developing an integrated market system out there to deliver our power to that section of the country as well as Canada.”

Federal records confirm the expansion. SPP now offers energy services to most Western states and the Canadian province of British Columbia, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. SPP’s Markets+ initiative and its RTO West plans would make it the first regional transmission organization operating in two interconnections by April 2026, according to Utility Dive.

Billions in lines, costs spread across the region

SPP’s original transmission plan called for $18.1 billion in projects to handle projected load growth of up to 99% by 2035, according to the Kansas Reflector. After pushback from the Kansas Corporation Commission and industry stakeholders, the plan was narrowed but still includes approximately $8 billion in transmission buildout.

The most contested project is the Branson 345-kilovolt overlay, a nearly $1 billion, three-part line stretching from the Buffalo Flats substation near Wichita through Oklahoma to Branson, Missouri. The first segment alone, approximately 155 miles from Buffalo Flats to Delaware, Oklahoma, carries an estimated cost of $484 million. The line starts at a major wind power interconnection point and, according to Oklahoma Energy Today, primarily benefits southwest Missouri while Kansas electricity customers help foot the bill.

SPP’s Highway/Byway cost allocation methodology spreads the expense of projects rated 300 kV or greater across the entire SPP region, according to the Kansas Legislative Research Department. Kansas ratepayers pay for transmission built in other states, and the KLRD confirms that SPP’s service territory now extends to Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and British Columbia.

Eminent domain and the push for landowner protection

Under Kansas law, utilities must obtain a siting permit from the KCC before exercising eminent domain. If a landowner and utility cannot agree on compensation, the utility can petition the court to take the land.

Kansas agricultural organizations have pushed back hard. “Farmers are struggling to keep the farm going as the green utilities expand their footprint across Kansas using eminent domain as a weapon,” Macha told the Kansas Reflector in 2023. The Kansas Farm Bureau and Kansas Livestock Association both oppose the use of eminent domain for transmission lines that primarily benefit out-of-state ratepayers.

“While building a for-profit interstate transmission line is a legitimate business, if such a project does not provide a public benefit to Kansas ratepayers, this business’ interests should not be allowed to trump the property rights of Kansans,” Jackie Garagiola, associate general counsel for the Kansas Livestock Association, said at a 2023 legislative hearing.

The property rights fight extends to the federal level. The Department of Energy designated National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors across Kansas as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, invoking federal eminent domain authority. Kansas landowner and organizer Beth Salmans recounted in the Plainsman Herald that a federal judge admonished the DOE, calling the NIETC approach “an egregious overreach by the federal government and a gross misuse of the federal power of eminent domain.” Grassroots opposition led by landowners filing county-by-county resolutions forced the DOE to withdraw the Kansas corridor in December 2024.

Senator Jerry Moran and Representative Tracey Mann introduced the Protecting Our Land from Federal Overreach Act of 2024 to prohibit federal eminent domain for transmission projects. “No person or government agency has the right to use my private property to provide energy to consumers in other states with no benefit to my state or myself without my consent,” Salmans wrote in the Plainsman Herald.

Health and safety concerns

Macha raised concerns on the show about electromagnetic field risks from high-voltage transmission. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency acknowledges that the World Health Organization classifies extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” based on limited evidence of association with childhood leukemia, though scientific studies have not consistently established a link.

California fears isolation as SPP expands west

SPP’s westward expansion is not theoretical. Thirty-one entities joined the effort to develop Markets+ as of 2023, including Arizona Public Service, NV Energy, and Puget Sound Energy. California’s grid operator, CAISO, has taken notice.

“Certainly if a lot of other entities were to join into the SPP Markets+ or beyond, we face the potential of losing participants in the Western Energy Imbalance Market, which could have significant reliability and financial implications for California,” CAISO President and CEO Elliot Mainzer told Utility Dive.

The dynamic confirms a central tension: Midwestern landowners losing property through eminent domain for transmission lines that increasingly connect to markets in the West, while the entities benefiting from expanded market access are in states that bear none of the land-use burden. Kansas ratepayers subsidize the grid and data centers compound demand on the system, but the new customers are on the other side of the Continental Divide.

Macha said constitutional lawyers are investigating a potential federal class action against SPP for overstepping its authority, and that Stand for the Land Kansas is expanding to other Midwestern states.

“Without our land, there is no freedom and there is no America first,” Macha said.