Grain Belt Express Project Clears Legal Hurdle in Missouri

An alumnus of the University of Arkansas School of Law, Douglas Healy has been working as an attorney in Missouri for nearly two decades. Focused primarily on environmental law as it pertains to the Missouri Joint Municipal Electric Utility Commission (MJMEUC), attorney Douglas Healy obtained a court victory for his client, Invenergy, in a state appellate case related to the Grain Belt Express transmission line project.

Designed to increase the diversity of Missouri’s energy resources, the Grain Belt Express transmission line project will provide wind energy from Kansas to consumers and utilities in Missouri and elsewhere. Extending throughout the northern part of the state, the project plans on reaching through Ralls, Randolph, Monroe, Clinton, Chariton, Carroll, Caldwell, and Buchanan counties. As a result, roughly 4,000 megawatts of clean, renewable energy will be made available to 1.6 million homes annually.

In March 2019, the Missouri Public Service Commission (PSC) awarded the project a certificate of convenience and necessity (CCN) in a unanimous decision that recognized the project as being in the public good and warranting eminent domain. In 2017, the PSC had denied the Grain Belt project’s request for a CCN.

However, once the CCN was approved, the Missouri Farm Bureau and the Missouri Landowners Alliance appealed the decision, claiming that the PSC did not have the right to grant such a certificate. In December 2019, an appeals court in Missouri found that the opposite was true and upheld the original CCN approval from the PSC.