New Yankee Docket: Hearing Tomorrow at Public Service Board

The Vermont Public Service Board (PSB) is starting a new docket for the Vermont Yankee application for a Certificate of Public Good.  As I noted in my earlier post about the crabby Public Service Board, the PSB wasn't sure what to do about the dockets. Could they could scrub the existing docket (Docket 7440) of issues that have been determined to be outside of their jurisdiction?  Or should they start a new docket?

They have started a new docket, #7862, and they are holding the first hearing on that docket tomorrow, at 11 a.m.  It is a pre-hearing meeting, and will resolve only procedural matters.  According to an article by Terri Hallenbeck of Burlington Free Press, Vermont Yankee doesn't expect a ruling on the Certificate until late 2013 or early 2014.  Sarah Hofmann of the Department of Public Service (DPS) says the first application took a similar amount of time, but the DPS will present its own proposed schedule for the hearings.  Meanwhile, I cannot find a link for docket 7682 on the PSB webpage of major pending proceedings. I guess the docket is too new.

There will undoubtedly be fireworks in the future as intervenors try to drag the PSB into territory reserved for the federal government and so forth.  Still, this one sounds like a snooze of a hearing, and I don't plan to go.

There will be plenty of hearings to attend in the future.  In other words: Here we go again.