Franklin County is once again at the center of a high-stakes battle over a proposed high-voltage transmission line that opponents say would scar some of the region’s most productive farmland while delivering no meaningful benefit to the people who live here.
Transource Pennsylvania, LLC is seeking approval to construct the Rice-Ringgold Transmission Line Project, a 29-mile, 230-kilovolt double-circuit line stretching from a proposed new substation in Southampton Township near Shippensburg south through Waynesboro, Mont Alto, and surrounding communities to the existing Ringgold substation in Smithsburg, Maryland. The line would be carried on 130-foot steel monopoles, with up to five to seven towers per mile cutting across the Cumberland Valley landscape.
The $113 million project has been filed with the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) and has been in the works in some form since 2016. Transource argues it would reduce energy costs for the broader region. Maryland has already approved its portion of the line. Pennsylvania is the final hurdle, and if the PUC signs off, construction could begin as early as next year.
Critics, including local landowners, agricultural families, and community organizations, argue the project would impose significant and permanent costs on Franklin County, including lost farmland, depressed property values, road damage, disruption to wells, and potential health risks, all in service of relieving congestion to Virginia — a market efficiency project, not a promise to lower costs for Pennsylvania ratepayers. Chairman DeFrank has said as much on video to all of Pennsylvania: this line feeds a data center.
The Supreme Court Ruling and What It Means
For those who have spent years fighting this project, the most significant recent development arrived not in a courtroom in Harrisburg, but from the United States Supreme Court.
In September 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued a precedential ruling in Transource Pennsylvania LLC v. DeFrank, affirming a lower court decision that the Pennsylvania PUC’s 2021 unanimous denial of Transource’s original siting applications was preempted by federal law. The Third Circuit held that Pennsylvania’s denial conflicted with federal energy policy objectives and obstructed the implementation of a federally mandated regional transmission plan approved by FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Pennsylvania’s Attorney General subsequently petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in the Third Circuit proceedings. Just hours before my interview with Mrs. Rice, the Supreme Court denied that petition, allowing the Third Circuit’s ruling to stand. It is a bad decision — one that leaves Franklin County residents, and all Pennsylvanians, without due process.
Lori Rice, President of the Coalition to Protect Franklin County, shortly after receiving the news was measured but direct about what it means.
“That decision alone undoes your due process. My due process. Everybody in Pennsylvania’s due process.”
The practical consequence, Rice explained, is significant. With the Supreme Court declining to take up the state’s appeal, the Third Circuit’s ruling remains in effect. That ruling effectively strips the Pennsylvania PUC of the authority it previously exercised to evaluate whether a federally approved transmission project is actually needed in Pennsylvania.
“So as far as Project One, that has been fully decided,” Rice said, referring to the original Independence Energy Connection filing. “Project One is done. So now we have Project Number Two that’s been applied to the Pennsylvania Utility Commission, which is a revised project. It is just the portion through Franklin County.”
That revised filing, the Rice-Ringgold project, runs to more than 600 pages and includes six proposed routes through the county. Rice noted that Transource’s new application relies heavily on data from 2017, while a 2023 PJM study that found the project would cause unreliability to the grid, which was produced while the project sat on an abandonment list, is being dismissed by the company as irrelevant.
“They pick and choose what they think is viable and what isn’t for the Pennsylvania Utility Commission to consider,” Rice said.
The PUC: The Last Line of Defense
With the federal courts having limited the state’s authority to challenge the project’s need, the question becomes: what power does the PUC actually still have?
Rice points to a notable exchange between Darryl A. Lawrence, the Pennsylvania Office of Consumer Advocate, and the PUC in the wake of the Third Circuit ruling. Lawrence petitioned the commission directly, asking how it intended to proceed on transmission project. The PUC’s response, Rice says, was revealing.
The PUC signaled it may not move to step two of its review process unless the project clears step one, a threshold related to demonstrated public benefit. Rice sees that as a potential off-ramp, though she is careful not to overread it.
The PUC’s remaining authority, under the current legal framework, is primarily limited to the siting of the line, meaning where it goes rather than whether it is built at all. That is a significant constraint for opponents who argue the project should never be built in the first place.
“So it becomes kind of complicated in a way,” Rice acknowledged. “But it’ll come down to this community’s strength. It’ll come down to businesses, organizations, landowners, ratepayers filing those petitions to the Pennsylvania Utility Commission.”
What It Costs Franklin County
Rice is emphatic that Franklin County does not simply face the prospect of an inconvenient infrastructure project. She argues the community is being asked to absorb generational harm with no offsetting benefit.
The proposed right-of-way is 130 feet wide, with an additional 65-foot curtilage on either side, a total footprint of 260 feet across any property it crosses. On some parcels along the proposed routes, Rice says the line would require the demolition of homes.
“It has to be agriculture first, because you are going to run out of food, you are going to run out of places to grow quality food. And so for me, it’s very easy to be able to separate out the harm that this would cause to our agricultural families. And we have to live with this forever.”
Beyond the direct physical impact, Rice points to documented consequences in other states where similar high-voltage lines have been constructed, including declines in property values, damage to roadways from construction traffic, disruption to private wells, and health concerns associated with proximity to 500-kilovolt infrastructure. Studies from Switzerland, she noted, have examined correlations between overhead power lines and increased rates of Alzheimer’s and dementia. The state of California has classified power lines as a Class 1 carcinogen. Residents with seizure disorders, pacemakers, or defibrillators may be unable to safely remain in their homes.
And then there is the financial reality that Rice says most Pennsylvania ratepayers don’t realize they are already living with. The original Independence Energy Connection project, the first Transource filing that was ultimately denied by the PUC and then revived through federal litigation, cost the company more than $200 million. That project was never built. But because of how utility infrastructure costs are recovered, Pennsylvania ratepayers are already paying for it.
“We are already paying that because this company will make $200 million back plus 10.4% interest,” Rice said. “So we are paying that as Pennsylvania ratepayers, and now we’re going to start paying for a new project.”
PJM Under the Microscope: House Resolution 361
While the legal fight continues at the PUC, the battle is also moving to the Pennsylvania General Assembly. The state House recently passed House Resolution 361, sponsored by Rep. Rob Matzie and co-sponsored by, among others, state Rep. Chad Reichard, which directs the Joint State Government Commission to study the costs and benefits of Pennsylvania’s continued membership in PJM. Rice has been pushing for this kind of legislative scrutiny for years.
“In the last 10 to 15 years, PJM, the regional grid operator, has become very cumbersome, and they are a non-government entity but they tell the government what to do,” Rice said. “It’s a very slimy, swampy world that PJM lives in.”
The resolution passed the House unanimously and represents the first formal legislative inquiry into whether Pennsylvania should reconsider its relationship with the regional grid manager, a question that has taken on new urgency in the wake of the Third Circuit ruling that effectively handed PJM-approved projects a federal shield against state denial.
Rice notes that under PJM’s own bylaws, a project removed from an active list should be rebid so any utility company could compete to build it at a lower cost. In her view, Transource sidestepped that process entirely, reviving its project only after a federal court ruling created a favorable legal environment.
What Residents Can Do Now
Despite the Supreme Court setback, Rice is clear that the fight is not over and that there is a meaningful role for community members to play.
The Coalition to Protect Franklin County is preparing a petition for broad community sign-on, open to any Pennsylvania resident. The coalition is also developing a form letter that residents can personalize and submit directly to the PUC, becoming part of the official record in the siting proceeding. Individual letters, Rice stresses, carry real weight.
The coalition will also push for public hearings, including the possibility of judges traveling to affected properties to view the land that would be impacted. The PUC has not yet set a procedural schedule for the Rice-Ringgold application, and Rice says that timeline will determine when petitions and letters need to be filed.
The coalition is also exploring filing complaints with FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, arguing that residents have been left without due process protections and that FERC must step into that role given the Third Circuit’s effective removal of the state’s authority to protect its own ratepayers and landowners.
“We are presenting a solid front and we are not deterred in continuing the fight,” Rice said. “We will do whatever it takes to provide the means to the public that want an avenue to express themselves.”
A Community’s Fight, and Perhaps a Future Commissioner’s
After a decade at the front of this fight, Rice says what weighs on her most is not the legal landscape but the human cost of the uncertainty itself. She sees the faces of her neighbors at public meetings. She takes calls from landowners who don’t know whether to invest in their properties, plant their fields, or plan their futures.
“I really care about my community,” she said. “I don’t want my community members to be very disturbed, very downtrodden already.”
That sense of obligation to Franklin County has Rice thinking about what more she could do. When asked whether she might consider running for Franklin County Commissioner, Rice didn’t say no.
“I think our community deserves people who really are passionate about this county,” she said. “And we don’t have it.”
For updates from the Coalition to Protect Franklin County and information on how to submit a letter to the PUC, follow the coalition’s social media pages and community announcements.
