Utah Power and Light Company v. Rogers C. B. Morton

This is an appeal by the Utah Power and Light Company from an order of the District Court for the District of Idaho, granting the Secretary of the Interior’s motion for judgment on the pleadings and sustaining the authority of the Secretary of the Interior to promulgate regulations requiring any private utility company seeking a right-of-way across public lands for the construction and operation of electric transmission lines, to transmit or “wheel” electric energy from a federal hydroelectric generating facility over the excess capacity of the proposed transmission wires in the manner provided for in 43 C.F.R. 2851.1-l(a) (5) (1971), enacted pursuant to 43 U.S.C. § 961 .

On January 5, 1969, appellant Utah Power and Light Company (hereinafter “Utah Power”) filed an application for a right-of-way across 2.01 miles of United States vacant land to construct a 69 kilovolt transmission line between Utah Power’s Camas and Dubois substations in Idaho. Appellant requested that the wheeling requirement imposed by 43 C. F.R. 2851.1-l(a) (5), which requires that the grantee of a right-of-way across public lands agrees to wheel government power over surplus capacity in its own…