Message-ID: <21140656.1075842455161.JavaMail.evans@thyme>
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 07:45:00 -0800 (PST)
From: drew.fossum@enron.com
To: kevin.hyatt@enron.com, lorraine.lindberg@enron.com
Subject: BNSF
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Per Louie Soldano, I called Dave Sinclair (GPG ROW) about whether we have any 
ability to negotiate a favorable right of way deal with the BNSF railroad.  
In Dave's experience, that is a nonstarter.  Apparently, a bunch of 
utilities, including us through Dave, have even formed a coalition to try to 
figure out how to get the railroads to be more cooperative.  If the RR owns 
its ROW outright (which many of the old railroads do out west) we might be 
able to condemn an easement by getting a FERC certificate.  In other words, 
the RR would be treated just like any other landowner.  If we did that, Dave 
thinks BNSF would treat it as a declaration of war.  Since our lines cross or 
parallel BNSF right of way all over the place from Topock to Duluth, that 
would be foolish.  

I swore Sinclair to secrecy and told him what part of the world I was 
interested in and he thought we could probably stitch together private ROW 
without too much pain.  If the RR option doesn't pan out, we may want to 
suggest to Tino and Dennis that our ROW people can handle this.  Assuming we 
can't come up with some magic contact with the RR, I propose that, at the 
appropriate time,  we tell Dennis and Tino that the last 7 or 8 miles of ROW 
should be flagged as a potential problem that Enron can help resolve once we 
decide to go forward.   

Other than the BNSF issue, I don't think we have any specific "to dos" or any 
specific comeback date to Dennis and Tino.  So what do you guys think should 
happen next?  DF