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San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz Counties, CA November 2, 2010 Election
Smart Voter

The New Route 66

By Dave Chapman

Candidate for United States Representative; District 14

This information is provided by the candidate
In order to eliminate oil imports, the United States is going to have to seriously upgrade our electricity infrastructure. At this time, we do not know which of the "alternative" methods of producing electricity will prevail. The most likely outcome is that no one method of producing electric power will wind up with more than 20% of the total.
What we do know is that we need to upgrade the long-range transmission of power. This will create a lot of jobs, and the technology already exists. Here is my proposal:

1. We build a 24 Giga-Watt transmission system between Los Angeles and Chicago, following the old Route 66. This route is designed to connect to the existing West Coast power grid near Riverside, to the solar farms in Arizona, the proposed geo-thermal power plants in New Mexico, the wind farms in North Texas and the Oklahoma panhandle, and the East Coast power grid near Springfield, Illinois.

2. The Route 66 project shall be built and operated by a Federally chartered corporation, similar to Comsat (the Communication Satellite Corporation). For the first 20 years, the entire board of directors shall be appointed by the governors of the eight states which will be members. After 20 years, half of the board shall be political appointees.


Building Route 66 will not only allow us to stabilize the power grid as needed, but it will also encourage investments in wind power, geo-thermal, solar, nuclear, etc., by businesses along the way.

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ca/state Created from information supplied by the candidate: August 20, 2010 17:04
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