To conservative Republicans, especially those from the West, few things are more sacred than property rights. Their attitude is usually that the government, especially the federal government, should keep its hands off private land.

But as they negotiate a new national energy policy, House Republicans and the Bush administration want to grant the federal government substantial new power to allow the seizure of property — even if it means overruling state and local authorities — to establish corridors for high-capacity interstate power lines.

Supporters of the proposal say new transmission lines are needed to head off blackouts like the one that crippled the Northeast and parts of the Midwest last month, and that the new federal powers are needed to ensure that property owners do not stand in the way.

The issue could complicate negotiations on the broad energy bill being conducted between House and Senate Republicans. Republican senators from the West have resisted such new federal powers in the past.

"I have been warned by some of our people not to do it," said Senator Pete V. Domenici, a New Mexico Republican who is chairman of the House-Senate conference that is working on the measure. "But I am not going to go into this conference frightened to death of the idea of having to make some compromise with the House on eminent domain."

The House bill would enable the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to approve power line routes that have been blocked or delayed by a state, if the agency found the new lines would significantly ease congestion along the power grid. Companies building the high-voltage lines would be able to exercise eminent domain to acquire rights-of-way if they compensated land owners. The Senate bill does not allow for such intervention.

It is a delicate subject for Republicans who oppose federal intrusion on property owners and often complain that environmental laws violate property rights. But supporters of the proposal say modernization has been held back because utilities have no guarantee that they can add to the more than 150,000 miles of existing power lines.

"I'm not real wild about that part of the bill, but when you are talking about building these power lines across hundreds if not thousands of miles, you can't have one property owner holding up the whole thing," said Representative Richard W. Pombo, a California Republican who is chairman of the House Resources Committee.

The National Governors Association, environmental groups and other organizations representing state and local officials whose powers might be usurped oppose the proposal.

But the blackout has softened opposition from lawmakers. "The blackout probably shifted all of us slightly," said Senator Larry E. Craig, Republican of Idaho, who said he would still work against the eminent domain proposal. Still, he said, he was not "going to give the states the absolute right of veto."

Transmission line proposals have been controversial for decades, as landowners, local governments and others fought them on environmental, health and safety grounds. Usually, the disputes have been settled in local forums and courts.

The latest move in Congress "is a significant change in law if it is enacted," said Diane Shea, who handles natural resources issues for the governors association.

Ms. Shea and other critics of the proposal say it is based on the faulty premise that states frequently block new transmission lines. They say that such cases are rare, and that objections are handled responsibly when they do arise.

The proposal has drawn the attention of property rights advocates who contend that once such new authority is handed to a government agency, it tends to be used as a hammer to intimidate land owners.

"When you put that kind of power in the hands of an individual whose job it is to run a straight line from X to Y on a map, he doesn't care about one man's farm or another man's business," said Charles Cushman, executive director of the American Land Rights Association, whose members are mainly property owners opposed to regulation.

The Bush administration backs the proposal, which it first advanced in the energy policy drawn up in 2001 by a task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. In its position paper on the energy bill issued last week, the administration said it "strongly supports" providing "last-resort federal siting authority for high-priority transmission lines" and easing the permit process for lines crossing federal land.

The idea was also supported at the House hearings on the blackout by E. Linn Draper Jr., chairman of American Electric Power, a major electricity producer. Mr. Draper said his company spent 13 years and $50 million winning approval to build a line linking West Virginia and Virginia.

Representative Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat who opposes granting the federal government new power line authority, said the American Electric Power case was an example of how the system works because the company won approval after resolving local objections. Mr. Boucher said the authors of the energy policy were searching for provisions they could point to as ways to fight blackouts while advancing a controversial energy plan that went far beyond electricity concerns.

Representative Billy Tauzin, Republican of Louisiana and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said giving the federal government authority to settle power line disputes would encourage needed investment in transmission systems. He compared it to federal authority for routing natural gas pipelines.

"Our view is that the feds should and can have a role when it involves an interstate power line of national significance," Mr. Tauzin said. "It is a limited role and is consistent with the notion that taking property for public purposes with compensation does not violate property rights."

By Carl Hulse
New York Times -