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WASHINGTON (AP) - The government has declared two swaths of the country critical to the nation's electricity grid.

The Department of Energy is pushing for construction of major power lines in southern California and along the East Coast, calling them "national interest electric transmission corridors."

The two would be the first of their kind under a 2005 law that could overcome local objections in order to relieve bottlenecks in the electricity grid.

The proposed Southwest corridor would be composed of seven counties in southern California, three in Arizona and one in Nevada.

The mid-Atlantic corridor would run north from Virginia and Washington, D.C., and include most of Maryland, all of New Jersey and Delaware and large sections of New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Local representatives fighting proposed towers in their communities are denouncing the proposal.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)