Capon Valley Coalition

The Observer Publishing Co. of McMurray, Pa., reports today on Allegheny Power plans to run the high-voltage power line known ever so quaintly as TrAIL through Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Read along and see if any of Allegheny Power’s tactics sound … well … familiar.

Allegheny Power officials say there is a demonstrated need for additional power from southwestern Pennsylvania to the northern Virginia corridor, and as a result a new North Strabane substation and 240-mile mega-transmission line will be built from Pennsylvania to Virginia. …

Approvals from state and federal agencies will be required, but Allegheny Power says it was these agencies which notified the company of the power grid deficiencies in the first place.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. The letter we saw from Gov. Joe Manchin to Allegheny Power said he and his staff had “reviewed” the plans and thought they benefited everyone. (He’s dead wrong, and we are letting him know that. You should, too.) But there was nothing in the letter thanking Allegheny Power for coming to the rescue. It sounds an awful lot like they came to him. Not the same as WV notifying Allegheny Power of deficiencies.

Let’s move on. (But just note the discrepancy. And by the way, one of our problems with Allegheny Power is their absolute refusal to provide evidence for their statements.)

While Allegheny Power has dedicated a Web site to the project, (www.aptrailinfo.com), it has yet to approach North Strabane officials with a proposal that can be examined and evaluated, said Township Manager Frank Siffrinn. “The company does own property in North Strabane and 4-5 different alignments have been looked at,” Siffrinn said. “But we’ve heard nothing on preferred alignments and they have not submitted a plan.

How about that? Does it sound familiar? Did Allegheny Power knock on the doors of the Hampshire and Hardy County Commissions BEFORE the Capon Valley Coalition and all of our great supporters started questioning this? I don’t recall that.

A meeting is planned with Allegheny Power and North Strabane officials on March 14. That meeting won’t be open to the public, but Siffrinn said township officials hope to have a better idea of Allegheny Power’s intent afterwards.

A closed door meeting with the elected representatives of the people who will be most affected? So that’s how Allegheny Power does business. Somehow, we are not surprised.

You can read the entire article about the folks up in Pennsylvania on TheAlmanac.net.

Lynn Golemon writes:

On Tuesday, March 13 in Romney, much information was shared during a meeting between H J Wratchford, Grady Bradfield, Bill and Lynn Golemon, and Mary Jo Brown, our area representative from Governor Manchin’s office,

Governor Manchin clearly needs to understand the extent of the extensive devastation which would be caused by these overhead power lines. As our area representative, Mary Jo will be hand delivering information which we are providing to the governor’s office, and to the West Virginia Public Service Commission. We are currently putting together the information requested by those two offices.

The MOST IMPORTANT thing that each of you can do is to write to the governor’s office, to the Public Service Commission, and to each of our state legislators with your outrage and concerns – the letters do not have to be specific, but THEY NEED TO HEAR FROM YOU. You can find all of the e-mail addresses as well as physical addresses on the Take Action page.

We realize that this all takes your valuable time, however, if you do not do this, we lose our clout as representatives of the Capon Valley Coalition. We are spending many hours on this each and every day, and we need your support.

We are definitely having a positive effect. Please support us. We need to stop this power line now, or it is just the beginning of an eventual ‘power line highway’ into the metro D.C. area.

We are late in reporting this good news from Hardy County. We apologize, but figure good news is good no matter how late.

On March 9, the Cumberland Times-News reported:

MOOREFIELD - The Hardy County Commission is the second West Virginia county to go on record opposing a proposed high-voltage power line through the region.

Commissioners Roger Champ, J.R. Keplinger and Stanley Moyer voted unanimously Tuesday to sign a resolution opposing a proposed 500-kilovolt power line to be constructed by Allegheny Energy through Hardy, Hampshire and Grant counties.

Hampshire County previously announced its opposition to the project.

The commissioners have received numerous complaints, both written and in person, concerning the project over the last several weeks.

Representatives of the utility were invited to present an overview of the project at the meeting Tuesday.

Our own Grady Bradfield and Bill Golemon are both quoted in the piece. And you can get a flavor for Allegheny Power’s arguments from it as well.

You can read the entire piece at Times-News.com.

NOT THE WHOLE ARTICLE

You may wonder why we do not quote the entire newspaper article when we write about a news item.

Three reasons really:

1. It makes for very long blog entries.
2. We try to give you the most important news here and point those who want more information to the proper place to get it.
3. While putting an entire article on our Web site might not violate the Copyright laws, it’s not neighborly to take someone’s hard work and not point at their Web site.
4. (I know I said three reasons, but I just wanted to note that when we DO put what is essentially a photocopy of a newspaper article on our site in a PDF file, we always include the newspaper masthead to give proper credit. And we only put copies up when we cannot find a link back to the source.)

The following item comes from Charlie Winfree, a Realtor, who added this as a comment on the old Capon Valley Coalition Web site on Feb. 24.

(For technical reasons, we cannot move comments from the old site to the new site. We have to copy them manually as a Web site posting. This actually guarantees that YOUR comments come from YOU.)

We thank Charlie for his input and his support.

As a full-time Realtor selling Potomac Highlands properties for the past 18 years, I can tell you that savvy buyers of quality mountain property want nothing to do with these big power lines on or near their property. Especially with so much property on the market today, they have lots of other smart choices. Anything under, or within view of these potential routes, may as well not even be on the market. They won’t come even close to compensating for all the property value declines.Selling a property now, without revealing that a potential route is on or near the property, may expose the seller and Realtor to liabilities at a later date. I’ve had to create property maps of the proposed lines as they pertain to each of the subdivisions I work within to protect all parties.

The power companies need to find another way to bring their product to market other than to trash our lands, homes, views and communities, for their corporate profits. I wish we could require anyone in favor of these lines to have to live with them, as they’re trying to cause us to do.

I suggested that to one Allegheny right-of-way official and she said that would be fine… she’d have no problem with a line/tower bordering her 1/4 ac home site in PA. Perfectly straight face. That shows you what twisted mentalities and professional liars we’re going to be working with if they build this monster. I suspect she’s already spent way too much time under high-voltage wires! You won’t get any sympathy or residual property compensation from that person! They chose her well.

Keep in mind that one of West Virginia’s best assets is the natural environment that buyers value so much. Every time we chip away at that with more big power lines, 4-lane highways and the like, we all lose and make it more like the Metro areas. But since Big Coal runs WV, this may not be the last if it.

Feb 24, 2:15 PM

Eddie Brill, a member of the Capon Valley Coalition executive committee, and others met last Friday (March 2) with a member of Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s staff to convey our message of opposition to Allegheny Power’s unwarranted plans to run a high-voltage power line through our communities.

Here is the gist of that meeting, from Eddie:

We met with John Richards in Rockefeller’s office. He was very open to our discussion and told us that he would confirm what (CVC exec committee member) John Anderson and the rest of us were saying and that he would talk with Senator Rockefeller.

He advised us to get as many people involved with our cause and to continue to write letters and to keep on top of our arguments.

He very strongly advised us to connect with other large groups or organizations to confirm and enforce our issues.

We will stay in touch with Sen. Rockefeller through John Richards, but our voice will be stronger if everyone writes Rockeller a letter. (You can find Rockefeller’s address on the “Take Action” page.)
NOTE: You can see what others are writing by clicking on the “Letters” link in the CATEGORIES box on the right. That will pull up all of the letters we have posted on the Web site.

We also have letter writing tips on the “Take Action” page.