Capon Valley Coalition

We got an exchange from a CVC member about whether Allegheny Power can take private property for its TrAIL power line, even if people don’t want to sell an easement.

Here is part one:

Heard this from one of our neighbors in River Ridge. Sounds like the power companies are using extreme scare tactics on people to give easement rights on land or the land will be taken.

Here is what the neighbor wrote:

…Who knows when this thing will be all said and done with the power lines. All I know is I have been contacted by TrailCo and they are pursuing easement agreements with land owners and the land owners that can not agree on a easement agreement trailco will start looking at filing for eminent domain on the land as the last resort.

Part two, from Bri West of the Piedmont Environmental Council:

Allegheny (TrAILCo) has every intention of employing eminent domain if people will not sell them the easements. But the trick is, they can’t use eminent domain or even build a line on their existing rights-of-way if their application is denied by the WV PSC. The time to fight back is now.

So if you don’t want this to happen, do something about it NOW!

The West Virginia Public Service Commission will hear YOUR comments on Allegheny Power’s TrAIL power line tomorrow (Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2007) at 1:30 PM and AGAIN at 6:30 PM in the Conference room, South Branch Inn, 1500 US Route 220 North, Moorefield, WV.

If you care, be there!

CVC Chairman Bill Golemon represented us at the West Virginia Public Service Commission hearing on Allegheny Power’s TrAIL power line in Morgantown last Tuesday. He filed this report.

The hearing was very impressive. The opposition expressed was well-informed, eloquent and passionate.

Two men supported the power line, for a total of about five minutes. One was a shop steward for the electrical workers union, and the other a surveyor who does right-of-way work for AP. His argument was that it will provide 700 jobs and a lot of income for restaurants and motels.

One speaker took exception to this, saying that the majority of workers would be from out of state, the jobs would be temporary, and that the benefits would be far outweighed by the long term damage to the state and its citizens.

Speakers included about six state legislators, several college professors, a pathologist, and the deputy mayor of Morgantown. Morgantown has sent a protest letter to PSC, and the deputy mayor said their air quality measures 14.9 (on some scale) where 15 is unacceptably and officially polluted.

The legislators I could identify who spoke were Barbara Fleischauer (also speaking for Charlene Marshall); a spokesman for majority leader Joe DeLong; Alex Shook; and Robert Beach. They adamantly opposed the power line and asked PSC to deny it because it doesn’t meet the State Code requirement of “public convenience and necessity” and does not benefit WV.

The pathologist cited numerous studies claiming greater risk of cancer from power line radiation, particularly for children.

Many speakers called AP arrogant and dishonest, not informing communities of the facts and making”vague” statements in their offers and negotiations. Delegate Fleischauer and many other speakers said West Virginians are getting tired of being “ripped off for the almighty dollar”, and being exploited for generations by corporations owned out-of-state.

The lack of an adequate environmental impact study was cited. Many homeowners said their property would become useless and their homes unlivable; one man said he would just bull-doze his house. One speaker said he has a small airfield and the power line would go right across the flightpath of his runway, making it unusable, and that AP wouldn’t even discuss a feasible alternative route.

That’s a brief summary of a part of what was said, and only in the afternoon session. Every other argument we have made and heard was cited. The recent PEC paper “How Dominion and Allegheny Power Got It Wrong” was referred to and a copy given to the head table.

The interest and opposition from the state delegates was encouraging. I wish we knew how to get our legislators involved.

I hope the meeting in Moorefield tomorrow is as successful. Bill

The Dominion Post in Morgantown, WV, reported on Oct. 25:

GRAFTON — Ralph “Butch” Neal did not intend to speak at either of two hearings held Wednesday about the proposed power line that could be crossing six counties.

However, a few minutes into the first hearing, Neal decided to speak his mind.

“Allegheny will run roughshod over us hillbillies if we let them,” he said. “We need to stand up to them.”

Public Service Commission Judge John Carter, who presided over the hearings, told each crowd of about 75 people assembled in the Taylor County Senior Citizens Center that the PSC will take these comments into consideration when it makes its decision about the Trans-Allegheny Interstate Line project. The Trans Allegheny Interstate Line Co. (TrAILCo) is managing the project for Allegheny Energy.

If the PSC approves TrAILCo’s application, it would allow Allegheny Energy to build a 240-mile, 500-kilovolt transmission line from West Virginia into Virginia. Allegheny’s project is part of the line that would start in Pennsylvania, pass through West Virginia and continue to northern Virginia. In West Virginia, the line would run through Monongalia, Preston, Tucker, Grant, Hardy and Hampshire counties.

“The straightest route for this power line is through Maryland, not West Virginia,” said Richard Rhodes, of Tunnelton. “The route they want just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.”

Allegheny officials were present at the hearings, but didn’t say anything. Allen Staggers, an Allegheny spokesman, told The Dominion Post one of the routes that Allegheny studied did go through Maryland, but the line routing evaluation favored the route that goes west and south of Morgantown, thereby bypassing Maryland.

“The route was determined based on an evaluation of all the impacts that each route had,” he said. “The one that was ultimately selected and applied for was the route with the least impact on the environment and the number of homes affected.”

There are two routes the PSC is considering for the Trans-Allegheny Interstate Line project. One segment of Allegheny’s preferred route has the line crossing Monongalia and Preston counties and bypassing Taylor County. The alternative route starts in Monongalia County, then crosses into Marion and Taylor counties.

“We did a study for the alternate route, but based on that study, the preferred route affects less homes and fewer properties,” Staggers said. “Ultimately though, the decision about which route will be made by the Public Service Commission.”

Sterl Dean, of Elkins, supports the project.

“I look at the electric grid system as being the same as the national interstate system,” he said. “Instead of vehicles, kilowatt hours flow over the electrical lines. Instead of trailers and cars, we are transporting electricity by these lines to houses, factories, schools and hospitals.”

John Whitescarver, of Pruntytown, said the PSC should be concerned about local needs.

“You should consider the needs of the people in this state, not the millions living elsewhere,” he said.

PJM Interconnection — the regional power grid operator — and Allegheny officials have said the additional power line will strengthen the regional power grid. West Virginia and other states in the region could see blackouts and brownouts as early as 2011 if the line is not built.

Bob Shaffer, of Tunnelton, said Allegheny will raise rates in West Virginia to help pay for a power line project it doesn’t need because of all the excess generating capacity.

“They have an open checkbook for this, and we are going to have to pay for it,” he said.

Staggers told The Dominion Post that based on the latest cost estimates from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which sets the rates, the average residential customer will pay about 90 cents more per month.

“West Virginia customers are only paying a small portion of the cost of the project,” Staggers said. “Customers in other states are paying more for the project because they use more electricity.”

Alison Hanham is a community development senior program administrator at WVU. She said the power line will harm the communities it passes through.

“The TrAIL project has been framed as an opportunity for Allegheny Energy to be the ‘good guy’ coming to the rescue, responding to the pressing needs for energy in the entire mid-Atlantic region,” she said. “In this way, commercial interests are being prioritized over local concerns. Yet this project will be executed at the local level and will have serious local social and economic impacts.”

Staggers said people have been able to adjust to living around power lines in the past.

“These lines will have an impact,” he said. “But people drive by them every day because they are already part of landscape and our communities.”

From today’s edition of West Virginia University’s The Daily Athenaeum:

Residents complained that their land would be ruined, their property devalued, their children imperiled and said they might leave their homes if Allegheny Power is allowed to go ahead with a transmission line that would cut through 114 miles of northern West Virginia and be put in place 140 feet towers.

At a forum in front of representatives of the West Virginia Public Service Commission, Allegheny Power and the state Consumer Advocate Division in the Erickson Alumni Center on Tuesday night, the crowd was almost unanimously opposed to or concerned about the line, which is up for the PSC’s approval in January.

Allegheny has said the Trans-Allegheny Interstate Line, or TrAIL, is necessary by 2011, or else the existing transmission system will overload, said Allen Staggers, a spokesman for the utility, in a previous interview with The Daily Athenaeum.

In 2003, there was a massive blackout on the East Coast when the electric grid became too strained and shut down. Over 50 million people lost power.

Things like this will become more common, advocates of the line said, if something is not done.

But residents at Tuesday’s meeting said they have everything to lose and nothing to gain from the lines.

Don Corwin, a resident of Halleck, a community in Monongalia County, said this state’s energy future is secure for now. West Virginia exports over 70 percent of the electricity it produces. He said the real winners are residents in other states that will receive our power inexpensively and at state residents’ expense.

The line “does not benefit us, and they want us to pay for it,” he said.

Customers in West Virginia would pay at least $2 a month more in their bills toward the cost of the line, which is to cost more than a billion dollars, only to “subsidize rates in New Jersey and Maryland,” Corwin said.

“How can Trans-Allegheny keep telling the public this project is about ‘keeping the lights on’ when they know it’s not?”

The route for the line and the design was a result of “shoddy research and poor technical worker,” Corwin, who spent several years in the energy industry, said.

State senators Mike Oliverio and Jon Blair Hunter, who both represent parts of Monongalia County, said they had received more letters, e-mails and calls about the line than any other issue during their time in the statehouse.

Oliverio said the “concerns are wide-ranging” and include air pollution, who will bear the cost of the line’s construction, and people’s access and enjoyment to their property.

“The bulk of the line goes right through my senatorial district,” Hunter said. “I do object to the building of this line.”

The added air pollution that would come from the power plants necessary to put energy into the line “is a big mistake,” he said.

He suggested the plants and line should be built closer to where the power they would produce and carry is needed.

“If we have to have more power in the East, let’s build the plant in the East,” Hunter said.

Other objections were more personal.

Brian Shriver, who recently got back from tours overseas in Iraq and as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, said, “I never thought I would come home and be forced out of my own home.”

He said the line “does nothing for the hard-working people who will lose everything they worked for.”

Another resident, Steve Giessler, found his farm 10 years ago after spending a year looking for the right spot. He found it, a 26-acre farm with a meadow at the top. He called it “The Sound of Music Meadow,” because he remembers his wife once dancing in the field.

If the TrAIL goes ahead, Giessler said he, his wife and their four children would probably move away.

“You may think those are sappy, sentimental things, but these are real issues,” he said.

Giessler, like others, complained that the money he would receive for the land, which might be seized under eminent domain if TrAIL is approved, would not be its true value because it does not consider the value his children might find in the property 10, 20 or 50 years from now.

Others complained that Allegheny acted like the plan was a done deal, and approval was “just a formality.”

Susan Olcott, who studies wildlife, said her land, like others’ land, had been flown over by helicopters apparently inspecting the area in preparation for building the line.

She said they flew about 20 feet above the treeline on her property, twice in a single day, with cameras aimed at the property.

Others complained of similar encounters and said they have been intimidated by representatives of the company. They said the representatives put pressure on them to sell their land or, without asking permission, told owners they were coming onto the property to survey.

Mike Caputo of the State House of Delegates said, “No company, no power company, no major company, has the right to come into a community and ride rough shod over the people living in that community.”

He suggested Allegheny consider building the line along existing routes or along “the least intrusive route” through the state.

Last night’s meeting was the second of the day and part of a string of forums that are meant to provide the state PSC with input that will help in its recommendation.

During the first hour and a half of last night’s meeting, only one person stood up and roundly supported the line.

“We need to maintain the infrastructure of the United States to remain competitive,” said Don Cunningham, who works at an engineering and construction company.

The PSC’s first evidentiary hearing begins in January 2008, and a decision is expected by May.

A member of the commission’s staff told the crowd that they were charged with investigating the siting, need, reliability, economic interest and statutory implications of the line.

“The commission itself has not made any decision,” she said.