Capon Valley Coalition

From the TimesWV.com and Associated Press on Oct. 12, 2007:

WASHINGTON, Pa. — Nearly three dozen property owners who live in the path of a proposed high-voltage power line allege they or former owners were misled when right-of-way agreements were signed years ago.

The 33 property owners have sued Allegheny Energy Inc. and subsidiaries, claiming easements have expired and that owners did not understand the scope of the project.

The suit, filed Thursday in Washington County Court, challenges the legality of a 37-mile, 500-kilovolt power line Allegheny Energy wants to build from Mount Morris to Eighty Four.

The line is part of a larger project to build a transmission line that would pass through West Virginia and continue to northern Virginia. West Virginia’s segment would run 114 miles through Monongalia, Preston, Tucker, Grant, Hardy and Hampshire counties.

The line is designed to ease congestion in the mid-Atlantic electrical grid and channel power to the eastern seaboard, where power plants are relatively few and electricity is more expensive.

“The property owners who gave these easements certainly did not contemplate the diminution of value and the hazard to health, welfare and agriculture that would be created by the (Trans-Allegheny Interstate Line) itself,” said Richard DiSalle, the property owners’ lawyer.

The property owners say they thought the transmission line would service a new steel mill and be constructed of wooden utility poles no taller than 25 feet.

Allegheny Energy disputed the claims.

“It’s our assertion that the easements we acquired in the late ’60s and early ’70s are valid,” said spokesman David Neurohr.

Allegheny Energy’s subsidiary, the defunct West Penn Power, planned to build the line in the 1970s, but eventually scrapped the project.

Neurohr cited the project’s 1975 application indicating plans for an “electric transmission system consisting of towers, wires, cables and fixtures.”