Capon Valley Coalition

Charlie Winfree, a Realtor from Burlington, WV, told it like it is at the Public Service Commission hearing in Moorefield on Oct. 30.

How will Allegheny Power’s new power line affect your property? Not the way Allegheny says.

Here is Charlie’s statement, provided by CVC Chairman Bill Golemon.

My name is Charlie Winfree, from Burlington, WV. I’m a local Realtor and the #1 top-selling Realtor in this 5-county area of WV. I’ve been selling real estate here for almost 20 years. I know about real estate.

The power companies and PJM won’t fool me about these power lines and how they affect property values. The humiliating offers they’ve made to land owners for power line easements are shameful. Many owners seem to feel powerless to fight this and most have no idea what this does to them. Fact is, many homes and land parcels will be un-salable later, at any tolerable price whatsoever. How do you compensate an owner for that damage? Yes, many over-eager out-of-staters purchased local land with power lines already on them in the last few years. They are now learning first-hand that it may be unwise to build on them and that they’re about impossible to re-sell. And now they’re being told to accept more.

As a Realtor, I can tell you that property values for residential properties will plummet, nearby or in sight of these lines. You won’t see the market value effect for a long time because many impacted property owners will suffer more by being unable to sell at all. Running them parallel to an existing line doesn’t eliminate the impact; it just increases it in one spot already harmed once.

One highly motivated owner in nearby Ashton Woods now has his otherwise very nice 21 acre lot priced at just 40% of what identical non-power line lots have been reselling for. It still sits unsold, impacted by only the power line. Other similarly affected lots have simply failed to re-sell at all.

It’s virtually impossible to resell residential land or homes in nearby sight of them. Power companies don’t feel any need to compensate owner’s whose nearby or adjacent land is devalued, they only want to pay for the easements, yet the individual and cumulative impact along and in sight of each line is enormous. The toll on peoples’ finances and families is harming many owners. Just the uncertainty of this line is impacting sales of potentially affected and nearby properties.

These lines are the wrong thing, at the wrong time, and for the wrong reasons.

Bad for everyone but PJM, the coal companies and the power companies… representatives of the big industries who have raped WV’s landscape, health and property values for generations. Even the distant consumers who are proposed to benefit from these lines would be far better-served by local, cleaner, power facilities.

New technologies for local energy production and conservation are just around the corner. Some will no doubt be in place by the time these lines are proposed to be in service. The next occupant in the White House will certainly understand the need to turn this country’s energy choices around to something more sane than “use all you want and we’ll destroy the land and it’s people and even other countries, to bring it to you”.

The PSC should be demanding that the funds for this project should instead be spent on real conservation and energy efficiency efforts. Instead of politely asking consumers to conserve, we should be demanding and enforcing it. A few brownouts sound like a great wake-up call to me.

We should all be ashamed to even be considering more long-term heavy investment in coal when we now know it’s most likely the biggest culprit in changing our climate, our children’s climate and the extermination of many species, quite possibly our own. Yes, parts of the WV economy may seem to depend on it; just as parts of Columbia’s economy depends on cocaine and parts of Afghanistan’s economy depends on heroin poppies. There’s no big difference and we’re all just feeding an unhealthy addiction to cheap and dirty power with this power line. Shame on us.

There is NOT room for both the people and new high-voltage transmission lines in this state. PJM, whose only business is transmission lines, needs to sit this one out and just take care of the lines they have while the people, the PSC and the power companies find a smarter, longer-term solution.

The Public Service Commission is supposedly working for the public, at least if the name is correct. I ask you all to have the backbone to tell the power companies, AND the Feds, that their efforts concerning this line are NOT in the public’s long-term, best interests. Quit looking short-term, like 5 years and begin to look long-term, like 50-100 years and more. What ARE we going to do about ever-increasing energy consumption and waste, and faster and faster consumption of coal, right in the face of ample evidence that it’s the very stupidest thing we as humans can be doing to solve energy needs? Coal, and fossil fuels in general, may well turn out to be the big juicy apple in the Garden of Eden that we were well-warned not to consume.

Just say NO to these power lines. Nobody needs them.

AP reports in today’s editions of the Philadelphia Inquirer. (We added emphasis to pieces of the story that would apply to West Virginia as well.)

Gov. Rendell and state utility regulators seek boundary alternatives.

HARRISBURG - Gov. Rendell and state utility regulators challenged the federal government’s inclusion of 52 Pennsylvania counties in a regional corridor where states could lose the ability to stop high-voltage power lines from being built.

The corridor’s boundaries are far broader than intended by Congress, going so far as to include parts of the state that have no electricity-transmission problems, the Pennsylvania officials said.

Lines that cross Pennsylvania may not deliver any benefit to electricity users in the state, and the U.S. Department of Energy, which drew the corridors, did not consider alternatives to meeting growing power demand, Rendell said.

“They will be delivering dirtier, fossil-fuel-derived power from states to the south and west of Pennsylvania at a time when we’re trying to protect the environment and meet our energy needs through clean and renewable technologies,” he said in a statement.

The Rendell administration asked the Department of Energy on Friday to reconsider the corridor’s boundaries. The state Public Utility Commission also asked the department to reconsider, and sued last week in federal court in Harrisburg to stop the federal government from acting on the designation.

An Energy Department spokeswoman said yesterday that she was not immediately aware of the requests for reconsideration or of the lawsuit.

The Mid-Atlantic corridor was one of two mapped out by the Energy Department last month. It would encompass all or parts of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, West Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and Washington. The other corridor is in the southwestern United States.

Four massive power-line projects spanning a combined 900 miles across Mid-Atlantic states have already received approval from the region’s electricity-grid operator. The lines could provide the first tests of a 2005 law that allows federal regulators to override states that do not approve certain transmission lines.

The lines, which would cost several billion dollars to build, are designed to relieve the strain on existing lines that officials say could overload as early as 2012 and to bring cheaper, surplus electricity from Appalachia and the Midwest to big East Coast cities.

The Cumberland Times covered the PSC meeting in Moorefield on Tuesday. Here’s the coverage:

MOOREFIELD - Citing health, environmental and private property issues, residents from Jefferson, Hardy, Grant, Mineral and Hampshire counties testified against Allegheny Power’s proposed Trans-Allegheny Interstate Line project Tuesday at a public hearing held by the West Virginia Public Service Commission.

The project proposed to be routed through those and other counties in northern West Virginia is currently before the PSC with the utility seeking permission to construct the 500-volt power line that will run some 240 miles across the state.

Ralph Wojtowice, a young professional who lives in Virginia, with plans to build his dream home in West Virginia, was the first to address Administrative Law Judge Keith A. George of the PSC, who was conducting the hearing and taking testimony.

Wojtowice said that the couple had sunk their entire life savings into their dream home project with an eye toward raising their family - twin boys born prematurely in February - in the picturesque setting that was to be their residence.

He said that he realized his family’s entire future could be jeopardized by this project in terms of their health and their finances.

“It is apparent that Allegheny Energy is more interested in profit than public service,” he said.

Wojtowice also pointed out that the project will boost the output of the oldest and dirtiest coal-fired electric generating plants in the state and added that his children are already at risk for environmental pollution and the project would only add to that.

He said that that utility’s advertising campaign that the project will be good for West Virginia and that it won’t cost its residents reminds him of a time when the tobacco industry tried to convince people smoking wasn’t dangerous either.

Wojtowice was one of 10 people who provided testimony that was recorded and will be transcribed by the PSC before a decision is made on granting a permit for the project.

Craig Etchison of Fort Ashby spoke of the concern about global warming and climate change that he said has been admitted by the Pentagon to be the single biggest issue facing the world.

He said that increasing the output of coal-fired generating plants will increase the burning of coal which produces greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

He said continuing on that course would create a potential for “catastrophe.”

Etchison said that Allegheny Energy’s plan to create expanding markets for coal is “insane.”

He said there are choices but the utility is not considering any of those, including conservation and variable pricing.

Henry Kopple of Lahmansville said that he would rather see the emphasis on reducing the need for additional power to the east by conservation or new power sources.

He suggested that the country needs to look at Denmark, which has doubled its gross national product while decreasing its energy usage.

David Fouts of Grant County said that the utility’s statement that there is no significant environmental impact to be noted from the project is “ludicrous.”

He called on the utility to consider three alternatives: Conservation, improving existing networks and utilizing the existing rights of way for any new power lines.

Thomas and Kathy Hildebrand, who live in Virginia with plans to move to a subdivision near Moorefield, also addressed the issue of need and the likely damage the project would cause to West Virginians.

Kathy Hildebrand said she noticed the number of large homes and businesses in Virginia that have lights on, both on the interior and exterior 24 hours a day.

She said that education is probably the most valuable tool the opponents have in the fight against TrAIL.

Her husband added that the coming together of people against the project in such force is probably the one positive of the proposed project.

Also addressing the hearing was David Reece of Germantown, Md., speaking on behalf of the Wratchford family of Old Fields. He said the family already gave a right of way in the 1970s, losing considerable property.

Darrell Kessell also said he was affected by the first power line project that went through and not only did he lose the right of way acreage but setbacks were imposed that took even more. He also said that you can feel the energy from the power lines when you stand near them.

Nina Mason of Rio said she sees people leaving the state to get away from the power lines because they believe their health is threatened by them.

Several public hearings have been scheduled throughout the region. George said when an individual testifies at one that is their only opportunity.

About 50 people attended Tuesday’s hearing in Moorefield.