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.

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!

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

Posted today at wvmetronews.com:

The state Public Service Commission says it will hold four public hearings later this month on Allegheny Energy’s plans for a transmission line to cross five northern counties.

The PSC will hold hearings in Morgantown (10-23), Grafton (10-24), Canaan Valley (10-29) and Moorefield (10-30). The agency will take testimony beginning at 1:30 and again at 6:30 on those dates.

The rest of the PSC’s schedule on the project includes a status conference and public comments at PSC offices in Charleston on Nov. 28 and 29. The evidentiary hearing in the case will take place in two phases scheduled for January and February.

The Morgantown public hearing will will take place at the WVU Erickson Alumni Center, the Taylor County Senior Center will host the Grafton hearing. The PSC will be at Canaan Valley Resort for the Tucker County hearing and at the South Branch Inn for the Moorefield hearing.