Governor forms commission to investigate border dispute
Governor Joe Manchin wants a Virginia wind energy company to know that drawing state lines is one government function that hasn’t been privatized, yet. Manchin also wants the company to know, if any part of the wind farm is in the Mountain State, it will be regulated.
Highland New Wind Development (HNWD) redrew the West Virginia – Virginia state line in maps submitted to Virginia state officials in August. In response to complaints from the Pocahontas County Commission, Manchin mustered up a long inactive commission to determine the exact location of the state line and investigate possible encroachments into his state’s territory.
Manchin appointed three members on September 15 and tasked the commission to “take all actions that are necessary and appropriate to identify the location of the boundary line in question…”
The appointments, which require approval by the state senate, are Curt Keplinger, surveyor with L&W Enterprises in Petersburg; Charles Sypolt, professor of land surveying at Glenville State College and Tom Rayburn, surveying manager at E.L. Robinson Engineering in Charleston.
State law authorizes the commission to establish a boundary line which shall be presumed correct unless proven otherwise in a court of law. The commission also is authorized to utilize state and private professional resources to determine the boundary and meet with similar commissions in neighboring states.
If the commission meets with another from a neighboring state, it can recommend legislation, if the two bodies come to agreement. If the commissions do not agree, litigation must be pursued before the United States Supreme Court.
HNWD’s engineer, Blackwell Engineering, of Harrisonburg, Virginia, submitted an initial site plan to Highland County officials on August 3, who noticed that some of the wind farm would be located in West Virginia.
HNWD resubmitted the site plan, which included changes to the state line on the base US Geological Survey (USGS) map. Jeffrey Hiner, a Monterey, Virginia, surveyor and contractor for HNWD, redrew the line after conducting a survey of the area.
If built as indicated, even with the new site plan, at least one of the wind farm’s gigantic turbine blades would spin in West Virginia airspace.
Manchin’s letter states, “If, indeed, a portion of the project is constructed in West Virginia, certain state regulatory action is required.”
The border between Pocahontas County and Virginia was formed by an Act of the West Virginia General Assembly in 1821. The Act delineates the border as a line that follows “the top of said mountain,” that is, the top of Allegheny Mountain.
Hiner described how he determined the state line in a letter published on HNWD’s website.
He first surveyed the area and marked the high points with stakes. The surveyor then used GPS to determine the coordinates of the high points, which he plotted on a USGS map as the state line. The line drawn by Hiner differed in places, by up to 50 feet, to the west, from the line on the USGS map.
In the letter, the surveyor wrote that he did not move the state line.
“The top of Allegheny Mountain is the line between Pocahontas and Highland counties and that is the line I surveyed,” he wrote. “I did not relocate, move, shift, or in any way change the location of that line.”
However, by redrawing the line, Hiner changed the geographic coordinates of the state line as indicated on the official USGS map.
As of press time, Governor Kaine’s office had not responded to the question if Virginia was forming a boundary commission in response to the current dispute.
In addition to questions about the site plan, HNWD’s controversial project faces other hurdles.
Virginia’s Department of Historic Resources (DHR) filed an SCC complaint in August, stating that HNWD had not met its pre-construction conditions regarding protection of historic resources. A hearing on the complaint is scheduled for October 13 at the SCC in Richmond.
DHR officials have stated concerns that the industrial wind facility’s could negatively impact the pristine Civil War battlefield at Camp Allegheny in Pocahontas County.
Geoff Hamill
Staff Writer
The Pocahontas Times
7 October 2009
Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
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