Group schedules informative meeting
Save Our Scenic Hill Country Environment, an organization that supports sensible development in the Hill Country, has scheduled an informational meeting to provide an update on area transmission line developments.
The public is invited to attend the meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 10, at the Gillespie County Farm Bureau building at 237 Equestrian Drive in Fredericksburg.
The featured speaker will be Max Yzaguirre, former chairman of the Texas Public Utilities Commission. He currently heads The Yzaguirre Group LLC.
Yzaguirre’s presentation will include an update on recent transmission line developments and the related Texas Public Utility Commission process.
His comments will be particularly timely as LCRA Transmission Services Corporation presented its Certificate of Convenience and Necessity application to the PUC on Oct. 28 for the Gillespie (Fredericksburg area) to Newton (Lampasas County) project.
LCRA TSC’s preferred and alternate routes were presented in the application. Potentially directly affected landowners will have 30 calendar days to file notice of intervention with the PUC. The PUC is required to make the final route selection within 181 days of the filing.
Updates on the McCamey D (Eldorado area) to Kendall (Comfort area) to Gillespie project also will be provided. LCRA TSC was recently granted a delay for the related CCN filing until July 6, 2010, to provide time to evaluate two additional routes that are outside the original study area. One of the routes would pass through Menard, Mason and northern Gillespie counties. The other route would follow Interstate 10 from Sonora to the Kendall substation.
The featured presentation will be preceded by a brief annual meeting of the SOSHCE organization, which will include election of six of the 12 directors and an annual report of operations for the past year.
In supporting sensible development, SOSHCE believes that installation of the transmission line projects should be done with minimal impacts. Proposed mitigation steps include utilization of existing electric right-of-ways and/or the I-10 corridor, use of monopoles rather than lattice structures throughout, avoiding special areas such as the Enchanted Rock State Natural Area and fully compensating affected landowners.
The organization also believes that there are much better places than the Hill Country to develop industrial wind farms. This belief is based on a number of factors, including there being areas in West Texas and the Panhandle with much better wind resource potential, fewer conflicts between landowners and less effect on best land use and values.
More information on SOSHCE and on transmission lines and industrial wind development is available on the group’s Website, soshillcountry.org.
By Conor Harrison
The Daily Times
4 November 2009
Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
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