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Power of farmers put to test 

Credit:  Power of farmers put to test; They say transmission line project will further diminish land, that company has gone too far | By John Green - The Hutchinson News | April 13, 2013 | hutchnews.com ~~

The first high voltage electric transmission line to dissect their crop and pasture land arrived in 1967, when Sunflower Electric paid Edwards County farmer Anthony J. Brake $1,413 for the privilege.

The second line – taller and with higher voltage – went up just two years ago, running parallel a few hundred feet from the first.

This time ITC Great Plains used eminent domain when many in the area, including Brake’s daughter and grandson, couldn’t reach agreement with the company on a right-of-way settlement for the 345-kilovolt line, erected to move wind-generated electricity from near Spearville onto the state’s electric grid.

Now, Theresa Brake and her nephew, Kevin Brake, fear a third line – the largest yet – will take more land from their limited farm, and they plan to resist it.

Nearly a dozen other farmers or landowners from the area joined the Brakes on Thursday in a church meeting room to express their concern and frustration with the latest project – Clean Line Energy Partners’ “Grain Belt Express.”

Clean Line Energy, headquartered in Houston and formed by a pair of out-of-state billionaires, is proposing to build a 700-mile-long overhead high voltage electric line that will carry a projected 3,500 megawatts of wind-generated power from Kansas east to Illinois, Indiana and beyond.

The company is promoting the 600-kilovolt “direct current,” or DC line, as a boon to Kansas in that it will allow the state’s wind energy to be marketed outside of Kansas, resulting in expansion of western Kansas wind farms, though none of the power in the line will – or can – be used within the state.

The Kansas Corporation Commission declared the company a public utility in Kansas in late 2011 – opening it to use the right of eminent domain to acquire its necessary right-of-way.

The company held public meetings at several locations in January and February to outline proposed routes, notifying and inviting any landowners within a mile and half of the potential routes.

The company indicated it will finalize a route proposal this summer – likely in June or July, said Diana Rivera, project development manager, and then seek approval of it from the KCC. The company will be required to notify landowners with property in the final proposed path, to allow them to comment before the KCC.

Line troubles

“From what we can gather, they’re going to come through on a diagonal simply because it’s the easiest way to get across,” said Theresa Brake. “We battled ITC and didn’t win. They’re (Clean Line) a big powerful corporation and we feel we’re going to be run over again.”

The problems with the line to farmers are numerous, Kevin Brake explained, and adding more lines just compounds those issues.

“We have to farm around them,” he said, which is expensive and time-consuming.

For example, for much of their acreage the Brakes hire crop dusters to apply fungicide and herbicide. The lines bisecting the land prevent aerial spraying on a significant portion of the acreage.

While the existing lines run parallel to each other, the placement of the poles or towers are not, because they are different heights and distances apart. That prevents him from operating a boom sprayer under the lines as well.

He uses GPS on his farm equipment to control placement of the chemicals and prevent overlap. At $500-plus a gallon for some of the treatments, it’s easy to waste $20 or more per acre with even slight overlap, Brake said.

“I’m going to have to go out in an ATV and spray it by hand,” Brake said. “When I am out there on equipment, I’m doing figure eights and swirls and everything else trying to farm around these poles. … One set of lines is bad; two is bad enough; three is beyond the call of duty. They need to put them somewhere else.”

While allowed to farm under the lines, the lines prohibit the use of irrigation systems, Theresa Brake said.

“You can’t put any structures up,” she said. “It limits the use of your land.”

Construction of the line, done with heavy equipment, also severely compacts the ground, damaging its production potential.

Rivera confirmed no structures higher than 10 feet, including irrigation equipment, may go under the lines. But Clean Line is “working on ways to identify and minimize this impact,” Rivera said. “We’ll attempt to mitigate and compensate for any impact on land use and yields and so forth.”

That includes identifying where pivot irrigation now exists and potentially locating the new line along parcel boundaries or the outer edges of property, Rivera said.

“If we can’t minimize or avoid it, we’d compensate accordingly,” she said.

Limiting options

Several of the farmers questioned why new lines couldn’t be added to existing towers, but Rivera cited liability and national electric safety codes that prevent different electric companies from sharing towers. In fact, she said, the lines must be 100 to 200 feet apart, depending on the type of tower, which range from 100-foot monopoles to 200-foot lattice towers.

The group also suggested the company should build the lines in existing public right-of-way next to state highways. If required to cross farm fields, the lines should be placed running on the edge or through the center of the land – directly north and south or east and west – making it easier to farm than cutting across a diagonal.

Some people expecting to lease land for wind turbines along the route have been advised they may lose one or more of the wind towers, said Richard Hogan, who also farms north of Offerle.

“They (wind turbines) have to be back 500 feet from the transmission line,” he said. “I’m told the way they’ve got it laid out, what they’ve got planned, certain areas will lose out on turbines.”

It would also prevent oil production within a certain distance of the lines.

Leasing for wind or oil, with significant annual lease payments, is “a lot more lucrative” than the one-time lump sum payment for transmission right-of-way, Hogan noted.

“We have to furnish this highway for the electricity from wind farms and get nothing out of it after that first payment,” Hogan said. “That’s my biggest beef.”

“These people don’t have any idea what we’re putting up with out here,” he said. “I know it’s progress. I understand progress. But I don’t think it’s right they can take it for that one-time payment. It should be an annual payment or percent of income coming off the line. We should have a share in it. The property is approaching 2,500 to 3,000 acres out here. They’re taking quite a bit of value off our property.”

“Wind turbines and transmission are very different as far as land use and land impact, in terms of footprint,” Rivera said in attempting to explain the difference in payments between the two. “There are also commercial differences, in that wind is from independent power producers, versus a regulated utility for transmission. It’s a combination of all those things.”

Clean Line will offer landowners with structures that have to be removed an option to take a lump sum payment or annual payments, Rivera said, but otherwise right-of-way will be paid for with a lump sum.

Local benefits?

Other complaints voiced by the group are that Clean Line will have to pay no taxes on the line for 10 years. While the company projects adding thousands of temporary jobs in the state during construction, its unlikely, because of the expertise required, that many of those employed will come from Kansas.

“When ITC put in their line, the workers were from all over the county – New York, Washington, Idaho,” Hogan said. “There were a few from Kansas City, but it doesn’t benefit our job market out here in this part of the country.”

“It’s correct, the state Legislature passed 10-year property tax abatement for new lines back in 2001,” Rivera said. “Beginning year 11 after they’re built, we expect to pay $10,000 per mile of line. We’ll likely pay millions over the life of the line.”

How much will go to local municipalities depends “on a variety of factor and local levies,” she said. As the line is built, however, the company expects to pay $7,500 per mile for a one-time “construction mitigation payment” to compensate counties for the heavy equipment on local roads.

Also, Rivera said, there are myriad opportunities for contractors within the state to participate in construction, with only the actual stringing of the line requiring specialized contractors.

“There’s lot of moving dirt, clearing right-of-way, putting up temporary fences, restoration as well,” she said. “For erecting structures, they’ll be pouring concrete. There are a lot of jobs we expect to be able to acquire locally.”

The company has estimated construction of the line will result in 5,000 temporary jobs in Kansas and 500 permanent jobs. That estimate, however, includes both construction of the power lines and development of new wind farms and came from projections on how much wind power could be built.

She admitted the majority of jobs would be tied to building wind farms and didn’t have a figure on how many jobs transmission line construction would create.

Theresa Brake has to drive under both lines going in and out of her property, her home about two-tenths of a mile from the structures. Taking a walk through her pasture, she can hear the lines buzz on some days. She’s concerned, living less than a quarter mile from the lines, about the health effects from the electromagnetic waves being put off.

“Everybody wants this wind, but gosh, it doesn’t affect people back east,” Kevin Brake said. “It doesn’t affect their property.”

“We’re just small farmers,” he said. “We don’t have 5,000 or 6,000 acres. We have less than 1,000. … Our family has been farming this ground for over 100 years. I’m 56 and I haven’t inherited the farm yet. But when I do, there won’t be any left. It’s ruining my farming heritage.”

Source:  Power of farmers put to test; They say transmission line project will further diminish land, that company has gone too far | By John Green - The Hutchinson News | April 13, 2013 | hutchnews.com

This article is the work of the source indicated. Any opinions expressed in it are not necessarily those of National Wind Watch.

The copyright of this article resides with the author or publisher indicated. As part of its noncommercial educational effort to present the environmental, social, scientific, and economic issues of large-scale wind power development to a global audience seeking such information, National Wind Watch endeavors to observe “fair use” as provided for in section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law and similar “fair dealing” provisions of the copyright laws of other nations. Send requests to excerpt, general inquiries, and comments via e-mail.

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