Southwest Pa. residents fight power line: Project would answer regional demand, reduce local rates, company says - The Charleston Gazette (Charleston, WV)

EIGHTY FOUR, Pa. - The farmhouse Deb Bandel built with her husbandin this southwest corner of Pennsylvania was meant to be a peacefulretreat from the bustle of the outside world.

But a fixture of modern life may soon carve a path through theirlush 134-acre property: a buzzing, crackling high-voltage power line.

'We built what we thought was the house we'd live in for the restof our lives,' said Bandel, whose farmland 25 miles southwest ofPittsburgh was once owned by her in-laws. 'I don't want to live thisclose to a line.'

The 500-kilovolt line, which would be strung from towers anaverage of 125 to 140 feet tall, has become a point of bittercontention for Bandel and other residents in this region. They haveformed an activist group, Stop the Towers.

Residents are worried it will hurt property values, theenvironment and possibly their health, and question whether it willbenefit the area.

The line is part of a larger project to build a 240-miletransmission line that would pass through West Virginia and continueto northern Virginia, easing congestion in the mid-Atlanticelectrical grid and channeling power to the eastern seaboard, wherepower plants are relatively few and electricity is more expensive.

The Pennsylvania section of the line, however, would serve onlymushrooming local demand, according to Allegheny Energy Inc., one oftwo utilities that would build the line.

Electricity customers between New Jersey and Washington wouldcover the costs of the project, which is expected to help lower theprice of electricity in those areas and is targeted to be completedin 2011.

Still more lines are being considered by Valley Forge-based PJMInterconnection, the company that operates the grid in a 13-statearea, as the vast power network undergoes its first major expansionin decades.

Two other proposed lines - from West Virginia to Maryland and fromPennsylvania to New Jersey - are under review by PJM this year. Theyare among about 10 major power-line projects on the table, all ofthem subject to regulatory approval.

Like the larger section of the Allegheny Energy line, some of theother proposals revolve around bringing surplus electricity fromlarge, coal-fired power plants in Appalachia and the Midwest to thedensely populated East Coast.

'When you build this stuff, you don't build it for today, youbuild it for tomorrow,' said Ray Dotter, a PJM spokesman.

The company continuously updates a 15-year plan to avoidoverloaded lines that could lead to costly blackouts such as the onethat swept from Ohio to Canada and New York City in 2003, he said.

In southwestern Pennsylvania, members of Stop the Towers expressconcerns about the possible health effects of electromagnetic fieldsgiven off by high-voltage power lines, though studies have beeninconclusive.

The building of the line would also scar the landscape, saymembers of the group, which has a distribution list of about 500people and has held meetings at churches and fairgrounds and boughtnewspaper ads and radio spots.

They also fear property values will decrease - also the subject ofinconclusive studies - or that they will be forced to move becausetheir houses fall in the path of the line, which requires a 200-foot-wide swath.

Harry and Mike Cross, a father-and-son team of bricklayers, livein homes a short distance from Bandel's farm and are among thoseworried they might have to vacate. The line, they say, would sweepacross nearby land and one relative's trailer.

Allegheny Energy owns rights to install the line on land alongmost of the proposed route, in some cases purchased decades ago, saidDavid Neurohr, a spokesman for the company. It owns easements on landowned by Bandel and the Crosses.

The company has said southwestern Pennsylvania's electrical systemhas become strained because of commercial and residential growth, andnew lines are needed to avoid future blackouts or brownouts. Theactivists, Neurohr said, are a vocal minority.

But Bill Pollock, an energy consultant and Stop the Towers member,said 'we have much more power than we need now or could need in thefuture' because of plants built years ago to support the area's once-thriving industrial base.

'We also have a very robust infrastructure for transmissionlines,' he said. 'They'll make hundreds of millions of dollars ofadditional profits. That's the only reason they're going after it.'

But experts say power distribution is no longer localized, as itonce was, nor is generation centralized.

'Does the power line in Virginia help the people in New York? Yes,it does, but it's also helping people in Virginia,' said Phillip F.Schewe, chief science writer at Maryland-based American Institute ofPhysics and author of 'The Grid: A Journey Through the Heart of OurElectrified World.'

'It's a sort of situation where all of these lines help everybody.You can't say that it's carrying power from A to B ... because theelectricity made in a generator goes to 100 cities,' Schewe said.

The Department of Energy, meanwhile, has proposed two electricity'transmission corridors' on the East and West coasts - designationsthat could spur the building of major new power lines in many statesregardless of local opposition.

That proposal has met with opposition from lawmakers and others,and public hearings are planned.

Like other members of Stop the Towers, Deb Bandel knew of thepossibility that new power lines could be built on her land.

'We may move, if I can talk my husband into it,' she said. 'We hadno idea the magnitude of this.'

On the Net:

PJM Interconnection: www.pjm .com/index.jsp

Allegheny Energy: www .alleghenypower.com

Stop the Towers: stopthe towers.org