Power to the People
Energy Expansion Across the West
By David Nolt, 2-13-08
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| Photo by David Nolt | |
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Resort communities require a lot of kilowatts, and bustling Big Sky, Montana is no exception to this rule; between 1996 and 2005 there were 660 new residential units built in Big Sky – a dramatic 8.2 percent increase. And this does not include the Moonlight Basin and Yellowstone Club ski resorts.
In order to meet the energy needs of Big Sky, Northwestern Energy is planning to upgrade the existing 69-kV power line from Four Corners to Big Sky with a 161-kV line. Northwestern is also seeking to bypass state and public review through right-of-way agreements with private landowners to build the 35-mile, $20-$30 million line.
In order to serve a slightly larger growing population, the West Wide Energy Corridor federal plan is buzzing right along with a public comment period closing on Thursday, February 14, 2008. The corridor could affect nearly 3 million acres in 11 Western states.
Northwestern’s Big Sky upgrade is very early in the process, according to company spokesperson Claudia Rapkoch, and she says it is “far too early” for Northwestern to be talking to individual landowners about right-of-way agreements. Northwestern is seeking to circumvent state and public review under the Major Facilities Citing Act Process, which allows the company exclusion from the Montana Siting Act if it obtains permission from more than 75 percent of the landowners who collectively own more than 75 percent of the property along which the new line is to be located. Rapkoch says this is “typical” for similar projects, and the company used this process to build a power line from Belgrade to Three Forks, Montana.
Northwestern will still have to go through environmental review for the line, which will consist of combinations of single and H-frame wooden poles 60- to 90-feet tall and 300 feet apart winding through the narrow Gallatin Canyon. Standard right-of-ways for similar lines vary between 50- and 80-feet wide. Northwestern estimates the permitting process for the line will be completed in mid-2009. Construction of the line will take about three years to complete.
West Wide Energy Corridor
Section 368 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 specifically calls for the designation of energy corridors across 11 western states, and designate corridors the Department of Energy has – nearly 3 million federal acres of them.
The West Wide Energy Corridor would set the stage for “multi-modal” (oil, gas, and hydrogen pipelines and electricity transmission and distribution facilities) transport lines, making it easier for energy companies to deal with government bureaucracy in order to bring energy to the growing populations of the West.
The 90-day public comment period on the West Wide Energy Corridor Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) ends on Thursday, February 14, 2008. Governors in the affected states will then have a 60-day Governor’s Consistency Review period after the final document is published. A final Record of Decision with amended land-use plans will then be published by the Bureau of Land Management.
According to the Energy Infrastructure Promotion and Development Division of the Montana Department of Commerce, Governor Schweitzer’s office will release initial comments on the EIS this Thursday.
The completed corridor plan will not necessarily mean there will be construction of new energy lines, but instead it will better coordinate federal agencies and set the stage for energy providers to work with one government point-of-contact. Energy providers proposing projects within the corridors will not have to identify alternative routes, saving time and money on environmental assessments. The plan is designed to minimize the dispersal of different energy lines across the landscape, according to West Wide Energy Corridor Public Affairs Specialist Heather Feeney.
“It’s not ever been envisioned that every mile or foot of corridor would be filled with multiple projects,” Feeney explains. “The reason they’re designated to accommodate multiple projects, however, is because Congress said that they had to be.”
The Forest Service and the BLM are the two main agencies working with affected federal lands, but the Department of Energy, the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service (no Park Service lands are affected by the corridor, according to Feeney) are all involved in the plan.
Feats of distance between populations have always been a major challenge of providing energy in the West, and Feeney says the corridors will provide better energy routes across vast western landscapes.
Western states and communities tapping into alternative energies like wind are finding the lack of transmission lines to deliver kilowatts as a major challenge to providing clean energy. This is especially true in wind-rich Montana; the Judith Gap wind farm provides plenty of power, but transmitting that power from central Montana can be difficult, especially for newly proposed wind farms.
According to Feeney, the West Wide Energy Corridor merely lays the framework for new energy lines and cannot require the incorporation of renewable energies like wind, but she says renewable energy sources are “absolutely considered” in the EIS (See Chapter 2). Programmatic Environmental Impact Statements on geothermal and solar energies are also in the works.
A public meeting on the West Wide Energy Corridor in Helena, Montana drew a large crowd but few comments. Some in attendance raised concerns about eminent domain takeovers to connect federal land corridors through private land. Conservation groups are weary about the corridor’s affect on existing roadless areas. Feeney was unable to comment on roadless areas, and repeated calls to the Forest Service were not returned in time for this story’s posting.
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HOW MANY ACRES OF FOREST SERVICE LAND WILL THE CORRIDORS INCLUDE?
343,296 acres. (.24% of NFS lands, (.0024) by comparison the BLM acreage = 2,701,023. Source: Table 3-32 of the DPEIS
Of the 6,055 miles of proposed Section 368 corridors, 61% or 3,713 miles have existing energy infrastructure in the corridor. (Source: page 2-6) 39%, or about 2,359 miles are already included in previously, locally, designated corridors.(Source: page 2-8).
HOW MANY ACRES OF ROADLESS AREAS IS THE PROPOSED CORRIDOR SLATED TO INCLUDE?
It is the intent to have no designated roadless acreage included.
As published the DPEIS infringed on 17 roadless areas. (Source: Table 2.2-6). Since publication, Forests have continued to refine the corridors, removing proposed corridors from roadless areas. In the few limited locations, where Energy infrastructure currently exists within the roadless area, it may not be possible to move a corridor outside the roadless area. In these few locations, corridor width and use will be restricted to reflect the local conditions. There are no corridors on roadless areas in AZ, ID, NM, or WA.
LEGALLY, HOW WILL THE GOVERNMENT GRANT PERMISSION TO BUILD IN THESE AREAS?
The government will grant access using the same authorization and easement authorities that have been used in the past. The Section 368 requirement to designate corridors did not change the Minerals Leasing Act or FLPMA, the primary authorities used to grant access to NFS lands. What will improve with the Record of Decision designating the Section 368 energy corridors is the streamlined process and coordination between Federal agencies that leads to granting access.
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Thanks for reading everybody.
-David Nolt
Renewable power is not necessarily best co-located with conventional base power sources, so it's reasonable to foresee needing new routings.
Gonna be interesting to see how much NIMBY angst buildup we see here.
I live near the Three Forks to Belgrade corridor for the transmission upgrade to 4 Corners. That line is on a 400 foot wide railroad right of way that also includes Frontage Road (US 10), BNSF railroad tracks, and fiber optic cable lines. That right of way cuts right through an 1869 homestead. The railroad went through in 1883. Clear title on the homestead and railroad sections was not secured until about 1891. In 1938 the owner of the homestead property asked the railroad if they ever compensated the homesteader or his heirs for the 400 foot right of way. (He considered it a taking.) The answer was NO. Since it was a homestead (i.e. a gift from the government), you should be happy we also provided a railroad through your backyard.
At least it was a specified and platted width. In the canyon of the Clark Fork east of Missoula in the Turah/Clinton area, I have seen plats of subdivision lots on the narrow valley floor that were awash in easements to Montana Power for power lines. Most of these easements were "blanket easements". In other words, the easement applied to the entire property, entitling the power company to put the transmission line ANYWHERE on the property, even through your house. This area has all filled in with houses now. I wonder if the homeowners even suspect the risk.
This plan at least offers some safeguards and warnings to prospective buyers. In any land deal, it's best to do plenty of homework until you are sure of what you are getting in to. Avoid taking the word of others for granted. Even then, there will be surprises somewhere down the line.
The real issue is that Montana is windy, as are many drier states. Lots of wind. And the limiting factor on wind power is adequate power transmission lines. You go see all those rivers with Federal dams and big time transmission lines snaking across the country, and that is where the wind farms are now popping up. You might make lots of electricity with wind, but people can't carry it home in a lunch bucket. There has to be an electron hiway for it to be of any use. That hiway has to go from where power is made to where power is used.
At one time, about every dam on the Columbia system had an aluminum plant nearby. Aluminum from bauxite is mostly a way to congeal electricity. Too bad the pot line process is so very expensive to stop and start. It would be a great way to conserve hydropower in the months and years of high runoff. Have a national aluminum ingot bank. And you have to know that national defense, Hanford, the aerospace and airplane industry, all benefitted from the BPA and close by aluminum plants near dams and near the railroad. We tend to forget how we got here from there, with a modicum of our freedoms intact.
I guess my point is that you cannot have the clean energy without producing it where conditions are favorable and possible, and then being able to send it where it is needed. Without powerlines, that require rights of way, you can't get there from here. If you buy off on man made global warming, then how can you be against power line rights of way carrying clean air electricity?
My problem with wind power is that I am still not satisfied they make that power without killing a zillion birds and bats each year. And, I wonder how much effort and discovery is made as to whether they are built on flyways, areas of seasonal use. Even shut down, they are something for night migrants to run into and die. Like, some of those new monsters are more than a football field lenght in the air!!! The blades rotate in an area of l 1/2 acres of air space!! Then the other part of my brain kicks in and says why do you give tinker's damn, Bear Bait? This is the good ole USA, where house cats, felis domesticus, kills by the lowest estimates, over a BILLION birds a year, with nobody caring the least, and some estimates are as high as 3 BILLION BIRDS EACH YEAR. The silent spring here, as it has on many islands in the world's oceans, will come on cat's feet, cats who will eat the last bird. And then someone will come and rescue the starving cats. On that light note, I guess windpower is just another little piece of clean air collateral damage for our avian cohorts on this spinning rock. A few tenths of one percent of public land devoted to rights of way is just a little, teeny bit, and will hardly be noticed.
As humans continue to breed like rabbits & consume like shrews there will be a greater demand for energy & hopefully it will be greener. Will there ever be a time in the foreseeable future when the issue of human numbers will be discussed because--although in this country "limits" are currently not perceiveable to the majority--there are limits. A recent survey in New Jersey indicated that 49 percent of the citizens would move out of the state if they could afford to do so. Although the survey did not give the reasons, I assume it would in large measure have to do with human density, crime rates, quality of life & such. The good citizens of Italy are ignoring the Pope & reducing their breeding rates because they are running out of space & there are not enough countries willing to take their "surplus humans". The "tribal wars" in Africa are in essence about too many humans & goats chasing degraded and shrinking grazing land.
So I believe that we have reached a point in this country where a rationale discussion about human population growth is needed. To those who would reject this idea, I would ask if they think one, two or even ten billion Americans is a "reasonable number? Or would any number do?