OF PIPELINES AND POWER LINES
Utah Homeowners Dismayed by Cutting Crews’ Work
By Headwaters News, 6-06-07
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The issue of energy corridors and the impact on private property is increasing in the West, as growth occurs in areas where older pipelines are located and new transmission lines are under consideration to carry power produced in the Rocky Mountain West to new markets.
Two stories today – one about a pipeline route in Utah and another about a proposed power line in Montana and Idaho highlight different aspects of energy development and growth.
In Utah, where crews are clearing trees and brush from Chevron’s pipeline route that stretches 200 miles between Rangeley, Colo., and Salt Lake City, homeowners have been surprised and dismayed to find cutting crews and felled trees in their backyards.
The Salt Lake Tribunereported today that the pipeline has been in place since the early 1950s, but a new federal regulation that requires the entire route be visible from the air for monitoring purposes has required the removal of trees that are literally decades old. The new rule stems from a 1999 incident in Washington where tree roots caused a gasoline pipeline to rupture, setting off an explosion that killed three and injured several others.
Although the company Chevron hired to do the clearing was required to give homeowners two weeks’ advance notice of the work, some were apparently notified just minutes before work began. Chevron officials said they planned to apologize to homeowners who were given little advance notice of the work. But those officials said growth in the Utah counties that the pipeline crosses has put the tree-cutting crews directly in people’s back yards, which have taken over the empty fields and pastures that used to overlie the pipeline.
In Montana and Idaho, it’s a new transmission route that may give some landowners pause. NorthWestern Energy wants to build a 400-mile transmission line from western Montana to southern Idaho, a plan that Ken Toole, a Montana Public Service Commission member, said could face some opposition from landowners in western Montana who might not want a power line running close to their homes. The Associated Press reports in the Montana Standard that the 400-mile power line, supported by towers more than 100 feet high, would run from either Townsend or Garrison, through western Montana to southern Idaho.
Another power line, from Great Falls to Alberta, is also under consideration. A project that if combined with the Montana-Idaho power line, could make a regional grid more efficient, and help electricity rates go down.
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Comments
If greener sources of energy are going to be pursued, the need for an expanded transmission grid must first be met. You can make power anywhere, but the trick is getting it onto the grid where the constantly changing amounts of power produced can be leveled automatically, and the power put where it is currently (bad pun) needed.
You identify where the power could be produced, make a committment, and build the transmission capability and then install the windmills.
Oregon had a governor who wanted to employ thousands of unemployed or under employed people planting trees. The workers were not working right now. It took a forester a little while to explain to the Guv that first you had to wait for cones to ripen, then harvest the cones, dry them, extract the seeds, put them through a chilling period, plant them, replant them, and replant them once again, and the whole process took two years if you started right now. You had to have the trees, a plan to plant them and where, match the planting sites with seedlings from similar sites for each species desired, and you had to start when conditions permitted. Good ideas need planning. Getting transmission lines in now is a good investment. It will aid in developing greener energies.