Power cooperative, citizens speak about new substation project at open house in Berea

Sep. 28—Winchester-based East Kentucky Power Cooperative (EKPC) has proposed a substation and new 8.5 mile-long, 100-foot-wide easement for an electric transmission line that will partially cut through the Upper Red Lick and Big Hill areas of Madison County as well as part of Jackson County.

The company is proposing 69 kilovolt transmission lines for the project.

Citizens of Berea attended the co-op's open house to express their concerns directly to the company.

The current proposed location is between the Pinnacles and the Owsley Fork Reservoir and along property lines, which has raised concerns among Madison County citizens.

At an open house last week, various employees from EKPC were stationed around Berea College's Forestry Outreach Center. A company spokesperson said that these open houses were not mandatory but were hosted by the co-op to educate interested locals about projects and operations.

According to Joe Settles, manager of members services at EKPC, the co-op is proposing to build a project substation and transmission line to "increase the reliability of service in this area."

"The current substation is getting to a point where it's getting overloaded," he said.

Settles added that, in the winter, especially, the demand for energy is higher. "You don't want to overload transformers because you end up damaging them. Then you can end up where you can't serve a load at all. So, you don't want to damage the substation, you don't want to damage your transformer. and so what we're trying to do is to get in front of that and put it in a new substation to handle the additional loads in the area."

He said that the project is necessary because their current substation, located in the Silver Creek area, is currently unable to provide the required amount of service. In fact, he said that the service area in question had "the highest amount of customers of any substation" in their entire system, which serves portions of 87 counties.

Nick Comer, external affairs manager of EKPC, said that the best way to think about it is like an extension cord. When the cord has too many items plugged in, it fails.

Settles additionally explained that, in the past, the company has tried to move some of its customers to different circuits, but the population growth has made the demand "much higher."

"We've gotten to a point where we need to — for the distribution area around here — we need to be able to provide an additional service tap point from a different transmission line so we can maintain the reliability. If we don't, we'll end up overloading the substation that currently exists, which would ultimately end up causing greater issues for the community," asserted Settles.

The project proposes using a mix of single and double-pole lines made of galvanized steel poles. The two-pole structures will reportedly have a pole-to-pole separation of 15.5 feet.

While the language presented by the company asserts that the project is in its early stages, it is important to note that the project is already considered to be underway.

Settles said, "We have started. We're proposing to build it this way, but we're in the early phases of what I would call our discovery phase."

The company's literature states that corridor mapping and surveying will take place from Oct. 2023 to Dec. 2023, and then right-of-way negotiations will run from Nov. 2023 to March 2023. Steps titled "structure stakeout" and "tree clearing & construction" will run from Oct. 2024 to June 2025.

In this phase, EKPC has developed a "proposed corridor" where they would develop a transmission line. This proposed corridor is created based on "an objective methodology and computer model", said Settles, that creates a plan based on a variety of different factors, including environmental concerns, geography, community impacts, and costs.

Settles said that the current goal is the get information from "potentially affected landowners" and how to mitigate issues that could arise for them.

However, at the open house, a group of citizens organized to speak directly to EKPC employees, gathering in a circle with a microphone. While Settles repeatedly emphasized EKPC's concern for "potential landowners," members of the group were insistent upon it being a problem for anyone in Berea due to the proposed line running close to Owsley Reservoir and impeding on the view from the Pinnacles.

Kitts was one of the organizers of the citizen-led efforts to express discontentment to EKPC members, building a 24-question bingo sheet of questions that she had compiled from others' concerns about the project. She also kept track of how many people came through the door with a clicker.

"A lot of my friends that did want to come out — and they did want to advocate for our mountains and our views, and our water, and our soil, and also our farmlands in history —they wanted to come, but they just didn't know what to ask or what to say because they were given so little time to formulate those questions and those ideas. So, by collecting that list of questions from people, I was able to put them out there and be helpful."

Her final count was 303 people; however, she said additional people may have come in during the citizen-led question-and-answer session.

"I am really proud of our community, for everybody coming together across county lines coming to support people who had easements that are going to be bought out or bullied into it as well as people who love the area that came out and supported it. I was also proud of everybody's behavior. Like, yeah — people were opinionated, but nobody was mean or rude," said Kitts.

Property owners claimed they had received letters about the project inviting them to the open house, and one shared with the Register confirmed this. However, Settles alleged that he was not aware of any letters sent on behalf of the company or on the company's behalf by another entity.

"We've heard that from a couple of different sources," he confirmed. "Internally, we have not been able to verify any letters like that."

Melissa Isaacs Powell was one of many affected property owners who expressed discontentment after the public open house. She says that, as a homeowner, she has concerns about the environmental impact on the local land, including the health of the children and adults who would be affected by herbicide use and other potential issues with the new substation.

She alleged that she did not receive a letter about the open house or the potential use of her property, which has been in her family for five generations.

"I felt the meeting was a disappointment," she remarked. "There were a lot of unanswered questions, and they beat around the bush. In preparation to address homeowners effectively, they should have gotten correct Property Valuation Administrator (PVA) information on the property line, and each homeowner should have gotten a packet instead of us finding out through social media or another neighbor."

Members of the group also asked Settles about the possibilities of utilizing alternative electricity sources, such as solar power or placing lines underground.

According to Comer, the company does utilize solar energy and currently has a 60-acre solar farm in Clark County; however, this will not work for this project. The reason for that, he said, is because solar energy is meant to generate energy. This project is improving the transmission of energy.

"Whether it's a gas plant, coal plant, a solar plant, or what have you — that generates electricity, and then once power is generated, then that that electricity is delivered over powerlines typically. Transmission lines are used to deliver large amounts of electricity over long distances to a substation where the electricity is then the voltage is reduced and goes on to the smaller distribution lines. Those are the smaller lines alongside the roadways that actually deliver it to homes and businesses. This is a project to improve the transmission system. This isn't a project that we're doing to improve the generation to have more generation of electricity, which is what a solar farm would do," he explained.

Additionally, citizens were concerned about the potential expansion of this "small" substation in the future, as demands could increase even further.

Comer confirmed that, while that is not currently the plan, "that is possible."

Settles remarked that citizen feedback is "a critical piece" of data for the cooperative; however, he added that the substation and its parts would "definitely end up with some route within that corridor" — which measures a half-mile wide — regardless of whether property owners agreed. Comer confirmed that, as a public utility, they have the power of eminent domain and that they try to "reasonably accommodate" property owners.

As a utility company, they answer to the Kentucky Public Service Commission and not the local governments, said Settles.

In addition, the company's literature on the project says that they need approval from the Rural Utilities Service, an agency that administers the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development Programs, to ensure that EKPC meets "appropriate environmental obligations including compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, and the Endangered Species Act.

"Our ability to construct this is covered as a public utility," he said. "That authority was basically there already. So what we're trying to do now is to make sure that what we build is in the best interest of our communities."

While Settles remarked that EKPC finds community feedback to be important, he also noted that "there could be citizens that are opposing projects, and the projects still occur."

What does that mean for landowners whose property are in the line of the proposed easement?

The co-op's project literature says that if a person's property is crossed by this project, EKPC will seek to purchase an easement that allows the co-op to locate its poles and wires on the property and enter the property "as needed" for maintenance.

The property owners maintain rights and ownership of the property. However, the easements allow the co-op to clear and control trees within the right-of-way, as well as other trees that could "interfere with transmission lines" and "prevent[s] structures from being constructed in the right-of-way."

According to Settles, landowners are typically compensated based on a fair market value, which is negotiated with each property owner. The co-op's literature confirmed that this amount is based on recent property sales and the impact that the line will have on the property.

If the parties disagree on that value, the company will negotiate.

"We end up trying to work out a way to get to a place where we both agree on that value," commented Settles. "We can get into a situation where we can get into condemnation, but we do everything we can to avoid it."

At that point, the matter is in the hands of a legal court, which will decide what that fair market value is.

In terms of environmental protections, Comer also said that they use conservative methods to manage the land around their lines, using herbicides that are approved by the Environmental Protection Agency and applied by licensed professionals.

He also says that the cooperative relies on information from the National Institutes of Health to affirm that "there's been no conclusive evidence that there are health impacts from electromagnetic field exposure."

According to Settles, "The community needs this. We need to provide this service. As a utility, we have to provide a reliable source of power to our members. and so, when we propose a project like this, it's because it's needed. If there was an alternative solution that made sense, it's possible. But in this situation, we've gone through the different ways of trying to alleviate this issue and we're at a point where now we need the project, as it is."

The company has another project in progress within Madison County, titled the Fawkes — Duncannon transmission line rebuild project, which the company says it intended to "rebuild approximately 7 miles of an existing 69-kilovolt electrical transmission line" as a 138-kilovolt and 69-kilovolt double-circuit electric transmission line. The physical scope of this project is reportedly near the intersection of Goggins Lane and Tates Creek Road, southeast to a location near Parrish Road and Duncannon Lane in Richmond.