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No certainty for power lines
Published May 16, 2009
Not in my backyard.
That was the sentiment of residents Thursday night when LCRA hosted an open house on the campus of Tally Elementary School.
Several hundred residents looked at maps and renderings of proposed transmission lines that might run through Kerr County to a proposed lift station north of Kerrville.
However, according to some in attendance, it is difficult to get any useful information until land owners know which of the proposed routes LCRA is targeting for lines — something that won’t happen for at least several more months.
“By mid-June, LCRA will identify alternate routes and send them to the consultant for their evaluation of environmental assessment and routing analysis,” said LCRA spokeswoman Krista Umscheid-Ramirez. “Once the consultant has finished that process (around late August), it will give back to us the routes with those evaluation results. We will add to that evaluation the route costs and determine our preferred and alternate routes that we will submit to the Public Utility Commission with our application in October. Until the evaluations are completed, we won’t know how many proposed/alternate routes run through Kerr County.”
According to Umscheid-Ramirez, LCRA learned several things at recent open houses that will help them determine the best routes, as they see it.
“We have learned about additional routing constraints such as archaeological and historical sites and barns that people made us aware of,” she said.
For Hill Country ranch owner Don Hancock, that timetable and the way the whole deal is being put together rub him the wrong way.
“I attended the meeting in Harper,” Hancock said. “My main issue is I feel like a lot of things are being misconstructed on this deal. LCRA is bringing these lines right through the heart of the Hill Country, and there is more than one company that is competing for the power. Each competitor wants their own easements and own lines. They think they can do whatever they want.”
Hancock said he put his life savings into his ranch, clearing cedar by hand and building his house to face away from any other structures and toward the hills on his ranch.
“They want this damn thing to go right through our property,” he said. “Over our creeks, through our trees and (the lines) are eyesores. Lots of big property owners would like these lines on their property because of the money — they don’t have to come through the middle of a lot of these small ranches.”
The proposed lines would be built to bring power from renewable energy zones — like wind power — from West Texas. According the LCRA Web site, “preliminary routes will follow existing rights-of-way and apparent property lines to the extent possible and practical.”
Kerr County commissioner Bruce Oehler would like to see LCRA use existing right-of-ways.
“I wish they would use existing right-of-ways other than going right through the Hill Country, Oehler said. “Interstate 10 or the pipeline right-of-way would work.”
Only one of the proposed routes would impact Oehler’s district, something he hopes stays that way.
“It seems like we have existing infrastructure to support the new lines already,” he said. “Florida Power and Light has a line — I don’t know how many lines these companies need.”
Oehler said he hasn’t seen any dates concerning the LCRA timeline for picking the eventual route but promised the county would take a long look at any proposed new lines.
“I might make some people north of us mad, but I just don’t want them to come any farther south,” he said.
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