A rare bird, fragile ecosystems, scenic landscapes, ancient fossil beds, and an outpouring of opposition may cause 15-miles of high-voltage electric transmission lines to be re-routed away from Donley County.
Cross Texas Transmission is seeking approval from state regulators to build the line from Childress County to Gray County. The company’s preferred route was through the northeastern part of Donley County, but the proposed final order filed August 16 with the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) seeks approval of Route 314, which bypasses Donley County in favor of a path through Collingsworth County.
“All routes are still under consideration,” Cross Texas spokeswoman Julie Ramsey told the Enterprise. “But landowners along Route 314, who had previously filed to intervene in the case, are now in agreement not to go to court.”
Ramsey said the PUC will review all the proposed routes and has until October 29 to give final approval to a route, but she said Cross Texas expects regulatory approval earlier, perhaps by the end of September.
The 345 kV double circuit line will require a right-of-way between 160 and 200 feet wide and will include poles 125 feet high placed five to seven poles per mile, according to published reports.
Ramsey said the average cost of building the line is $1.5 million per mile, and a seven-page legal notice published in the Enterprise on May 6 showed the preferred route through Donley County being about 15 miles long, which would have required an investment of about $22.5 million. The total cost of the project from the Gray Substation near Lefors to the Tesla Substation in Childress County is expected to be $177.9 million.
“It certainly would have increased the tax base,” Ramsey said of the preferred route through Donley County. “But there were a lot of concerns about the Lesser Prairie Chicken (LPC) and other environmental issues.”
The US Department of the Interior, the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department, Texas Comptroller Susan Combs, and the Texas Panhandle Audubon Society all filed comments with the PUC during the public comment phase of the process raising concerns about the effect the line could have on LPC habitat, according to records available online.
Numerous citizens, including Jay O’Brien, Laphe LaRoe, and many, many others, expressed concerns to the PUC about the habitat of the Prairie Chicken as well as the effects on wetlands and other ecologically sensitive features. O’Brien, the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, and many others also raised concerns about several fossil sites on the original historic RO Ranch, which in the past has yielded specimens that caused a period of time 12.5 to 9 million years ago to be officially known as the Clarendonian age.
O’Brien, Kade Matthews, Turner Caldwell, and Jack Waller also commented to the PUC about the visual impact of the line and the effect its placement would have on ranching operations, with each of the property owners making suggestions of more acceptable routes, such as following county road or state highway rights of way.
The Texas & Southwest Cattle Raisers Association also filed a resolution encouraging the PUC to follow existing highway or electric transmission rights of way so that “the immense damage to productive and scenic agricultural and recreational property incurred by Texas landowners will be minimized.”
In reviewing more than 300 comments and filings, the Enterprise found only one in favor of the route through Donley County, and that was filed by the Donley County Commissioners’ Court.
Ramsey said landowners who are hoping to lease their property to a wind farm should not be discouraged if the Cross Texas line does not come nearby.
“Wind developers have to tie into a substation – not into a transmission line like this,” she said. “They will put wind towers where they find good, consistent wind and will run their own transmission lines to the substation.”
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