GARFIELD - A plan to build an extra-high-voltage electric transmission line through Garfield is energizing residents to fight the route.
During an emergency meeting of the City Council and Planning Commission held April 24, Mayor Laura Hamilton and city attorney Joanne McCracken rallied people to fight the route using a multi pronged attack.
“This is going to cut the town in half, going to prohibit the chance of any commercial growth along the bypass (of U.S. Highway 62 north of town) and presents health issues by being so close to the elementary school,” Mc-Cracken said.
At issue is the route of a 345 kilovolt high-tension line that SWEPCO is installing from west of Centerton to just north of Berryville. Landowners along the proposed routes recently received letters from an attorney representing SWEPCO announcing the line.
During the meeting, the City Council voted to file a petition to intervene with the Arkansas Public Service Commission. The PSC regulates utilities in the state.
Hamilton distributed petitions to people who attended the meeting, asking that they have friends and neighbors sign them, then turn them in to City Hall so they can be sent to the PSC.
She also encouraged people to go to the PSC website to offer comments online.
“Eureka Springs is fighting this -trying to stop the whole project,” Hamilton said. “I don’t know how successful they’ll be.”
During the discussion, nobody talked about working to stop the project; rather, everyone talked about how the preferred route would significantly impact the city.
McCracken outlined what could be the biggest impact on the city: Loss of revenue.
“Putting it in close proximity to (relocated) Highway 62 will discourage businesses to locate there, and that will diminish revenue the city receives from sales tax and property tax,” she said.
She said that diminished revenue, coupled with health concerns, diminished property value of land the line crosses, “will all go together to destroy Garfield as we know it today.”
She noted that individuals and groups of people can file petitions to intervene, too, but she strongly suggested using an attorney to do it.
“The procedures are 95 pages long, and I don’t think a citizen can successfully get through it in the time frame required,” Mc-Cracken said.
J.L. Wright noted that he’s having trouble, using the map provided in the letter from the SWEPCO attorney, determining if his land or a neighbor’s will be used.
“If this comes into effect, do the laws of eminent domain come in effect?” Wright asked. McCracken nodded yes. “Well Junior,” Wright said as he slapped the shoulder of the man sitting next to him - the man whose land sits adjacent to Wright’s - “there you go.”
McCracken then explained that this is different from when land is taken for a highway because it’s for a right of way - so it’s not “taking for ownership.”
“They’re taking an easement, a right of way - they have to pay for building something that diminishes value,” she said.
Ellis Doyle, who was sitting on the other side of Wright, suggested the cleared land would make good pasture - then he quietly mused that “they’ll be using herbicide to control growth, so you’d be grazing cattle on herbicide.”
A woman in the back of the room asked about the effect of herbicide and land clearing on springs, creeks and wells.
McCracken said the preliminary Environmental Impact Statement written by an engineering firm hired by SWEPCO “addresses at length the environmental impact in every little community, they acknowledge it but they say - I’m paraphrasing here - you can live with it.”
The city plans to complain about errors in the environmental document,including: There will be no visual impact on the city when in fact the cleared swath will be 150 feet wide across town; that it does not address the effect of electromagnetic fields on elementary school children.
Also, state law requires SWEPCO to appear before the city Planning Commission but that has not happened.
When Wright asked whether anyone has a feeling about the chance of success, McCracken offered tempered optimism.
“As a community we have greater impact than an individual...” she said. “But I can make no promises.” Later she noted that court cases tend to side not with residents but with the entities installing projects.
News, Pages 1 on 05/01/2013