GROUP SEEKS LINE ROUTE INFORMATION

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, January 12, 1993                   TAG: 9301120246
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
GROUP SEEKS LINE ROUTE INFORMATION
Common Ground, a West Virginia group that opposes Appalachian Power Co.'s high-voltage line plan, is trying to force Apco to provide new information on its proposed routes.
The West Virginia Public Service Commission has given Apco 10 days to comment on Common Ground's request for more route information from Apco in addition to maps for each copy of an application to be filed soon.
The petition from the Monroe County, W.Va. group "is clearly harassing, counterproductive [and] a delaying tactic," said Charles Simmons, Apco vice president. The information asked by Common Ground "would not be helpful," he added.
Simmons said he hopes Apco will get a recommendation on the Virginia portion of the line from State Corporation Commission Examiner Howard Anderson "fairly soon." Anderson probably will make recommendations to the three SCC commissioners on both the need and the routing of the line, he said.
The delays in the plan to build a line from Wyoming County, W.Va., to Cloverdale have used all available time in a schedule to complete the line by 1998, Simmons said. "We've compressed the construction schedule to get to a mid-1998 completion and any further delays" will extend the timing, he said.
Opponents in Virginia and West Virginia have used a number of plans to delay the controversial project.
The "pacing element" for approval of the power line, Simmons said, will be the U.S. Forest Service's environmental impact statement, scheduled to be complete early in 1994. A consultant has started on the statement but the Jefferson National Forest has not decided whether the document will cover only the proposed 12-mile route across the forest or the entire 110 miles of the line.
Apco hopes to refile its application for the line in West Virginia by the end of January or soon afterward, Simmons said. The utility withdrew its application last year in order to give the West Virginia commission time to gather information in the complex case.
Common Ground also asked the West Virginia commission to decide how it will evaluate the environmental impact of the line in that state. The organization asked how the commission "will arrange for Apco to pay" for such a study. Apco has agreed to pay for the Forest Service environmental study.
Bob Zacher, coordinator of Common Ground, said his group is trying to get evidence from Apco "up front so we won't have to go to court every time we want information."
The West Virginia opponents want the commission to limit the routes to be considered for the line to those "on the table," Zacher said.
On the company side, Simmons said Common Ground "is trying to preclude alternate routes. I say anybody who wants to suggest a route ought to be able to do so."
The West Virginia commission once asked Apco to study a southern route that could swing the line southward through Tazewell, Bland and Giles counties, but Apco rejected that and talked of a northerly route.
Opponents have suggested that approval could be given to routes that would not meet at the Virginia-West Virginia line.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB