Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 12, 1993 TAG: 9309120087
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
At the heart of the debate over Appalachian Power Co.'s proposed new extra high-voltage power line is one question: Why build it?
But Tuesday - when a State Corporation Commission hearing examiner holds what is expected to be the last public hearing on the power line - that question probably won't even be discussed.
Howard Anderson Jr., the SCC hearing examiner, is seeking only new evidence on the effect of electromagnetic fields on human health and the impact of power-line construction on the Appalachian Trail and terrain containing limestone caverns.
Hearings on Apco's need for the line were wrapped up last summer. In November, the SCC staff, using a national utility consultant's report, concluded that the company does need the line to reliably serve its customers. Anderson has rebuffed repeated efforts by power-line opponents to have him reconsider the need for the line.
Citizens' groups in Virginia and West Virginia continue to argue that the real reason Apco - the largest operating company in the American Electric Power Co. system - wants to build the line is to sell excess power from AEP generating plants to utilities on the power-hungry East Coast.
Apco is one of seven operating subsidiaries of AEP, a Columbus, Ohio-based power system that stretches from the shores of Lake Michigan to North Carolina.
Opponents claim Apco has overstated the needs of its own customers and has failed to look at alternatives to building the power line, such as conservation and upgrading existing lines.
They say the line would threaten human health and the environment. And they argue that AEP selling excess power to other electric utilities is not a sufficient reason for the SCC to approve it.
Apco's early public pronouncements that noted the opportunities the line would create for selling power outside the region helped fuel opponents' suspicions.
When Apco and Virginia Power jointly announced plans in March 1990 to build new extra high-voltage lines, they talked about bringing lower-cost electricity produced at the Apco's coal-fired plants in West Virginia to the East Coast.
In a recent interview, Charles Simmons, Apco's vice president for construction and maintenance, said the proposed line will have enough extra capacity to move more power from the Midwest to the East. But, he said, the main reason for building it is to increase the reliability of service to Apco's customers in Virginia and West Virginia.
The new line is "vital to the economic viability of the area served by Appalachian Power Co. in southwestern Virginia and southern West Virginia," Simmons wrote in the winter issue of the Virginia Coal and Energy Journal. Many industrial leaders in the company's service area apparently share that view and support the line.
The only reason that the SCC could approve the line's construction is that Apco needs it to serve its customers, Simmons said.
That's not just Simmons talking. That's Virginia law.
Apco and Virginia Power plan to build extra high-voltage transmission lines that, combined, would link existing lines in southwestern West Virginia with lines in northeastern Virginia.
For Apco's part, it would build a 765-kv line 110 miles from Wyoming, W.Va., to its Cloverdale substation just east of Roanoke, crossing four West Virginia counties and three in Virginia - Craig, Roanoke and Botetourt - in the process. The transmission towers would span the Appalachian Trail, the Jefferson National Forest, and a section of the New River in West Virginia that's being considered for federal scenic river status.
Apco filed an application for the line with the SCC in August 1991. An application filed with the West Virginia Public Service Commission for the portion of the line in that state was rejected with a request that Apco provide more information.
Virginia Power also has an application before the SCC to build a 102-mile, 500-kilovolt line from Apco's Joshua Falls substation near Lynchburg to Virginia Power's Ladysmith station south of Fredericksburg.
The cost of both lines is estimated at $450 million. They're expected to take three to four years to build after approval is granted in Virginia and West Virginia.
Anderson will hear testimony related to Virginia Power's proposed line Monday and for Apco's on Tuesday.
If the file on the Apco line is closed after Tuesday's hearing, Anderson's recommendation to the three SCC judges on whether to approve it could be made within six to eight weeks, Ken Schrad, an SCC spokesman said.
The SCC judges, powerful but obscure state officials elected by the General Assembly, regulate most of the state's major economic interests. Hullihen W. Moore, a former Richmond lawyer and consumer advocate who grew up in Roanoke, is the newest member of the commission.
William Bilenky, a Richmond lawyer representing Arcs Inc., a coalition of power-line opponents, said two aspects of this week's hearings are important:
The testimony of an expert on the health effects of extra high-voltage power lines.
And the opinion of Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., that a right-of-way for the power line across the New River cannot be approved while the river is being studied for federal scenic river protection.
Dr. Samuel Milham Jr. of Olympia, Wash., will testify Monday during the Virginia Power hearing that there is a direct link between cancer and leukemia and living close to extra high-voltage power lines, Bilenky said.
Milham - who, Bilenky said, comes to the power-line issue without bias - will talk about recent Swedish studies that show a relationship between childhood leukemia and power lines. Apco has in the past dismissed those studies as inconclusive.
Both Apco's Simmons and Bilenky agree that Anderson will have to recommend a route for the line if he decides the line is needed.
State law requires that the environmental impact of a transmission line be considered as part of a determination of a line's need, and that can't be done unless a route is chosen.
Simmons and Bilenky differ, however, on how the requirement for a route will affect the eventual outcome of Apco's application.
Congressman Rahall's position strengthens the arguments of opponents that the route can't be determined in Virginia while there is no viable route in West Virginia, Bilenky said.
In a Sept. 1 letter to Robert Zacher, leader of Common Ground, a West Virginia group opposing the power line, Rahall wrote that he doesn't believe any federal agency can approve the crossing of the New River by a power line during a three-year study begun last year. The study is to determine if a 20-mile stretch of river that Apco wants to cross should be designated a federal Wild and Scenic River.
Furthermore, earlier this year, in anticipation that the river would qualify for scenic-river status, Rahall sponsored another bill that would, in effect, jump the gun and give it scenic designation.
With the passage of the legislation, which Rahall expects next year, the U.S. government would be permanently barred from letting projects like the proposed power line cross the river, Rahall wrote Zacher.
"You're not going to end up in Craig County is what [Rahall] is saying," Bilenky explained.
However, opponents have attempted three times in the past to stall Apco's plans by arguing that the selected route for the line is not workable. Each time the SCC's Anderson has rejected their arguments.
Apco's Simmons agreed Anderson can't leave the question of the route open in his recommendation, but he said Anderson might go forward with the idea that the route may need to be reconsidered later.
The SCC's Schrad confirmed that will be Anderson's likely course, considering the number of unknowns still surrounding the proposed route, including the New River crossing and an environmental impact statement being prepared by the Forest Service that is still two years from completion.
Opponents have also argued that Anderson should reconsider the project because the company's forecasts of power usage are faulty and outdated. But Schrad said Anderson was emphatic in his recent ruling that opponents were "beating a dead horse" on that issue.
Apco studies have shown that unless the new line is built by the winter of 1998-99, failure of one critical line could cause a cascade of failures affecting the entire transmission system south and east of Charleston, W.Va., Simmons said. Apco still hopes to have the new line in place by 1998 but delays are making that more difficult, he said.
Opponents continue to maintain that Apco has overstated the power needs for its own customers and is building the line to move power from AEP's overbuilt generating plants in the Midwest to the East Coast.
"They are designing the system to ensure they can have these off-system sales," said David Brady, an engineer and power-line opponent from Newport in Giles County.
As part of AEP, Apco does not operate as a single independent utility, the State Corporation Commission said in a September 1991 report to the Virginia Coal and Energy Commission. "The AEP transmission network was designed and constructed to accommodate the operation of its member companies as a single . . . entity," the commission wrote.
The interconnections between the Apco-AEP system and neighboring utilities to the south and east enhance the reliability and economy of all systems involved, the SCC said.
Besides providing the exchange of power during emergencies and periods of unusual demand, the interconnections of different utility systems "allow these utilities to engage in cost-effective wholesale exchanges of power," the commission said.
AEP has already taken advantage of opportunities to sell excess power. In 1990, AEP's $828.7 million in sales to other utilities broke a company record.
A move toward deregulation and the predictions of AEP management indicate that wholesaling of power outside of the AEP system could become a more significant portion of the power giant's business in the years ahead.
The Comprehensive National Energy Policy Act signed by a President Bush last year brought profound changes to the U.S. electric utility industry, particularly in the area of competition.
The federal law seeks to promote greater competition in the industry by making it easier for independent power producers to get into the business of selling power wholesale. The act also opens up the national power-line network by requiring open access to wholesale producers of power even to the point of ordering utilities to construct new power lines to transmit wholesale power if their current lines are not adequate.
Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, author of open-access provisions in the energy law, has said he would prefer Apco building new power lines to the Southwest Virginia coalfields over the company's current proposal.
Boucher said the state should meet its growing energy needs from generating plants built near the state's coal mines.
Because Apco doesn't produce all the power it needs at its Virginia generating plants, those customers currently send $200 million a year to Apco's sister AEP companies in other states, Boucher said. That's money that could be used to provide jobs in Virginia and improve the state's tax base, he said.
Boucher agrees with power-line opponents that AEP is seeking ways to send more of its excess power East.
In AEP's 1992 annual report, Richard Disbrow, then the company's chairman, wrote "The new energy bill also presents opportunities for us to expand our markets, revenue and return on investment within the new regulatory framework.
"We could, if analysis justified, become an independent power producer either within our service area or outside it," Disbrow said. Business outside the United States might even be pursued if it appears feasible, he said.
"While we strive to make our wholesale rates attractive, outside sales result primarily from weather, the economy and the status of our neighboring utilities' generating capacity," Disbrow wrote.
Transmission capacity also has an effect on a utility's ability to make sales of power to other utilities, as the SCC found.
The SCC in its 1991 report noted that, in the late 1980s, massive transfers of power from Apco and other Midwestern utilities to the East Coast were being disrupted by the inadequacy of the transmission system.
In 1988, the year Virginia Power approached Apco about building the new power line, AEP and Hoosier Energy, an Indiana utility, failed to deliver 13,120 megawatt hours of contracted electricity to Virginia Power because of an inadequate transmission system, the SCC said.
\ Coming Monday: The last time Apco tried to build a 765-kv line, Floyd County citizens fought it, and delayed the project a decade.
by CNB