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

DATE: TUESDAY, September 13, 1994                   TAG: 9409130041
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BILL TANGER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CONSERVATION AND POWER ARE NEEDED

Rather than allow any new transmission line to be built, it appears the Virginia Sierra Club is prepared to let the electricity go off - unless ``all feasible'' energy conservation is implemented first. This real-world impossibility makes the club's policy totally irrelevant to decision-makers.

Moreover, the Sierra Club is not opposed to allowing new electrical hookups. It is only opposed to new transmission lines. But you can't keep adding more electric customers without sooner or later adding more transmission lines, or the whole electrical system will collapse.

The Virginia Sierra Club apparently does not understand the real causes of our increased use of electricity, much of which results in an improvement to our environment. In fact, by opposing a needed power line, it could make matters worse for the environment. Imagine millions of gallons of raw sewage being suddenly dumped into a river because the treatment plant lost electricity during a blackout.

As one who has lived through major blackouts both in the United States and in a foreign country, I know that the environment will be much worse off without electricity than with transmission lines. Yet the state's Sierra Club demands the impossible when it comes to power lines: ``all feasible'' energy conservation before any transmission-line construction.

A better policy is to work for rapid, concrete progress toward all feasible implementation, to address the reasons for the increased demand for electricity, but also to support the continued use of electricity.

This is a sound, reality-based environmental policy. Not popular among NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard), perhaps, but neither are landfills or sewage-treatment plants.

Consider this: Should we oppose all new landfills when we are out of landfill space, or oppose all new sewage-treatment plants when we are in violation of the state's water standards? The bottom line is that we will continue to need more and more transmission lines, even after the building of those proposed today, unless we stabilize population growth, now projected to hit 400 million in the United States by 2050.

The Virginia Sierra Club policy on power lines needs some real-world rethinking to be meaningful. If the concern is for more energy conservation, then the focus should be on that issue, not on attempting to hold transmission lines hostage, since that is not only impossible, but absolutely silly with new hookups allowed every day.

I believe the Virginia Sierra Club has a lot of homework to do before it understands the full implications of its policy. It needs to start today while the lights are still on.

Bill Tanger of Roanoke is an energy consultant for Appalachian Power Co.