Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, August 20, 1994 TAG: 9408220085
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The filing in U.S. District Court in Roanoke is the first lawsuit in connection with Appalachian Power Co.'s four-year effort to build a 765,000-volt, 115-mile transmission line from Wyoming, W.Va., to Cloverdale.
The utility says the line is necessary to meet the increasing demand for electricity in the region.
Opponents, citing such a line's potential impact on health and aesthetics, charge that Apco really wants to use it to move power to lucrative markets along the East Coast.
The lawsuit is the latest twist in an ongoing battle. The plaintiffs - many of them members of the Informed Citizens Action Network, a Blacksburg-based citizens' group - live along or within the alternative corridors in Montgomery, Giles, Pulaski and Bland counties.
Citing a section of the National Environmental Policy Act, they ask that the court force the federal government to reopen the so-called "scoping process" for public comments.
Further, because Roanoke, Craig and Botetourt county residents had such a process two years ago, the plaintiffs allege the Forest Service has deprived them of their rights to due process and equal protection under the law and has damaged their property values.
They ask for no money, except to pay their lawyer.
"We want to slow the ... process to afford these people the opportunity to give the Forest Service significant input on these routes," said lawyer William S. Bilenky of Richmond, who prepared the suit for members of ICAN and other anti-power-line groups.
"We're now asking a federal judge to say these people are entitled to the same due process everybody else has had."
Apco is not named in the suit, but company Vice President Charles Simmons said Friday it is "obviously a concern" that the filing could further delay the Forest Service's release of an environmental impact statement.
Apco has been waiting for the document, required because the utility's preferred route crosses the Jefferson National Forest, for nearly two years.
William Sweet, the Jefferson's acting supervisor, said Friday that work would continue on a draft of the statement, which is scheduled for release in February.
"As far as we're concerned, we're well within the legal constraints of the process," Sweet said.
He had not seen the lawsuit and said it would be handled by agency lawyers in Atlanta in conjunction with the U.S. attorney's office in Roanoke. They will have two months to respond.
(Sweet is filling in for Supervisor Joy Berg, who has joined crews battling forest fires in the West.)
In early July, the Forest Service released a map showing a web of alternative paths for the power line across Bland, Giles, Montgomery and Pulaski counties. It said the options were required as part of the environmental study.
But ICAN, which organized early this year in reaction to the Interstate 73 proposal, and another citizens' group in Giles County quickly demanded that the Forest Service reopen the so-called "scoping process," a legally required period during which the federal agency identified "significant issues" to be looked into as part of the environmental impact study. They noted that people in the four counties were never told about the alternative lines when the first "scoping process" occurred two years ago.
The Forest Service replied that it would hold a series of public meetings in the counties, but it was too far along in the study to go back to the initial stage.
The meetings went off as scheduled last month and drew hundreds of people. The Forest Service has continued to meet with local governing bodies and citizens' groups.
On Monday its officials will brief the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors; on Tuesday they will attend a meeting in the White Gate area of Giles.
"In all of our public meetings, we haven't heard any new issues [that] we haven't heard identified before," Sweet said. "I think people get the scoping process confused with public participation. ... That's always open throughout the entire process."
Bilenky, however, called the late introduction of the four counties an "excellent example of administrative process by ambush."
"This lawsuit says, `Hold it. You've added new territory; you need to expand the issues,''' Bilenky said.
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