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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 12, 1994                   TAG: 9410120090
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ABINGDON                                LENGTH: Medium

APCO: POWER LACK SCARED OFF INDUSTRY

The president of Appalachian Power Co. said Tuesday that the lack of power capability along the route of the company's planned 765,000-volt line through West Virginia and Virginia has already cost the region one industry.

Joe Vipperman made the comment during a Virginia Coal Council conference in response to earlier remarks by a West Virginia congressman opposed to the line's planned route.

Rep. Nick Joe Rahall, D-W.Va., said he did not question the need for the power that the line would provide. ``What I am opposed to is the company's preferred and alternative routing of the proposed power line,'' he said.

The preferred route would cross a pristine segment of the New River in West Virginia, Rahall said, and the alternate route would cross Bluestone State Park and Bluestone Lake.

Rahall said he is seeking congressional designation of that part of the New River as a national wild and scenic river to prohibit a high-power line being built across it. He said he wants Apco to seek another route through West Virginia.

Vipperman, who was on a panel after Rahall left, said Apco had Virginia Tech and West Virginia University study possible routes for the line and choose the one with the least environmental impact. That is Apco's preferred route, he said, and he thought their findings would withstand any objective scrutiny.

He said Apco supports inclusion of the river in the federal act, with an amendment allowing the line to cross if the appropriate agencies agree that the route is the least objectionable one. ``To see that line, you'd have to lie down in a boat and look up right underneath it,'' he said.

Vipperman said he recently had to turn down an economic development that would have been located east of Charleston, W.Va., and created more than 1,000 jobs because Apco could not provide the required power. ``It does involve some very high-level professional jobs,'' he said.

If the line were in place, he said, the power could have been provided. He said there is still a chance the development will locate west of Charleston.

by CNB