Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 21, 1995 TAG: 9501230059
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Such a route would have substantially shortened the stretch of Appalachian Power Co.'s controversial project in "The Mountain State."
Forest Supervisor Joy Berg said the route suggested by West Virginia - which would dip into McDowell County, W.Va., and Tazewell County - was beyond the scope of her agency's study.
Power line foes in West Virginia, fiercely critical of the Forest Service's work on the environmental report, took the news as a good sign.
James McNeely, a lawyer and opposition leader, said he would have preferred that the agency look at the route in order to conduct a "full scale, legitimate draft environmental impact statement."
But he took heart that Berg appeared to be telling West Virginia in her three-page, single-spaced letter that the Forest Service is not going to get involved in making decisions for the state.
"We feel pretty good. Apco will be on its own in West Virginia," McNeely said.
Apco applied to the Forest Service to cross about 12 miles of the forest with its proposed 115-mile, 765,000-volt transmission line from Oceana, W.Va., to Cloverdale. The federal agency is limiting its study to an area that extends roughly a mile out from federal lands, and is reviewing numerous alternative routes within that area.
West Virginia's Public Service Commission and Virginia's State Corporation Commission each must determine the need for the line, and where it will cross private lands in their states.
The draft of the environmental impact statement has been delayed three times, and the Forest Service has not settled on a date. Berg made clear in her letter that she will not issue the final impact statement until the two states decide what they're going to do. She went on to say that the forest could "supplement" its analysis for the final report to include other routes, but only after West Virginia gets started on its own review.
McNeely said that Berg's apparent withdrawal from the tussle levels the playing field for West Virginia opponents, because Apco won't have the weight of the federal government's preferred route "to say to West Virginia, 'You're trapped.'''
Charles Simmons, Apco's vice president in charge of the project, said he was surprised by Berg's news, "because there was a lot of interest in [the southern route]. This was something being put forth by the opponents."
Apco had no objection to the Forest Service looking at the southern route, Simmons said. The company, which is paying for the study, wants a complete and defensible environmental impact statement done the first time around.
by CNB