ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 6, 1997 TAG: 9704070099
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY THE ROANOKE TIMES
Some Roanoke officials don't want to give up the city's claim to a right of way for utility lines.
Roanoke, the National Park Service and American Electric Power Co. appear to be playing a high-stakes game over control of Tinker Mountain and the Appalachian Trail on city-owned land in the Carvins Cove watershed.
The Park Service is trying to buy a protective corridor along four miles of the trail from the city. But the city wants to reserve a 600-foot stretch of the trail as a "utility crossing" that some trail advocates fear might be used for a giant new power line by AEP.
AEP says it doubts it would use that particular crossing for a power line. But it warned city officials in a Nov.1 letter that selling the land to the Park Service or granting an exclusive easement could create "a potentially impenetrable barrier" between the Roanoke Valley and future efforts to bring in power from West Virginia.
Negotiations over control of the trail through Carvins Cove are continuing between the city and Park Service.
Any sale or easement would have to be approved by Roanoke City Council. In the meantime, the Park Service is considering buying up privately owned land on Tinker Mountain to thwart the possibility of an AEP power line there.
Some City Council members, such as Jack Parrott and Vice Mayor Linda Wyatt, strongly favor preserving a utility crossing in any deal with the Park Service.
"We have a responsibility to protect the watershed and for that matter sources of utilities for this valley," said Wyatt, who chairs City Council's Water Resources Committee.
But Councilman Jim Trout said the city shouldn't be doing the power company's bidding.
"That's absolutely unbelievable," said Trout, who said he hadn't been informed of the utility crossing.
"That would be encouraging AEP to put [the power line] there, if you save that right of way. In my wildest dreams - or nightmares - I can't see the city of Roanoke playing a leading role in the location of any easement for any utility."
Concerns over the utility crossing were first mentioned during a Water Resources Committee meeting last October. The committee was considering an offer by the Park Service to buy the trail corridor through the watershed for $413,655, or to purchase an exclusive easement for $310,000.
Trout and Mayor David Bowers urged the committee to accept the offer and use the money to fund greenways elsewhere in Roanoke.
But the city administration opposed the move because it didn't want to give up absolute control of land in the watershed. City Manager Bob Herbert told the committee he would attempt to negotiate an easement under which the city wouldn't lose complete control of the land.
During a public hearing on the question that day, Roanoke Gas Co. officials told the city they want to keep access to an underground gas line that crosses the trail at Angel Gap on Tinker Mountain and might want to add another transmission line there someday.
That is where the proposed utility crossing would be. But the proposed easement is six times as wide as the gas company needs to install another gas line, company spokesman John Williamson said.
"As I understand it, the city is trying to reserve, broadly speaking, a utility corridor not just for Roanoke Gas Co., [but in case] another utility wanted to come through there, a power line or whatever," Williamson said.
Kit Kiser, the city's director of Utilities and Operations, referred questions about why the city wants the wide utility crossing to City Attorney Wilburn Dibling. Dibling said the language is in the draft agreement because Kiser told him to put it in there.
"We're trying for a balanced approach that will protect the environment and the Appalachian Trail for future generations while recognizing there might be a need for future utility expansion which might require crossing the trail," Dibling said.
Ron Poff, an engineer with AEP, said a new 765-kilovolt power line could conceivably cross the trail on Tinker Mountain, but well south of where the city wants to establish the utility crossing.
In the Nov.1 letter to Wyatt, AEP recommended that any easement the city grants for the trail allow for future utility corridors across it. AEP also is seeking to buy its own right of way through a different part of Carvins Cove, according to the letter.
One trail advocate criticized the city for conducting negotiations in secret.
"The city is supposed to represent the interests of the citizens, and not a utility company," said Jimmy Whitney, a board member of the Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club.
Don King, the Park Service's regional chief of land acquisition for the Appalachian Trail, said: "Our position is that any public utility crossing the mountain should be part of a process developed in the public. That would be our concern for any lands, not just in this area."
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