Published: August 23, 2008 07:24 pm      

765kV line brings millions in tax dollars, zero fears realized

BLAND, Va. — It extends more than 90 miles across the scenic mountains of southern West Virginia and Southwest Virginia with 333 self-supporting towers.

While the debate over Appalachian Power Company’s Wyoming to Jackson Ferry 765kV transmission project lasted more than 13 years, the actual construction took less than three years. It was just two years ago when officials energized the project across the rugged mountains of McDowell, Wyoming, Tazewell, Bland, Wythe and Pulaski counties.

Today, environmental concerns have failed to materialize, and suggestions that the project would ruin the scenic beauty of the region’s landscape have proved to be largely unfounded. The transmission grid also is helping to pump about a million dollars in additional tax revenue each year into the six southern West Virginia and Southwest Virginia counties.

“In short, if you look at the project as it is today, the feedback we are getting from our customers is that in many areas it is not what they expected,” Todd Burns, a corporate communications director for Appalachian Power and a long-time advocate for the 765k project, said. “In many ways, we are finding it is blending in with the community more and more each day.”

Two years after the construction was completed, the vegetation and right-of-way has greened back, and the fear that the transmission line would create large buzzing or humming noises has been silenced.

Burns said the 90-mile line was the first system in North America at the time to utilize a six-bundle configuration, which helps to reduce the audible noise level of the project to half of that of earlier lines.

“One person questioned whether we really energized it,” Burns said. “Because some of the power lines built in the early 70s and 80s were really louder. The technology there was something we pioneered. It was the first time it was used. The reason we went to the technology was in our area — with the higher elevation, moisture, drizzle and snow — a lot of the weather we get when those things came into contact with our generation of 765kV lines — they would sizzle. Like bacon frying. They had a buzz. People were concerned about that. It (the new six-bundle configuration) performed in excess of our expectations.”

When the debate over the project brewed more than a decade ago, the most common concern from folks dealt with the potential visual impact of the towering project.

“Whenever a project like this is announced, you often gravitate to a worse case scenario,” Burns said. “But many of the folks we have talked to have felt like it is much less than they expected. For example, I was out on the Appalachian Trail in the spring, and was actually producing the video we talked about, and stopped and asked a hiker his opinion of the power line. He had been under it twice, and didn’t know it was there.”

Throughout the long 13-year permitting process for the project, Burns said the company tired hard to work with citizens and property owners.

“We’ve really tried, and genuinely tried to work with people and the localities and the organizations to number one put them in the best place, and number two to reduce the impact,” Burns said.

When the system was energized two years, it helped to reinforce the regional grid, and continues today to deliver power to customers in southern West Virginia and Southwest Virginia. Without the new system, Burns said the old 345 line wouldn’t have been able to handle a redundancy in the transmission grid.

“The point was if we had lost the big line, it dumped everything on the 345 line, and it couldn’t handle it,” Burns said. “We’ve now secured this area. We now have two 765kV lines. I you lose one, the other continues to flow.”

– Contact Charles Owens at cowens@bdtonline.com