Transmission line could mean windfall for county

   Location, location, location…It’s the key to so many matters of commerce and revenue, whether it’s where a business will best attract customers or the route of, say an electrical transmission line, that will bring a stream of tax dollars to local government.

   ITC Great Plains first mentioned two years ago its intention to build such a line in the shape of a “V” from the wind farm at Spearville down to the Sitka area and back to the east/northeast to Medicine Lodge.  While early plans indicated the likelihood of the line running through western Kiowa County, such a path is now less than certain as ITC approaches the final stretch of preparations before making its recommendation to the Kansas Corporation Commission (KCC) next January.

    ITC’s local government and community affairs liaison, Daryl Poprave, met with Kiowa County Commissioners Monday to provide an update of the progress toward determining a route as well as gauge county sentiment toward the line passing through its acreage.

   “We’ve got three possible routes,” Poprave told commissioners at one point.  “We haven’t decided on one yet.”  He also acknowledged the company has yet to settle on the location of a substation, though a handout he provided makes mention of “a new substation in or near Comanche County.”   Such a substation in southern Kiowa County would seem to quality as “near Comanche County.”  And while the specific mention of Kiowa County’s neighbor to the south in connection with the substation could imply the Coldwater region having a leg up, Poprave indicated Comanche County has been the least enthusiastic of the five counties potentially involved in the route of the line.

   “We’ve (ITC) been more than welcome in four of the five counties,” Poprave said, “and that one is not Kiowa, Ford, Barber or Clark.”  Poprave went on to characterize Comanche County’s reaction to the line’s installation as “more guarded” than the other four, saying it was his impression the county commission there had been involved with a “debate with some landowners.”

   Commissioner Gene West made a strong pitch to Poprave to consider using Kiowa County acreage prominently in the line’s route, citing what he’s understood to be “environmental concerns in Comanche and Barber” Counties as a reason for ITC to rely on his county’s openness to the line running across its borders.

   “We’d dearly love to have the substation here too,” West said.  “You’d have fewer miles to go if you came through western Kiowa County and our (topography) is friendly since you’ve got the mesas down in Barber County to contend with.”

   Poprave indicated ITC would have to take into consideration environmental concerns raised by Kansas Wildlife and Parks when determining a route.

   He also said ITC hopes to have a route preference determined by September, after which it will return to the area in October with a series of leadership summits that will include aerial maps detailing the proposed route.  The following month would see a series of what he called public open houses “with landowners” affected by the preferred route.  ITC will be filing a preferred and alternative route with the KCC in January.

   Regardless of the route finally settled on, construction of the power line is slated to begin in 2013 with “electricity flowing by December of 2014” according to Poprave.

    Later telling The Signal that having the transmission line come across Kiowa County would “be a huge deal for the county,” West said he expects the line’s presence here to “at least double the valuation in the county, and more than that if the substation is built here too.”  That, of course, translates into a lower mill levy for county residents paying property taxes.

   “Right now the mill levy for 2011 is 51,” West pointed out.  “If that line were through here you’d probably be looking at a mill levy in the low to middle 30’s.”