Random 10 brings another example of the "NIMBY" Enviros, like the Kennedy/Kerry resistance to wind farms off Cape Hatteras.
They're just better than us folks, you know.
WKOW runs an update on a small confrontation between environmentalist and development concerns. In the ongoing effort to upgrade our power system, American Transmission Company (ATC) wants to build an improved power line between the Jefferson substation on Highway 89 through Lake Mills to the Stoney Brook substation south of Waterloo. ATC asked to build the line along the existing Highway 89 electric corridor (Map) but the Public Service Commission instead directed them to break new easements through residential back roads.
Now why would ATC be ordered to do the more expensive thing?
Simple. Madistan Lefty Enviros:
...the Madison environmentalist mindset happened here. The Madison Audubon Society is doing a restoration project on lands on one side of Highway 89. Concerned about enlargement of the existing electric lines they astutely lobbied the Public Service Commission to change ATC’s preferred route.
We're talking "aesthetics" here. And what's more important to the birds, bees, and foxes than "aesthetics"??
Audubon Society attorney Dave Bender actually gets to the heart of the matter when he tells Channel 27: "Eighty to one hundred foot transmission line towers would have a negative aesthetic impact on the Faville Grove Sanctuary.”
So just shut up, pay the extra costs, and go away, Joe Lunchbucket.
Laugh with me now, because the higher cost routing means that ATC will earn higher profits. That's the way regulated utility rate of return works. The cost of the T-lines is passed along to the ratepayers and ATC will earn their profit as a percentage of these capital expenditures.
ReplyDeleteThe folks at ATC know this and laugh all the way to the dividend check.
...yup.
ReplyDeleteBut it's only Joe Lunchbucket's money that the Greenies are spending.
Screw HIM!
The Madison Audobon Society's Faville Grove "Sanctuary" is actually located 1.5 miles away from STH 89, where the lines were supposed to go. One of the project managers is also the Secretary of Faculty for the UW system, and has VERY strong political connections, including (from my sources) personal phone calls accepted by BIG JIM (Doyle). The PSC is corrupt. ATC is corrupt. The Audobon Society is a joke, but a well funded one. Every Jefferson Co politician went against this decision (27-0) and the county also has a lawsuit against the PSC because this decision was horsehockey! If anyone else is looking at having 138kV in their front yards like I am, fight with everything you've got, because there are snakes hiding in every corner of this game..in our case, the enviro-wackos. see WWW.STTOP.INFO for more
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