KIOWA — Colorado 86 runs across Elbert County’s rolling prairies and pastures, verdant after the spring rains and dotted with grazing cattle and horses, but as bucolic as the scene is this is a battleground pitting ranchers and landowners against Xcel Energy.
The point of contention is Xcel Energy’s plan to build a segment of its $1.7 billion Colorado Power Pathway transmission line along the highway and through the heart of the county.
The transmission line will cover 550 miles bringing wind and solar power from the Eastern Plains to the Front Range. It is being built in five segments in a large loop across 12 counties from Longmont to Pueblo and then up to Denver.
Land acquisition has gone smoothly in all the segments, according to the company’s April report to state regulators — save for a stretch of Segment 5 in Elbert County.
Xcel Energy needs rights of way through 48 properties in the county, but 21 landowners have refused to grant access and the utility has filed for court-ordered entry, through eminent domain, on 13 properties with more expected to follow.
Meanwhile, the county planning commission has already voted unanimously to recommend rejecting Xcel Energy’s permit applications. Commissioner Nicole Hunt said they were incomplete and “failed to show the benefits outweigh the impacts for Elbert County.”
At one point during the commission’s June 3 hearing, Hunt asked Jennifer Chester, Xcel Energy’s manager for siting and land rights, “Are you going to sue us?”
“In the event any jurisdiction denies we would evaluate whether that is an avenue we would take,” Chester replied.
Chester told the commission that the company has made every effort to keep the line along roads, combined with existing power lines and infrastructure rights of way, following a pipeline in one instance.
Xcel Energy executives call the Power Pathway a “Field of Dreams” project and a key element in the state’s transition to 100% clean energy by 2040.
The hope is the 375-kilovolt line, through some of the state’s best wind resources, will prompt energy developers to build wind and solar farms along the path. Build it and they will come.
“Colorado homes and businesses require more power, and the state’s current infrastructure is not sufficient to support long-term needs and growth,” Xcel Energy said in a statement to The Colorado Sun. “Projects like the Colorado Power Pathway are vital to maintain the reliability Coloradans expect from their electrical system.”
The Elbert County commissioners take up the issue Tuesday. A large crowd is expected, so the meeting has been moved to the Ag Building at the Elbert County Fairgrounds in Kiowa.
Front-row seat to the battle
From his porch, Don Gray has a front-row seat to the battlefield as well as his cattle. For 32 years Gray has run a cow-calf operation, raising calves for market.
Xcel Energy’s plan would run Power Pathway across a few acres of his land and within 80 feet of his home, which was built in 1918.
“It sounds like a little piece of property, but it is attached to a bigger piece of property we use every day,” Gray said.
Landowner Don Gray stands next to a staked, he placed about where he thinks Xcel Energy would build a tower on his property. Gray claims Xcel would condemn this part of his property and clear cut an entire stand of his trees in the process. (Brian Malone, Special to the Colorado Sun)Xcel Energy first contacted Gray about two and a half years ago and Xcel representatives sat down with the rancher in his kitchen to go over the plan. Gray, however, said the proposal was vague.
“We have property rights, until we don’t,” Gray said. He has hired a lawyer to represent his interests. “Every day I get a call from someone who has gotten court papers.”
Xcel Energy is offering a one-time payment for the right of way.
Some property owners haven’t even allowed Xcel Energy on their land for surveys and in some cases the utility is seeking “immediate possession” from the court.
Farther east along Colorado 86, just outside of Kiowa, Jessica Heaton is also wrestling with uncertainty.
Heaton operates a summer day camp, Camp Serendipity, which serves 30 children a day, but has 200 children enrolled in its program, with some coming from as far as Castle Rock, 23 miles away.
The Power Pathway is planned to run along the highway on the opposite side of the road from the camp and then cut over the road and cross the back of Heaton’s 4-acre property.
Whether it comes across closer to the camp or at the far end of the property makes a difference. “It is hard to get answers,” said Heaton, who has also hired a lawyer.
“Will parents want to send their kids here if there’s a big powerline?” she asked.
Jessica Heaton teaches a camper the correct way to tie up a pony at Camp Serendipity, a western-themed day camp for kids. Xcel Energy’s new high-voltage transmission line is slated to span over her day camp. (Brian Malone, Special to the Colorado Sun)Towers that are as tall as 14 stories
The plan is to place 275 towers of brown or rust-weathering steel, 105 feet to 140 feet high, along a 48-mile route through the county, with the towers 950 feet apart. Xcel Energy needs a 150-foot right of way.
The company held several opening houses and community meetings to discuss various routes for the Power Pathway through the county and made adjustments to its preferred path. It hasn’t responded, however, to community calls for a different route.
“It isn’t the Power Pathway we object to, it’s the route,” said Kerry Jiblits, an Elbert County Environmental Alliance board member. “We’ve been pushing for a route further to the east in the county.”
On the eastern end of the county the landholdings are larger and as a result the impact on any landowner would be less, Jiblits said. “But they want to run it through the heart of the county.”
It is Jiblits’ belief that Xcel Energy’s aim by running the line down the county’s middle is to open it to wind and solar development.
Gray said that at night he can see the blinking red lights of the Rush Creek Wind Farm and the Golden West Wind Farm off on the horizon.
Xcel Energy’s Chester told the planning commission that “going east there are a number of constraints.” These include conservation easements that prohibit power lines and businesses along the roads.
The Elbert County planning department recommended rejecting Xcel Energy’s permit applications listing 11 unresolved issues, including fire protection agreements with some of the local, volunteer fire departments and air quality.
Power Pathway due in service by 2027
Xcel Energy is facing a tight timeline and Chester told the planning commission that while there were items to address “we felt we had sufficiently addressed the asks.”
Approved by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission in 2021, Xcel Energy’s goal is to have the entire line in service in 2027. To do that the company told the PUC it must have land rights and permits in hand by the middle of this summer.
Not having the permits in hand risks “cascading schedule impacts that could result in cost increases, inefficient resource allocation, and potential ISD (in-service-date) delays,” the company said. El Paso County permits have also not been finalized.
Another risk comes from the potential impact of tariffs, particularly on steel, for the remaining $108 million in needed imported materials, Xcel Energy said in its report to regulators, adding “the company is closely monitoring trade policies and working with existing suppliers to manage cost increases where possible.”
Delays on high-voltage transmission lines, however, are the norm as is opposition from local communities.
At the planning commission hearing, many voiced the feeling that Elbert County residents were being asked to shoulder the impacts of Power Pathway for the benefit of people in Denver. Elbert County residents don’t even get their electricity from Xcel. They are members of the CORE cooperative.
Xcel Energy’s contractor for the project Quanta Infrastructure Solutions Group is also working on the 550-mile Sun Zia transmission line designed to carry wind power from New Mexico to Arizona.
The Tohono O’odham and San Carlos Apache tribes have filed a lawsuit seeking to block Sun Zia, saying it crosses their ancestral homeland.
“Building transmission is extremely difficult,” said Debra Lew, executive director of Energy Systems Integration Group, a nonprofit focused on grid transformation and whose members include large utilities, research laboratories and regional grid operators. “It seems to be becoming more and more difficult.”
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