Real Estate & Property Law

AEP in Virginia

By Alan Ackerman

Forbes

Sandy and Gene Byrd Harman own a 400-acre Black Angus cattle farm in Bland County, Va. that has been in Gene's family for five generations. Its view of rolling pasture backed by the virgin forests of the Blue Ridge Mountains has remained largely undisturbed for 150 years. "Our landscape could be on any postcard in America," Sandy says.

Five years ago the Harmans feared that their pristine vista would be lost. Their farm lay in the path of a high-voltage line that American Electric Power, the second-largest electric utility in the U.S., wanted to lay across the valley. The 765,000-volt (765kV) line would be an electrical superhighway, built on towers 130 feet high. It would carry three gigawatts of power, easing the strain on an antiquated network of smaller wires that carried electricity between the Midwest and AEP's power plants there, and the East Coast.

Ron L. Poff, AEP's project manager for the line, had the job of persuading the Harmans and 163 other landowners to let the $300 million, 90-mile line pass through their properties. Harman spent a year attending town meetings at which residents "blew a lot of steam," she says. Then in 2006 she agreed to sell AEP an easement over a 200-foot-wide swath of her farm. She won't discuss the price, but AEP has had to compensate landowners not only for property but also for visual pollution

-This writer recognizes the importance of electric transmission capacity. However, the need of the profit making AEP for the owners property rights should not be used as an excuse to shortchange the owners.  AEP is relatively inexperienced in the process, but Bulldozed might be the right word for the way AEP is going about it.  At least Joe Waldo is there to represent the owners in Virginia.

Full post as published by National Eminent Domain Blog on December 08, 2008 (boomark / email).