Regulators outline preferred route for Montana Alberta Tie Line

By KARL PUCKETT

Great Falls Tribune Staff Writer

Tuesday September 30th

, 2008: Government regulators have come up with a preferred route for a high voltage transmission line connecting the electric grids at Great Falls and Lethbridge, Alberta, that they say attempts to strike a balance between the cost to the developer and disruption caused to farming.

The state Department of Environmental Quality and U.S. Department of Energy on Monday released a summary of a long-awaited final environmental impact statement for the 203-mile Montana Alberta Tie Line, which outlines the preferred alternative and several others. Final decisions on the project by both agencies could follow in a month, regulators said.

The U.S. portion of the line, proposed by Calgary-based Montana Alberta Tie Ltd., would cross 130 miles and six counties in Montana, and carrying capacity for the 300 megawatts of electricity it would carry in each direction has been sold to prospective wind farm developers. Federal and provincial authorities in Canada already have approved the line.

DEQ Director Richard Opper was involved in coming up with the compromise route favored by the DOE and DEQ, which differs from MATL's preferred plan but also doesn't go as far as some farmers had hoped, said Greg Hallsten, the DEQ's EIS coordinator. "We basically sat down with the director and went through this segment by segment, trying to pick which would best serve MATL's needs as well as the landowners," Hallsten said. "It's turned out to be a balancing act." The agency says it selected the preferred alternative because it provides the best balance between avoiding impacts to farmers while not making the project too expensive for the developer.

Bob Williams, MATL's vice president of regulatory affairs, said Monday afternoon he couldn't comment because he had not received the EIS summary. The 133.5-mile preferred alternative has 83 miles of single poles and 49 miles of wider H-frames. Fewer miles of diagonal crossings, particularly just north of Great Falls and near Dutton, are proposed as well. The addition of more miles of single poles and fewer diagonal crossings is a nod to farmers, who have complained about having to maneuver machinery around the double-poles, particularly when they are lined up diagonally.

"One of the comments we heard loud and clear was to use monopoles on cultivated ground," the DEQ's Tom Ring said.

By comparison, MATL's favored route is 129 miles long, slightly shorter than the government's, and has single poles planned on 27 fewer miles of land. Additional miles of monopoles would drive up the cost because H-frames cost $323,092 per mile while the taller monopoles cost $359,429 per mile, according to the environmental study. The average height of the single poles is 90 feet, 65 for the H-frames.

MATL has previously estimated the cost of the project at $150 million. Another alternative, but not the preferred one, devised by the agencies would cost even more. It would require 88.9 miles of monopoles over cropland across the 139 miles of the project in Montana. Previously, MATL told the state that plan would increase the cost by $5 million and that would threaten the project. Farmers who commented said the alternative minimized the impact on agricultural practices. The preferred alignment also does the best job of avoiding houses and provides a new clearance minimum of 27.2 feet from the ground, Ring said.

MATL needs a presidential permit from the DOE because it crosses an international boundary and a certificate of compliance from the DEQ, said Ellen Russell, project manager for the U.S. Department of Energy's Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability in Washington, D.C. The first MATL environmental study was released in early 2007 but it was expanded after the public raised concerns, delaying the project. Last month, northcentral Montana county commissioners publicly criticized how long the study was taking. The extensive public comment, and the fact two agencies are jointly working on the project, led to the delays, Ring said. More than 350 comments were received on the current study. About 100 international power lines connect the United States and Canada but MATL would be the first major "merchant" transmission line between the two, Russell said. Historically, electric utilities have operated both generation and transmission facilities but MATL is just in the business of selling just transmission.

"It's a toll road," Russell said.