KCP&L identifies potential power line routes

The second in a series of informational meetings between Kansas City Power & Light Co. officials and Nodaway County landowners with regard to construction of a proposed high-voltage power line will take place from 3-7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 22, at the American Legion hall in Maryville.

A sort of dress rehearsal for that session was held Wednesday at the Northwest Technical School, where KCP&L staffers filled Nodaway County Commission members and other officials in on how the project is progressing.

The initiative, undertaken in partnership with the Omaha Public Power District, will lead to construction of a 170-mile-long, 345-kilovolt line running from southeastern Nebraska to KCP&L's existing Sibley (Mo.) Substation in Jackson County.

Plans also call for construction of a new KCP&L facility — the Mullen Creek Substation — in Nodaway County west of Highway 71 and about seven miles south of Maryville.

The utility is holding a series of similar meetings this month across the 13 northwest Missouri counties to be affected by the project.

These meetings differ from the first round of informational sessions last August in that KCP&L has now filled in its once-blank map with dozens of proposed routes.

Over the next six months, KCP&L plans to winnow those alternatives down to three or four options prior to selection of a final route next summer. Construction is to begin in 2015, and power company officials hope to put the new line in service by summer 2017.

The purpose of this week's meeting was to prep county officials so they'll be prepared to answer constituents' questions as the process moves forward.

The new map shows a half-dozen or so possible routes crossing a wide swath of Nodaway County before narrowing to a single point at the substation, then spreading out again between northern Andrew County and Conception.

No formal program is planned for Tuesday's public information session, rather participants will walk through a number of stations featuring maps, GIS computer terminals and information about environmental impacts, real estate, routing and construction.

When completed, the transmission line will consist of large H-pole structures standing up to 100 feet high and supporting 1,000-foot spans of high-voltage cable. Landowners over whose property the line passes are to receive one-time cash payments in exchange for granting easements ranging in width from 100 to 160 feet.

Partnership officials estimate construction cost at  $400 million, and say the effort will create between 50 and 70 construction jobs. The investment is to be recouped from electricity customers throughout the Southwest Power Pool, which embraces utilities in parts of nine states: Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.

The Missouri portion of the line — by far the biggest part of the project — will be constructed and owned by Transource Energy, an entity formed last year by Great Plains Energy, KCP&L's holding company, and power giant American Electric Power, which owns a controlling interest in Transource.