Restoring Lands vows fight against power lines

Restoring Lands — the former Ozaukee Washington Land Trust — is vowing to fight American Transmission Co.’s proposal to site high-power electrical lines through Saukville and Fredonia in the so-called “preferred routes” the company has proposed using.

Those routes would significantly degrade land set aside in perpetuity for preservation, Restoring Lands Executive Director Tom Stolp said, noting multiple preserves and protected lands would be impacted by the preferred routes.

“We are prepared to vigorously defend the integrity of these conserved lands,” Stolp said. “ATC’s preferred routes cut directly through lands and waters our community has protected for the enjoyment and benefit of all.

“If we start to erode the notion we as a community can permanently protect these areas, I don’t think that’s going to be popular in Wisconsin — in Ozaukee or Washington counties certainly.”

Restoring Lands has joined with other groups opposed to the preferred routes in its quest, “urging” ATC to follow a route farther to the east that would make use of existing power line corridors, he said.

“It’s the only acceptable path of the two proposals in front of the Wisconsin Public Service Commission (which is evaluating the proposed routes),” Stolp said, noting that corridor is better aligned with I-43 and areas of future development.

In a release, Restoring Lands said it will “also scrutinize whether there is a need for the line at all and closely evaluate resource impacts of the line.”

Stolp said he believes the impact of the routes on the environment “will prove relevant facts” for the PSC.

ATC has submitted a proposal to the PSC that outlines a preferred route and alternate routes  for power lines to service the Vantage Data Centers Lighthouse Campus in Port Washington. 

Residents along the route ATC has designated as its preferred and preferred alternative routes, which would traverse the towns of Fredonia and Saukville, have been vocal in their opposition to the plan.

The PSC will ultimately select the route to be used.

Stolp noted that Restoring Lands has spent decades conserving areas of the county that residents treasure, in some cases restoring them to their natural beauty and keeping these areas open for the public to use and enjoy, Stolp said.

“Now we’re seeing a proposal to undue all these years, all these millions of dollars, invested in this land. Doing so would be short-sighted.”

Stolp said Restoring Lands supports “environmentally informed” siting of power lines, adding it does object to locating these lines in environmentally sensitive areas that have been set aside for protection. 

Selecting the eastern alternative and making use of the existing power lines would be “a far better use ... and better proposed for a long-established corridor,” Stolp said, adding his understanding is that the state prioritizes the use of existing infrastructure.

“We think that warrants serious study,” he said. “There’s simply more of this infrastructure in the eastern corridor.”

Siting 180-foot-tall transmission towers on 250-foot-wide utility corridors in natural areas is wrong, Stolp said.

“If its woods, it won’t be woods any more,” Stolp said. “It’s taking the intact forest, the healthy wetlands, off the map in a 250-foot-wide swath.

“That is unacceptable and incompatible with our mission.”

Stolp said he believes that organizations like Restoring Lands should have influence with the Public Service Commission, given its role.

“I think individual landowners have extraordinarily important standing in front of the PSC. We are like many of those individual landowners, but multiplied,” he said. “We’re protecting everyone’s favorite places.”

Stolp said the preferred routes for the power lines would destroy a number of environmentally significant areas.

Among the most prominent of these, he said, is the County Line Preserve in the Town of Saukville, which he said is a relatively new preserve along Highway Y about a mile south of Highway 33 that’s part of a more than 300-acre complex of preserves and conservation easements.

“It’s really quite lovely,” he said.