EDITORIAL: State must weigh threat to nature in power line decision

The plight of the homeowners and landowners whose property is in the path of the high-voltage power line corridor planned to serve the Vantage Data Centers Lighthouse Campus has struck a chord with the public. 

People relate to what the targeted citizens are facing—the loss of control of a portion of their land as the permanent location of massive towers strung with wires carrying high-voltage electricity, an unsightly intrusion into their privacy that comes with a constant buzzing sound as an annoying reminder of the insult to their property and the resulting diminished value of that property.

That empathy is well placed, but the fact is that the negative impact of the transmission lines to feed the data centers’ insatiable hunger for electricity extends beyond what the directly affected property owners are facing. Land that has been preserved and protected for everyone is threatened.

Restoring Lands, the land trust that has protected significant natural areas in Ozaukee and Washington counties, is preparing to “vigorously defend the integrity of these conserved lands” against the damage threatened by the power lines, the organization’s executive director, Tom Stolp, declared in a letter to the editor published  in last week’s Ozaukee Press.

The two routes proposed by the American Transmission Company (ATC) cut through a number of areas that landowners have entrusted to the land trust as natural areas to be protected in perpetuity.

Power lines could not pass through these precious pieces of the natural landscape without doing profound damage. A 250-foot-wide passage would be cut through the woodlands and wetlands to accommodate 180-foot-high steel towers. Heavy equipment would enter the natural areas to construct the transmission assembly and would have unlimited access to it for maintenance going forward, including cutting back any form of nature that tries to reassert itself.

The land trust’s efforts to avert the looming environmental damage is aimed at persuading the state authority over power line placement, the Wisconsin Public Service Commission, to order ATC to use an existing transmission line corridor rather than creating a new one on one of its preferred routes. The PSC can find good reason to do that on its own website, which explains:

  “Building a transmission line through woodlands requires that all trees and brush be cleared from the ROW (right of way). One mile of 100-foot ROW through a forest results in the loss of approximately 12 acres of trees. Transmission construction impacts can include forest fragmentation and the loss and degradation of wooded habitat and aesthetic enjoyment of the resource.”

Under “Environmental Impacts,” the PSC website also points out: “The activities associated with tree clearing and constructing a transmission line through or along the edge of forested areas can destroy and degrade forest habitat. Habitat providing food and cover for local wildlife may be altered or lost.”  

Apologists for ATC’s plans might say that power lines, regardless of their unpleasant consequences, have to go somewhere. They are, after all, essential for the way we live.

Though true in a general sense, the rationale does not apply to what is proposed by ATC in this case. These high-voltage transmission lines are not needed to power a city, village or town and its homes, schools or industries. They are needed only by a single user, a vast for-profit enterprise, the data center campus in Port Washington.

That fact should make the case for the PSC to veto the proposed power line routes through rural Saukville, Fredonia and Port Washington and tell ATC to put the electronic infrastructure needed to power the data centers in an existing transmission line corridor where it will do the least harm. 

The homeowners and landowners, the public that benefits from nature preserves and the flora and fauna that live in those natural places should not have to pay the steep environmental price of a power line invasion to accommodate corporations prospering from the artificial intelligence boom.