Then, when Marler read company handouts and studied the project that cut diagonally across some of his property, he decided to protest. Initially, concern came from neighbors who didn’t want Avista stretching transmission lines west to Rosalia. That’s higher than Spokane’s tallest building and poses a problem for crop-dusters who need to fly relatively low to ensure chemicals for one field don’t drift onto a neighboring field, Marler said. In the hilly Palouse, this means some of the top wires can run about 250 feet above a valley floor. Avista decided to replace its old, wooden, 60-foot-high poles with steel poles 120 feet tall.
TOWER OF TRAMPLE FEET UPGRADE
The transmission upgrade came on the heels of a regional study that concluded Avista needed to improve its capabilities as power companies increasingly depend on one another for moving large quantities of electricity. The problems began about four years ago when Avista announced its Palouse transmission project that would extend from a substation near Plummer, Idaho, west to Rosalia, and then travel south through Colfax to another substation. Avista relies on easements to fulfill its obligation of providing reliable, safe and affordable power to residents in its service territory. Marler contends that Avista is misusing an easement the company bought for $75 in 1922, one of many the company negotiated that helped bring electricity to rural Whitman County. The dispute underscores the difficulties and competing interests Avista must handle to accomplish an ambitious upgrade of an obtrusive transmission system that often raises the ire of neighbors. So he decided to fight Avista, and today his actions have turned into a legal skirmish pitting a farmer against a billion-dollar company he accuses of trampling property rights to make a profit.
And without crop-dusters, he said, growing wheat just isn’t profitable. The new line, however, makes it unsafe for crop-dusters to fly about 50 acres of his prime wheat ground, Marler contended. That wire is called a lightning shield wire, and, as the name suggests, is designed to protect Avista’s new $45 million transmission project that upgrades electricity service in the Pullman and Colfax area as well as helping Avista meld into the national power grid. “I told them: ‘You’re putting up a fence that’s affecting my farming.’ “ COLFAX – Martin Marler squinted and pointed a finger to a wire running far above a new high-voltage line strung by Avista Utilities near his wheat farm.
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