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HEBER CITY — Amid protest from community members and concerns voiced by newly elected officials, a multijurisdictional plan to build 138 kilovolt power lines across the Heber Valley has been temporarily placed on hold, pending studies into the necessity and cost of such a project, according to Heber City Mayor Kelleen Potter.
The project began in 2014 as a collaboration between Heber Light and Power and Rocky Mountain Power to “increase electrical service capacity and reliability to the Heber Valley, and surrounding area, by completing a transmission loop between Park City and Orem,” according to the Heber Light and Power website.
Heber City resident Bengt Jonsson said he didn’t know about the project until he noticed new power poles that “over the last few years have been popping up,” he said.
“It caught everybody kind of like, ‘What is this that’s going on here? And how come nobody ever knew about it?’” Jonsson said.
Jonsson is involved with Valley-wide Opposition to Large Transmission Lines (VOLT), a citizen action group established to oppose the power line project. Jonsson said his opposition stems from his feeling that the public was not included in the decision making, as well as his worry that the approximately 100-foot tall proposed power lines would be a blight on the “gem” that is Heber Valley.
Rocky Mountain Power communication specialist Dave Eskelsen said the project has had “a long history of analysis” and is necessary to meet energy demands in the rapidly growing valley. Eskelsen said the agreed upon plan would be the shortest route while still providing energy from Park City to Orem, and “presents the least impact to land owners.”
At a Heber Light and Power board meeting on Jan. 24, the six-member board, on which sit the mayors of Heber City, Midway City and Charleston, all three of whom took office in November 2017, voted unanimously to temporarily place the project on hold until impact studies can be done exploring the costs and feasibilities of the project, Mayor Celeste Johnson of Midway City told KSL.com on Thursday.
“Currently, the whole project is basically on hold pending these studies,” Johnson said.
Additionally, a six to eight person citizen advisory board will be established to increase community involvement, Johnson said. The idea came after a citizen board was created for the Wasatch Fire Department in recent years and “it worked really well,” Johnson said.
One of Johnson’s priorities is to ensure “that the community is aware of what is happening and that their concerns are legitimately addressed,” Johnson said.
“It’s a fairly complicated issue,” she said. “There’s still more work to be done, but the bottom line is before we move forward, we want a whole lot of questions answered so we feel like we are making the very best decisions for our valley.”
An estimated 65 people showed up to the Jan. 24 meeting, according to Heber City Councilman Wayne Hardman. Hardman said he believes he represents a silent majority of Heber Valley residents that support the decision but don’t do so vocally.
As of Friday, VOLT’s petition to “Rethink, Reroute, or Bury High Voltage Power Lines in Heber Valley” had received 3,457 signatures. The petition is open to anyone, so it is not immediately clear how many of these signatures are from Heber Valley residents.
The proposed impact studies will be done by three independently contracted companies, Potter said. One of the studies will look at the feasibility of building underground power lines as an alternative to overhead poles.
Eskelen said that Rocky Mountain Power has already considered building the lines underground, but that doing so would be significantly more expensive than building above ground.
“We like to work with the city and county authorities that we go to (for projects),” Eskelsen said. “We are certainly willing to do more discussion, but this particular project has received several years of scrutiny.”
Bart Miller, Heber Light and Power’s chief financial officer, told KSL.com on Friday that the power line project is necessary to keep up with population growth and power demands in the valley. Simply put, the city can’t handle the power, Miller said.
There are “pretty pressing timelines in terms of growth and customer demand,” Eskelsen said. “So a decision should be made soon.”
Miller said some residents worry that Heber Valley is being used as a means to an ends of providing power for Park City. He said he categorically rejects this idea, and added that the plan has everything to do with meeting population demands in Heber and “nothing to do with Park City.”
Potter said the project would move forward once all options have been explored, and it will likely take multiple weeks for the studies to be completed. There are still “some questions we don’t have answers for entirely yet,” Potter said.
KSL.com attempted to contact Mayor Brenda Kozlowski of Charleston by email to contribute to this story. Kozlowski could not be reached at the time this story was written.
