Process for Construction of New Overhead Transmission Lines Stacked Against Property Owners

Red Deer County resident Kurt Kure is upset, as are many Albertans, about the public consultation and hearing process associated with construction of new high voltage power lines.

In this letter to the Red Deer Advocate yesterday, Kure writes about the Western Alberta Transmission Line, “AltaLink had just served our family two right-of-entry orders just weeks before. I have a personal stake in this illegitimate enterprise as it directly affects my family’s long-term plan to build a new home in the AUC-dictated right-of-way. We have been harassed by landmen, intimidated through AltaLink’s draconian so-called ‘consultation’, negotiation and routing practices, and pushed aside and ignored by the AUC, Surface Rights Board, and our government through this whole wearisome process. A process which has been stacked against property owners and the Alberta public from the very beginning, with our government barring public discourse on this massive overbuild with Bill 50.”

Many Albertans who have contacted RETA have characterized the entire public consultation and hearing process related to new power line construction as “theatre” – an attempt to suggest to the public that their input is meaningful. Kure certainly provides another good example of how landowners’ concerns about massive overhead high voltage transmission lines are ignored by everyone involved in the process: transmission companies such as AltaLink, Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO), Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC), Surface Rights Board, and the Alberta Government.

For more information on how the public interest is cast aside whenever new high voltage power lines are built in Alberta, see Electricity Transmission in Alberta Ignores the Public Interest and Public Interest Overridden in Power Line Construction – Court of Appeal. For more information on how intimidating the entire public consultation and hearing process is, see AUC Power Line Hearings Intimidating and Unfair to Residents, No One Wants AltaLink’s Overhead Power Lines and AUC Heartland Hearing – Day 13.

~ by RETA on May 15, 2014.