Rebekah L. Sanders and Cecilia Chan
The Arizona Republic
Jun. 29, 2008 12:00 AM
Newcomers flocking to developing West Valley cities for homes that still offer pristine views are in turn bringing in infrastructure that threatens to blemish the Sonoran Desert skyline and scar hundreds of acres of wilderness.
Two major utility projects under way are provoking the ire of the very residents, city officials and developers they're meant to serve.
"It's a chronic dilemma," said urban-growth expert Grady Gammage Jr., a land-use lawyer and senior research fellow at Arizona State University's Morrison Institute for Public Policy.
"We want growth to pay for itself, so we don't want to put infrastructure in long before it comes. But when you do that, people are taken by surprise."
Arizona Public Service Co. wants to string 40 miles of high-voltage electrical lines along metal towers reaching up to 195 feet high through Peoria, Surprise and Buckeye.
They would help power about 60 housing developments planned over the next 20 to 25 years in the northwest Valley and help ensure a reliable power supply for the entire area.
In Buckeye, Houston-based Transwestern Pipeline Co. next month will begin laying part of a 259-mile natural-gas pipeline through the West Valley, coming as close as 20 feet to some homes. It will supply Arizona's growing natural-gas needs, whether for local electrical power plants or backyard grills.
Part of the problem is likely unavoidable, Gammage said.
"When you build stuff people need but don't want to see, there's going to be tension," he said.
Opponents want the projects built farther away from areas where people live or are expected to live. Additionally, they say the utility companies should have solicited more resident input to ensure safety and protect the surrounding desert.
APS and Transwestern say alternative routes would cost more. And they say they're going through the proper channels for state and federal approval.
In APS' case, sitting the project along its preferred choice, the Carefree Highway Alignment, would cost about $190 million, compared with $200 million for its alternative choice, Arizona 74, because it's longer, APS Project Manager Mike DeWitt said.
The Carefree route would end up costing APS more money and eventually its ratepayers because of access issues: The land has washes and rough terrain that APS must traverse to build the project, said Peoria assistant engineer Maher Hazine.
APS also argued that the Arizona 74 plan would take more time to build.
3 councils oppose route
APS needs approval for its preferred route from the Arizona Corporation Commission, the state's utilities regulator. A public hearing before the commission's Power Plant and Line Siting Committee is tentatively scheduled for Aug. 17.
The site committee will then forward a recommendation to the commission, which has the final say.
In anticipation, Peoria, Surprise and Buckeye city councils recently passed resolutions formally opposing the project's route.
Peoria, which said the towers are best suited along two-lane Arizona 74, aims to send its city attorney to argue its case at the hearing.
City officials point to the future development of the state route into a four-lane divided highway as the logical choice for the project.
DeWitt said Arizona 74 is a designated scenic corridor and no utility company he knows of has even sited a project along a scenic corridor.
Peoria residents are upset that overhead power lines could come so near to their upscale, award-winning Vistancia community. They have bombarded APS with 100 letters and an 800-signature petition. The 7,100-acre community this month also started a mass phone campaign, reportedly keeping circuits at APS busy and requiring the utility company to assign two secretaries to answer phones.
Residents complain that the close proximity of power lines to their homes would diminish property values, pose health risks and mar the desert skyline.
Lynda Reithmann, 52, who moved from the Moon Valley area of Phoenix a year ago, said if the high-voltage lines go up along the Carefree Highway, she would see the towers from her backyard, about a mile and a half away.
"Because of the mountains, some of the lines would probably be 195 feet high," she said. "It will do a lot of damage to the pristine desert there."
Peoria Mayor Bob Barrett said if the Carefree route were chosen, APS would build roads under the lines to access them for maintenance. He said it would leave a scar through the heart of Peoria.
DeWitt said building a road that runs the length of the line could happen. But he said it would provide a good opportunity for recreational activity.
Like Peoria, Surprise officials want the high-voltage project on Arizona 74 north of future developments, which are expected to add more than 32,000 homes.
"You never want to see that kind of scar, if you will, going through any community," Surprise Mayor Lyn Truitt said. "If we can put it in a place that's less intrusive, that's what we want to do."
If the Carefree Highway alignment were approved, according to DeWitt, future builders could construct their developments so the impact of the twin 230-kilovolt and 500-kilovolt power lines would be minimal.
Residents already pass by an existing 500-kilovolt transmission line on their way into Vistancia, De Witt said, and developers worked around that line to reduce its visibility.
"We did plan residential uses as far away as possible and surrounded the (existing) towers with commercial land uses. But the towers are very visible," Mark Hammons, senior vice president of Sunbelt Holdings, one of Vistancia's developers.
One of the difficulties with large energy projects, Gammage said, is that residents sometimes feel they've been caught by surprise.
To the extent a developer knows big projects are coming, the developer must include information in a report for home buyers, he said.
"But nobody ever reads those things," Gammage added.
Pipeline opposition
Farther south, Buckeye officials and developers have taken the lead in opposing Transwestern's natural-gas pipeline.
At least 28 miles of pipeline will cut through or close to 31 housing communities that are built or approved along Sun Valley Parkway.
One of those is Tartesso in north Buckeye, the largest master-planned community built by Scottsdale-based Stardust Development. It is projected to eventually hold 48,500 houses, said company President Chris Heeter. Currently, about 1,000 homes have been built.
Heeter is one of the more vocal critics of the pipeline. It will cross his company's development and come as close as 20 feet to about five homes, he said.
"There's no question the pipeline is a legitimate need for a state that's growing like Arizona is," he said. "I just think they could put it in a safer location."
Transwestern rejected a 19- to 25-mile longer alternative route proposed by Buckeye so the pipeline would swing out around the town through mostly vacant desert.
Company spokesman John Ambler said the alternative route would add millions of dollars to the cost, which would show up later for consumers as higher prices and disrupt more land.
"It's trading impacts in one area for impacts in another," he said.
The Buckeye Town Council has fought the energy giant for more than a year, reaching a settlement last month that requires stricter safety precautions during construction but leaving the pipeline route intact. Transwestern said it will use new motion-detection equipment to alert the company to anyone coming too close to the line.
Stardust reached an agreement with Transwestern that says crews will try to avoid the development's existing infrastructure - water and sewer lines, storm drains, roads, retention basins and electrical lines - and replace anything that's damaged in similar or better condition.
So far, efforts to keep the pipeline farther away from houses haven't worked.
Though residents expressed concern at an initial meeting last year with Transwestern and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which approved the project, their reactions have been more muted than their counterparts in Peoria, fighting APS.
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