Louisiana homeowners reject new powerlines

- The three high-voltage power lines that Entergy Louisiana wants to string alongside his Burnside restaurant will be troublesome eyesores and barriers to development in the area, according to a local restaurant owner.

"I'm against it," said the store's owner, Al Roberts, whose restaurant and adjoining cluster of historic buildings near the Sunshine Bridge have become a tourist attraction in recent years.

For the 2.5 million Entergy utility customers in southeastern Louisiana, however, the new transmission wires promise a more reliable power system, especially in the summer when air conditioners are running their hardest, and greater access to lower-cost electricity.

The lines are part of a $61 million, four-year transmission grid upgrade, the biggest undertaken by an Entergy Corp. subsidiary since the 1980s. Customers of Entergy Corp.'s four utilities will pay for the improvements through electricity rates.

But work on the project's first phase, a 9-mile stretch of lines running from Gonzales to Sorrento, can't get started until the company obtains rights-of-way along the entire route.

That's proving difficult.

Robert and owners of 20 other tracts, which represent about half of the route chosen by Entergy, rejected offers from the utility to purchase easements. Entergy, in response, has moved to expropriate the rights-of-way through a lawsuit.

That legal battle unfolding in the Ascension Parish Courthouse in Donaldsonville is the classic progress-versus-property rights fight. While property owners don't want intrusion on their property, power customers want reliable electricity, maybe more than ever.

After all, it was only eight months ago when more than 50 million homes and businesses in eight northern states and Canada went dark for days when that region's transmission grid failed. And the approaching summer could again bring tight power supplies, soaring prices for electricity and threats of blackouts.

In our back yard

A joint U.S.-Canada investigative task force blamed last year's blackout on utilities that disregarded voluntary rules meant to ensure the flow of electricity.

Entergy and other members of the Southeastern Electric Reliability Council recently agreed to impose penalties on members that violate the rules. Meanwhile, proposals in Congress to make the rules mandatory nationwide have been stuck in partisan limbo.

Others have said utilities haven't done enough to modernize the nation's vast grid of transmission lines that links power plants and substations to homes, shops and manufacturing plants.

Even so, George Bartlett, director of transmission operations for Entergy Louisiana, said the chance of a similar large-scale blackout hitting Southern states is small because the region's power grid is spread over a much larger area and controlled by some of the nation's largest utilities, making it easier to isolate problems before they trigger massive shutdowns.

"If I operate within the rules of the system, then I should operate properly. It's when you violate the rules that the system gets in trouble," he said.

But Ellen Vancko, a spokeswoman for the North American Electricity Reliability Council, which oversees grid operation in the United States and Canada, warned against investing too much confidence in any segment of the grid, no matter its size or who is operating it.

With power demands growing in nearly every region of the country and with transmission grids rapidly morphing to handle greater volumes of electricity carried over longer distances, significant failures could arise almost anywhere, she said.

"It would be foolish to say that (last year's blackout) can't happen in the South," she said. "Every time you change the system, you have an effect on how it operates and how power flows."

Rising demand

Entergy managers say new transmission lines are needed between Gonzales and Sorrento to ensure that the company can continue delivering enough power to New Orleans and the industrial corridor between the city and Baton Rouge.

Historically, power plants in the New Orleans area produced enough electricity to meet the needs of local customers. That was a good thing, because opportunities for importing extra power into the area have always been limited by the region's unusual geography -- bordered on three sides by lakes, bays, sparsely populated marsh and the Gulf of Mexico.

"We get no support from the fish in the Gulf," Bartlett said.

But customer demands for power have grown in recent years, while Entergy's ability to produce electricity locally has stagnated. These trends have started taxing the main transmission lines that follow the Mississippi River to Baton Rouge and connect New Orleans to the rest of the electricity grid.

On the hottest summer days, Entergy customers in southeastern Louisiana use 6,500 megawatts of electricity, easily outpacing the 5,800 megawatt capacity of the company's local power plants. To keep the lights on and air conditioners running, the company imports juice from power plants in other areas.

Most of that imported power flows along transmission lines running between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

The high-voltage wires are capable of importing 2,100 megawatts of power, more than enough to meet current peak demands, Bartlett said. But that's not enough excess capacity to survive a major system failure, he said.

You can think of the power grid like you think of a highway system, Bartlett said. As traffic volumes rise, lanes must be added, in part, to allow traffic to continue flowing even when a lane is blocked by a wreck.

The same idea holds true with transmission lines. A utility must make sure there is enough excess capacity built into the grid to compensate for the loss of a main line, Bartlett said. As more power flows through the grid, more transmission lines must be added to maintain that balance.

The new Entergy lines running from Gonzales to Sorrento would add 350 megawatts of import capacity to the local grid, or enough power to supply Metairie. The second and third phases, stringing new transmission lines from Sorrento to Garyville and from Gonzales to Walker, would add another 350 megawatts.

A final phase of the project, involving upgrades in New Orleans and surrounding suburbs to medium-voltage transmission lines and substations, would ensure the extra power can travel all the way to the city.

When complete, the entire project would boost import capacity into the region by 700 megawatts, about the same amount of power produced by a mid-sized power plant and more than enough juice to supply half of Orleans Parish in the summer.

Power out of reach

The planned upgrades predate last year's blackout in the Northeast. They were borne from a desire by state utility regulators to deliver cheaper electricity to Entergy customers in southeastern Louisiana, officials said.

The project emerged from a study the Public Service Commission requested in 2002 to determine whether grid upgrades could help reduce power bills in the region.

Significant increases in electricity consumption and the deregulation of the nation's wholesale power market over the past decade prompted investors to build dozens of "merchant" plants that can sell their power on the open market to regulated utilities. Many of the plants are in Entergy's territory in Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas.

By using new technology, merchant plants can produce electricity more efficiently and at a lower cost than older-generation plants operated by Entergy and other regulated utilities.

But in southeastern Louisiana, much of that power has been beyond the reach of power customers because of capacity constraints along transmission lines running between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

The commissioners wanted to find a way to get more of the merchant power into southeastern Louisiana, said Ernest "Lanny" Edwards, a New Orleans lawyer who worked on the study for the agency.

"We knew we were paying higher prices for power generated by older and less efficient units," Edwards said. "If Entergy was able to increase the import capacity of its transmission system, would you be able to bring in enough cheap power to pay for the project and ultimately reduce" power bills?

The answer was yes, according to the study.

In fact, the study determined that the upgrades could save customers between $128 million to $260 million during the next 20 years, depending on how quickly electricity consumption grows during that same period. That amount, which is above and beyond the cost of the project, translates into an average monthly savings of 21 cents to 43 cents per customer.

Dispute in court

But before the system can be upgraded, Entergy must settle the dispute over rights-of-way along the Ascension Parish route.

The court battle boils down to two issues: monetary compensation and aesthetics, said Baton Rouge lawyer Steve Irving, who represents Robert and several other defendants in the expropriation suit.

"These lines are being built through one of the fastest-developing areas of the parish," he said. "They are going to run along several prime commercial tracts that have been held for development. The effect will take property under the lines out of commercial service, except for parking."

Entergy has chosen a route that runs south along a short stretch of the Illinois Central Railroad then turns east along Louisiana 22 before turning south again along Louisiana 70 and ending near the St. James Parish line. Along the way, the route crosses woodlands, sugar cane fields, subdivisions and businesses.

Entergy plans to string three 230-kilovolt lines from 51 steel lattice towers and 24 concrete poles towering 75 feet above the ground. Plans for the second and third phases of the project are still being developed.

Irving and others involved in the expropriation case have proposed changing the route in a way that would bypass their properties. If the route doesn't change, then the defendants say they are entitled to greater compensation from Entergy for the use of the rights-of-way.

In its suit, Entergy says the route represents the best path that is "conducive to the public interest and convenience," and it warns that failure to construct the new lines could risk blackouts.

The company said the compensation it offered property owners was based on land surveys and appraisals it had conducted.

"We are trying to be fair," Entergy spokesman Chanel Lagarde said. "We are trying to resolve these issues in a manner that is fair to everyone."

Bartlett said the lawsuit was an act of last resort. "We hate to do that. Our first step is to try to reach a resolution," he said.

As dictated by state law, the judge hearing the suit has expedited the case, setting a May 17 trial date to decide whether expropriation is appropriate. If Entergy wins that round, a second trial would be held to determine how much money the property owners can receive from the utility.

The lines would take eight months to erect after the rights-of-way are acquired, Bartlett said.