Murphy – On the day of a Feb. 20 deadline for public comment on a proposed Tennessee Valley Authority power line extension in western Cherokee County, local residents and officials were feeling snubbed.
At the Feb. 20 meeting of the Cherokee County Board of Commissioners, County Manager Randy Wiggins said he reached out to TVA several times, inviting it to send a representative to one of the two board of commissioners meetings in February. Wiggins added that the county has no authority over TVA, which is a federal agency.
“We’ve tried everything we can,” board Chairman Cal Stiles said.
State Rep. Karl Gillespie (R-Franklin) said in an email to TVA officials that he was concerned that TVA did not hold an in-person public input session.
“It might be TVA’s preferred method to have an online comment period and mail submissions, I maintain that the citizens of Cherokee County are entitled to the courtesy of an in-person meeting where TVA can explain why the line is necessary and hear the concerns of the citizens,” Gillespie said.
TVA spokesman Scott Fiedler, responding to an inquiry about the issue from the Cherokee Scout, said, “Because some commissioners may be impacted, it would be inappropriate to participate in the commission meeting. To be fair to everyone, TVA posted information online so everyone can review the project and provide comments.”
Just one county commissioner – Jan Griggs, who owns acreage off of Guy Eller Road – is affected by the proposal. She offered to recuse herself from participating as a board member if the TVA would appear.
The TVA’s online information is still available, although the Feb. 20 deadline to comment has expired.
Go to tva.com/transmissionprojects and click the link for “Appalachia Area Improvement, Tennessee and North Carolina” for project information. A multimedia presentation is available at tvavirtual.com/appalachia. Although the official comment period ended Feb. 20, the link is still active and questions and comments can be emailed to newtransline@tva.gov; refer to the Appalachia Area Improvement project.
TVA wants to build a switching station in Martins Creek and about 27 miles of primarily single-circuit power line, half of which would be on newly acquired easements, “in order to provide power for growing load and increase power reliability in the Appalachia area.”
The proposed line would begin at TVA’s existing Apalachia Hydro Plant in Reliance, Tenn., and extend southeast to the Tap to Ranger and Harshaw Road-Weaver transmission lines and then connect them to a switching station TVA wants to build on one of two possible sites in Martins Creek.
TVA plans to buy 100-foot-wide easements across affected properties to make room for the new power lines as compensation for use of the property, but is not buying the properties outright. That would leave the property owners with 100-foot-wide swaths of cleared land along with the power lines. Many worry that the power lines will ruin their property values.
Becky Wright, who owns just over 14 acres off Bell Hill Road in Ranger, spearheaded a petition drive against the project that collected more than 400 signatures, she told commissioners on Feb. 20.
“TVA blindsided our community,” she said, pointing out that public notices about the project only mentioned Martins Creek and that the TVA’s own website is vague, putting information behind a directory link called “Appalachia Area Improvement, Tennessee and North Carolina.”
The number of affected landowners and parcels depends on whom you ask, but is about 365 property owners and more than 460 parcels. Critics speculate that the TVA project is intended to help power a growing crypto mining industry in Cherokee County, which has no way to control land use in the county.
“I was puzzled why we had rolling blackouts in December, and I have never experienced them living almost all my 64 years here,” Wright said.
“But I was told that crypto mines never stopped operating.”
County resident Penny Harrison uncovered information about a possible crypto mine in development in Andrews. “Commissioners, now is the time when we really need to stop these crypto mines,” she said.
TVA denies allegation about cryptocurrency influencing TVA expansion decisions.
“Cryptocurrency is not a TVA target market,” Fiedler said. “Our target markets include: Advanced Manufacturing, Aerospace and Defense, Consumer Products, Industrial Products, [and] Transportation-Related Manufacturing. Our goal is to bring jobs and investment to the communities we serve.”
Here is the project timeline, with dates subject to change:
- Jan. 19: Virtual Open House began.
- Feb. 20: Comment period ended.
- Late spring 2023: Determine preferred route for field surveys.
- Winter 2023-24: Surveys of the right of way are scheduled to begin.
- 2025: Easement purchases scheduled to begin.
- Winter 2025-26: Construction scheduled to begin.
- Winter 2026-27: Project in service.