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Happy birthday power tower
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Credit: Athmar Park Neighborhood Association
Can't let the day go by without wishing the Xcel Energy tower at South Lipan Street and West Virginia Avenue a happy birthday. It will be two years old this week.
The 150-or-so-foot tower came into this world to upgrade an Xcel Energy transmission line from the Zuni power station at 13th Avenue and Zuni Street to the Arapahoe power station near Platte River Drive and Evans Avenue. The previous line, which took a different route between stations, carried 115 kilovolts and the new one carries 230 kilovolts. Lots of juice.
Not a lot of planning went into this birth. Blythe California had a six hundred plus page study in place before their power line upgrade. DeSoto County Mississippi had a seventy-seven page assessment for a relatively small upgrade. Denver's upgrade did not require any study, assessment or environmental impact statement. Nothing. All that was required was approval from the Public Utilities Commission and as long as the towers were built in right-of-ways, the city of Denver could do nothing to help or hurt the project. So poor was the planning that Xcel had not figured out how to route the power lines around Sanderson Gulch and Ruby Hill Park on the way to the Arapahoe station. At the time of its birth, it was the "Tower to Nowhere."
More will be written in future posts about the controversy that followed. There were hearings, discussions, meetings, more meetings and perhaps a plan to underground the power lines. But let's go back to October 2006 when residents first looked at the tower and asked, "What the **** is that?" Mark Stutz, a spokesman for Xcel Energy, said that neighborhood groups were properly notified, but no one from the Athmar Park Neighborhood Association remembered seeing the letter. At a neighborhood meeting Jerome Davis of Xcel said a notice was on page 40 something of the Rocky Mountain News a few months earlier. It reminded me of chapter three of Douglas Adams' brilliant novel, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, depicting the destruction of Earth:
"Before the Earth passed away it was going to be treated to the very ultimate in sound reproduction, the greatest public address system ever built...'People of Earth, your attention, please...This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council...As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route through your star system, and regrettably your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes. Thank you...There's no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you've had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it's far too late to start making a fuss about it now.'"
UPDATE: Rob, the South St. Paul Minnesota Examiner has a post on power lines in his home state
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