Talk about a visual imposition as well as spread of weeds and off-road vehicle tracks! This powerline would destroy the view of the Beaverhead, Lemhi, Lost River, and Pioneer Mountain ranges — hundreds of miles. It’s not just the national monument.
Carey residents: ‘No!’ to power line. Hostile crowd raps plan put forth by South Dakota energy giant. By Jason Kauffman. Idaho Mountain Express Staff Writer
Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan's Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of "Hiking Idaho." He also wrote "Beyond the Tetons" and "Backpacking Wyoming's Teton and Washakie Wilderness." He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many, many proposals to rip through just about every undeveloped valley in the Intermountain West with new powerlines.
Right now it is like a feeding frenzy of Utility line developers.
In Nevada, BLM is trying to weasel out doing an EIS to analyze soemthing called SWIP (Southwest INtertie Project). They have broken it inot 2 separate boilerplate EAs to try to slide by. There are the Las Vegas water grab corridors. T
Where powerlines go — coal-fired powerplants, mountain top removal wind farms on public lands -,and all the rest follow. PLUS be assured that down the line, it is not just transmission lines that will use these corridors – once the right-of-way is obtained and the damage done – no reason to not put in a massive water movement line …
AND how absurd. Instead of working to generate power from renewable energy close to where it is used (and of course to conserve) , these Powerlines facilitate development of remote public lands -and lose Mega-kilowatts to the air …
Just like Las Vegas and the SNWA is making central Nevada a Water and Energy Colony – making many other remote areas Energy factories is a primary purpose of all the Utility Corridor frenzy in remote areas across the West right now.
Here is a link showing the proposed routes for this monstrosity. http://www.msti500kv.com/maps.htm
Besides the damage inflicted to eastern Idaho, one of the alternative routes follows Beaverhead County’s Medicine Lodge Creek, along the Big Sheep Byway in south-southwest Montana. It would totally degrade the views in this spectacular, but little known backcountry byway, and also slice through an area that has been managed as wilderness, bisecting the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail.
So now we know what has been going with those meetings with the Western governors, the Bushies, and the energy companies.
Rotten bastards!
If I’m reading the linked map correctly, it looks like there would be a line running down the Centennial Valley too. That would not be good.
Yikes, that’s true about the Centennial! The only piece of comfort is the Nature Conservancy owns a large chunk of the proposed route on the north side of the valley (the Centennial Sandshills Preserve) and I’m sure they’d never agree to sell.
always eminent domain!!!!,, whats good for the better of the many at expense of the few,!!
Hello All, I wrote to Ralph and asked him to post the information about this project, but I think he left on his travels before reading my email. I found out by chance that there were meetings in Montana regarding the Mountain States Transmission Lines (MSTI) this week and there are also meetings coming up throughout Eastern Idaho. I’d like to remind people to attend these meetings or at least comment to voice their objections to yet another attempt by energy companies gain an even bigger foothold of access to vast corridors of public lands in the west.
Here’s the scoping letter: http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/mt/blm_programs/lands/msti.Par.60127.File.dat/letter.pdf
Here’s Northwestern Energy’s webpage regarding the project
http://www.msti500kv.com/
Here’s the color-coded map.
http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/mt/blm_programs/lands/msti.Par.30327.File.dat/scopingmap.pdf
Can you show me the route proposed through aspen valley in boulder montana… We have a home their. THANKS
ALLEN ….