Hearings begin on controversial Tucson Electric power line

Tucson Electric Power officials at the kickoff of state hearings on Monday stressed the urgent need for a new, high voltage transmission line through midtown to replace aging equipment and upgrade system reliability.

But at the first hearing on TEP’s Midtown Reliability Project before the Arizona Power Plant and Line Siting Committee, a local activist said TEP can, and should, bear the cost of installing the 138-kilovolt lines underground to avoid a miles-long blight of 100-foot poles and lines.

And a Tucson city attorney maintained that the planned overhead lines along some routes would violate city ordinances banning such installations along key corridors.

“This is a case about modernizing an electric grid to keep pace with the city’s growing population and progressing with the city to meet its evolving energy needs,” Meghan Grabel, an attorney representing TEP, said at the outset of hearings before the line-siting panel at the DoubleTree by Hilton Tucson-Reid Park.

TEP says the 138-kilovolt transmission line from the south side to a substation near Interstate 10 and West Grant Road is badly needed to meet surging power demand.

Grabel and TEP’s project manager told the panel that the current 46-kV transmission system in the central Tucson area was built in the 1950s and 1960s and is nearing capacity.

The new 138-kV equipment will help serve growing power needs and improve reliability with a new transmission loop, while allowing TEP to remove miles of old 46-kV lines.

“The community continues to rely on the same old electric system, it was built in the 1950s; we all know that nothing lasts forever,” said Clark Bryner, TEP manager of siting outreach and engagement.

“The existing system has served its purpose and it has done so very well, but it no longer meets the needs of the city and is due for modernization,” Bryner said, noting that since the midtown power grid was built, air conditioning units became common.

The upgrade including a new, 138-kv substation adjacent to Banner University Medical Center will deliver more power to the nearby University of Arizona campus and, in all, about 45,000 homes and businesses in the area.

TEP, which has been planning a midtown system upgrade since 2007, says the cost of installing the lines underground is prohibitive, at an estimated 10 to 20 times the cost of overhead lines — about $15 to $26 million per mile compared with about $1.2 million per mile for overhead lines.

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But the co-founder of a Tucson group opposing the installation of overhead lines said TEP should pay to bury the transmission lines, some of which will border or run through historic neighborhoods, to preserve precious local assets.

Tucson resident Daniel Dempsey, co-founder of Underground Arizona, said Arizona utilities have installed transmission lines underground, citing recent installations by Salt River Project in Chandler and an Arizona Public Service Co. project to refurbish 11 miles of underground lines in central Phoenix.

Cost in those cases wasn’t a barrier, and shouldn’t be for TEP, Dempsey said.

“There are many misconceptions perpetuated by the utility companies that are easy to disprove, the biggest is that undergrounding of project costs substantially more than above-ground,” he said. “It does not — it does cost more upfront, but it saves money over the long run and the lifetime cost of the asset can be less than above ground lines, especially in urban high density settings.”

“(TEP) is attempting to run above-ground transmission lines from the very center of Tucson and the economic part of Southern Arizona, which is important to all of Arizona in our competition with other states for tourism and business,” Dempsey told the line-siting committee, which after a scheduled 10 days of hearings will make a recommendation for a final decision on the line route to the Arizona Corporation Commission.

Assistant City Attorney Roi Lusk told the panel the city is trying to enforce its development code, which bans overhead transmission lines in certain “scenic” and “gateway” corridors, including North Campbell Avenue.

TEP’s current preferred route would avoid Campbell and veer away from historic neighborhoods like Sam Hughes, but it would cut through parts of the historic Jefferson Park and West University neighborhoods.

“The concern that the city has in this proceeding is not related to the necessity for progress, or the necessity for this project, in and of itself,” Lusk said. “What the concern the city has and is willing to discuss and defend is its ability to enforce its own code.”

The city and its Board of Adjustment are defendants in a pending lawsuit brought by TEP to overturn a zoning administrator’s decision that the lines must be installed underground as the utility sought approval for the new substation.

Hearings before the line-siting committee are scheduled nearly daily at the Doubletree starting at 9 a.m. through July 19.

For links to the live hearings and other information, go to tucne.ws/tepline.