Two new high-voltage power lines going up in Tucson

Tucson Electric Power will build high-voltage power lines over two busy Tucson intersections after two of three denials by the city’s zoning examiner were overturned.

TEP can now run its power lines east-west across North Oracle Road on West Grant Road and east-west across South Kino Parkway on East 36th Street as part of its Midtown Reliability Project, which would connect three substations across central Tucson via 138-kilovolt transmission lines suspended by 75- to 85-foot-tall poles.

In some areas, the poles could be up to 130 feet tall. By comparison, a standard power pole is typically 30 to 40 feet tall.

The project is necessary to meet growing peak demand needs in the midtown area, including the UA, TEP has said.

At a glance, the utility’s preferred route would connect a substation near Interstate 10 and West Grant Road to a proposed substation just north of the University of Arizona and Banner University Medical Center. From there, TEP would route transmission lines to a substation near South Kino Parkway and East 36th Street.

TEP was seeking exceptions from city code that requires new transmission lines be installed underground within a “Gateway Corridor Zone.” Those are areas in the city that give a “favorable visual impression of Tucson to tourists and visitors at entry points to the City and on routes leading to major recreation attractions.”

The utility said in its original request that they should be exempt from undergrounding the lines, because that would require it to build large risers on either side of the intersections that would be more “visually invasive” than having them run overhead.

Acting Zoning Examiner Frank Cassidy, however, disagreed with TEP’s contention in his Feb. 21 decision. Undergrounding the lines would provide “a substantially more favorable visual impression in the Gateway Corridor Zone, despite the need for the risers,” Cassidy said then.

TEP believes the zoning examiner’s decisions were “severely flawed,” Adam Melton, assistant general counsel for TEP, said Wednesday night in a presentation to the City Council, “not because of the conclusions he reached, but because of how he reached those conclusions.”

“His interpretation of (city code), if left standing, makes it so that it’s impossible for any special exception to ever be granted. And that is an absurd and arbitrary, and capricious, interpretation of the statutes,” Melton said. “We believe the plain language of the ordinance councils towards overhead crossings. We believe it’s more aesthetically pleasing to not have those riser structures bracketing these roads, and it’s certainly cheaper for our customers.”

Melton said project costs, and affordability for its ratepayers, are a concern for TEP.

“We are very cautious about inviting these types of costs on for our customers,” he said. “I think it’s important to look at the practical issues here, in-terms of what’s the difference between an overhead crossing and an underground crossing at these three intersections. Because it’s not, ‘undergrounding is always better than over-heading’ and vice-versa.”

Melton argued that running the lines underneath the three intersections “may not be the best choice,” not only because it would cost more, but that the large risers required may not be more visually appealing than if they were to run overhead. He noted that while the zoning examiner denied the three exemptions, staff from the city’s Planning and Development Services Department recommended their approval.

The Midtown Reliability Project would be an 8.5 mile route that would cross 91 roads, but just three of them need exemption from city code, Melton said.

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“In total, if there were three underground crossings, the effect is undergrounding about three-tenths of a mile of line. That’s a little over (3.5%) of the total mileage of this sign,” he said.

TEP’s estimate to underground at just the Broadway-Euclid intersection would be an “incremental increase” of nearly $6 million, while the entire budget for the 8.5-mile line is $19 million, Melton said, so undergrounding would have a “huge impact” on overall costs.

The city council granted two of those three appeals on Wednesday, overturning two of Cassidy’s three denials by a 5-2 vote.

As part of the council overturning the denials for the two intersections, TEP withdrew its appeal to Cassidy’s Broadway-Euclid intersection decision, something Melton said ahead of the vote was something TEP could live with.

Councilmember Rocque Perez said Ward 5 residents, which includes the 36th and Kino parkway intersection, “had no opposition to overhead lines” so he had no objections to granting the appeal.

Council members Paul Cunningham and Karin Uhlich voted against the motion made by Nikki Lee.

For her vote, Uhlich said she was supporting the zoning examiner’s decision because “it’s very unusual for me to not agree with the zoning examiner or the planning commission because I do believe they know more than me.”

Cunningham, however, pointed criticism to TEP’s practices for his vote against their appeal. And he called granting the appeal for the Oracle-Grant intersection a “poison pill” because the city shouldn’t “put overhead lines where there are no overhead lines right now.”

“We made the rules for a reason. I happen to live off Kolb Road, which has both sides of the street with transmission lines, and it isn’t pleasant, and I’ve not liked it forever. I can’t stand driving to other communities in Arizona and there’s no overhead lines,” he said. “One of the things that’s come up is our mountains and our view, and we have the most aggressive overhead lines utility power, in what I feel is the state . . . For me, it’s kind of messed up our town a little bit. We had the opportunity to start undergrounding a long time ago.”

“We can’t put overhead lines where there are no overhead lines right now. We should not do that,” Cunningham said. “What’s the point of me having expectations for people if I’m not going to have expectations for my partners?”

Simulated photos of what the lines would look like over the three intersections were presented to the council. Ahead of the vote, Tucson Mayor Regina Romero, agreeing with previous comments made by Cunningham, said lines over Oracle and Grant look “horrendous.” But Romero, along with the rest of the council, deferred to Kevin Dahl, who represent the area. He agreed with granting the appeal.

About a half-dozen people spoke out against granting the appeals.

Daniel Dempsey, co-founder of nonprofit group Underground Arizona, which contends TEP must underground the lines, argued that the utility spent more money fighting for the overhead lines than it would have cost to put them underground.

“It should piss you off that TEP is comfortable telling you that undergrounding isn’t allowed when there are dozens of undergrounding projects in Phoenix that have had no measurable impact on rates . . . It should piss you off that TEP feels so comfortable fighting to have Tucson treated as a second-class city,” Dempsey told the council.