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Letter to the editor

Progress Energy's plan too costly for preserve

Progress Energy has managed to offend both nature lovers and Pinellas County officials - who haven't been on the same side much lately - by floating the idea of clear-cutting a half-mile wide transmission line corridor through the priceless Brooker Creek Preserve.

The way the power company approached the proposal was especially distasteful: without a public meeting and offering what is, in effect, a bribe to persuade county officials to look favorably on the idea.

Come on, Progress Energy, you have to do better than this.

It is true that Florida needs to generate more electric power for the future. Progress Energy is responding to that need by exploring the possibility of building a new nuclear power plant on a site in Levy County, a few miles north of the Crystal River power plant, and then distributing the electricity across west central Florida through a network of high-voltage transmission lines.

It also is true that finding places to locate those transmission lines will be difficult, especially in densely developed areas like Pinellas County.

Yet, is the answer to level a half-mile wide swath of trees and wildlife habitat in the county's most precious preserve? That's what would be done if Progress Energy's latest proposal, reported in the St. Petersburg Times on Friday, were implemented.

Setting a price

There is already a 500-foot-wide, clear-cut power line corridor extending north to south through the east side of Brooker Creek Preserve, parallel to the Pinellas-Hillsborough county line. From the air, it looks like a scar through a wide mat of green, with 140-foot-tall towers carrying power lines. Progress Energy's idea is to increase that existing power line corridor to about a half-mile wide - that is about 2,600 feet - and erect a second line of towers 165 feet tall to carry power from the new nuclear plant.

It isn't just Pinellas that would have such transmission corridors. A map obtained by the Times last week also shows potential corridors a half-mile wide or wider crisscrossing Hernando, Hillsborough and Pasco counties, including one possibly crossing the Jay B. Starkey Wilderness Park in Pasco.

Pinellas officials learned about the potential for such a corridor in the Brooker Creek Preserve in private talks with the power company and its consultant, Biological Research Associates of Riverview, which was hired to gather information about environmental lands that might be affected by the proposed corridors. Pinellas officials were properly dismayed.

"I cannot express our protests strongly enough," said Dr. Bruce Rinker, director the county environmental lands division. "The (Brooker Creek) preserve and all other environmental lands are points of pride for our citizens, acquired and managed over the past 30 years. There is no substitute for their ecological, aesthetic and ethical benefits."

Rinker's comments came after the consultant, instructed to look for a "win-win" solution, asked the county to create a wish list of items the power company might be able to provide in exchange for the right to march its transmission towers through the preserve.

As appalling as that tactic is - essentially, the utility would be paying off the county for the right to destroy the natural beauty and value of about 1,549 acres of the 8,300-acre preserve - the county set about creating a long wish list.

Rinker says that the lengthy list was created merely to show Progress Energy that the idea is ridiculous. That would be more reassuring if the list did not include numerous items the county wants or needs, including new fencing to replace dilapidated fencing on county environmental lands; firefighting equipment; restrooms; reimbursement for purchases of environmental land; restoration of wetlands and sandhill habitat in the preserve; a new pole barn; funding for 10 law enforcement officers to patrol the county's preserves; a wildlife underpass for Keystone Road; a $3.5-million annual boost for the stretched environmental lands operating budget; and reimbursement for the cost of building a water blending plant in North Pinellas. Even a tree canopy walkway in the Brooker Creek Preserve was on the list, "but without view of the power lines."

Little public input

Progress Energy representatives say the map of corridors is merely an exploration of possibilities and is very preliminary, and that new maps are likely to be created in the future. They insist they don't even know yet if they will build a nuclear plant in Levy County.

However, residents already are concerned, and Progress Energy has scheduled only one meeting in Pinellas to share information: 4 to 8 p.m. Feb. 25 at the Crescent Oaks Country Club, 3300 Crescent Oaks Blvd., in East Lake. Progress Energy should schedule more opportunities to share its "preliminary" plans with Pinellas residents, whose neighborhoods and nature preserves could be seriously impacted by such wide transmission corridors.

[Last modified February 16, 2008, 21:14:31]