Sinking Spring hopes politician can sway PPL’s high-voltage line plans

by Steve Reinbrecht

The electric company is not budging on its plans to run a high-voltage line through the middle of Sinking Spring, effectively gouging a 100-foot wide no-man’s-land through the middle of the borough’s renaissance plans.

PPL Electric Utilities is “continuing discussions” with borough officials and “other interested parties regarding our preferred route for the new transmission line,” spokesman Joe Nixon said in an e-mail.

He doesn’t mention any options to the path.

Sam Loth, in charge of Sinking Spring’s ambitious redevelopment project, says the battle has landed in the lap of state Sen. David Argall, a Republican who represents the area.

Argall supports the borough’s opposition to PPL’s proposed route, Christine Verdier, Argall’s chief of staff, told me in a call last week that. However, she said there hadn’t been meetings between Argall staff and PPL officials in the past couple of weeks, and that none had been scheduled. She said Argall has sent a letter to the power company opposing the placement of the wires.

“We haven’t got a whole lot of correspondence back from PPL,” she said.

Loth says it’s hard to believe the power company decided to put the line through the borough even though company officials attended early meetings about the project. Plans call for 450,000 square feet of commercial, office, retail and food operations, about 100 housing units and $60 million in private investment.

PPL says the new power line is needed to make electric service more reliable for thousands of homes and businesses in Sinking Spring and the surrounding region. Based in Allentown, the company has about 10 million customers and saw $7.7 billion in revenues last year. 

The right-of-way is the issue, Loth said. It cuts the plans in half.

“We remain committed to avoiding interference with future road relocations,” Nixon wrote. The path appears clear of work planned at the major intersections.

But Loth said he’s not sure that even a park could be installed in the right-of-way.

“I’m not sure how many people would want to sit under high-tension wires.”

Map from PPL

Loth has asked the power company to bury the line, to no avail.

It would cost 10 times as much to bury the lines, with customers paying the bill, Nixon wrote. Also, it’s harder to fix underground lines.

“We don’t feel it would be appropriate to pass the cost of that work onto our customers when there is a viable above ground route. That is why we have determined that this line will be built above ground.”

A major concern for the borough is whether even a buried 65,000-volt line on the site would discourage the major private developers needed to fund most of the project, Roth said.

It’s not unusual for the company to build new lines in developed areas, Nixon wrote.

“Power lines need to be built close to the areas where our customers use electricity.”

An example of a recent project was the construction of the 5-mile Honey Brook – Twin Valley transmission line in Chester, Lancaster and Berks counties, Nixon wrote.