The Nebraska Public Power District announced the final route for its proposed transmission line between Columbus and Lincoln 60 days after the series of public hearings concluded.
     The final route tracks closely, with minor alternations, the proposed route the NPPD announced in November.
     "We've used the past 60 days to analyze comments and respond to suggestions from property owners and public officials," Ed Wagner, NPPD's vice president of customer services and delivery, said in a news release.
     The more than year-long process used to identify the final route has been comprehensive, Wagner said.
     "Because of the process, I'm confident we've identified the most suitable route for the new line," he said.
     Public involvement was a high priority in the line-route process. For example, over a 10-month period, the project team held 33 public hearings and reviewed more than a dozen alternative line routes proposed by the public.
     Representatives of NPPD met with the Seward County Commissioners during the Jan. 15 meeting. At that time, Wagner, Lynn Askew of POWER Engineers and Craig Holthe, NPPD project manager, reviewed some of the concerns expressed by the board and county residents.
     "We took a deliberate and methodical approach," Wagner told the board.
     When the project started, NPPD had approximately 400 routes to consider.
     Askew said the city of Seward's main concern with the route was its proximity to residences and its impact on the city's growth. In looking at the routes proposed by citizens, the city and the county, all had more homes within 300 feet of the proposed line than the proposed route did, he said.
     The NPPD proposed route had 16 homes within 300 feet, while the citizen proposed routes ranged from 15 to 27 homes within 300 feet. Askew said the engineers looked at aerial photos to determine the numbers of homes impacted.
     One of the citizen proposed routes ran along Interstate 80. Askew said the I-80 corridor was looked at early on in the process but was not pursued because of future expansion of the interstate and the fact that the NPPD's poles would have to be at least 300 feet from the median centerline. That would impact center pivots south of the interstate.
     In addition, with the I-80 expansion, the interchanges will be changed, and the Seward interchange would be raised 18 to 25 feet, Askew said. That would put it higher than the Seward Airport's elevation and affect the ceiling for pilots.
     Because of public comments, NPPD will use steel single-pole structures with an average 400-percent smaller footprint than lattice steel towers almost exclusively, stair-step the route past Bee, Seward and Garland to minimize the impact to residences and increase the line's distance from communities and double-circuit the line where it is prudent to do so.
     Double-circuit means to use an existing transmission line right-of-way, placing the existing 115 kilovolt and the new 345 kV lines on the same structure.
     "These decisions may add slightly to the project's overall cost, but we feel it is a fair trade-off to lessen impacts," Wagner said in a news release.
     In the final analysis, more than 30 different criteria were used to identify the most suitable line route.
     Construction will begin in late summer 2008. Right-of-way agents will be talking to landowners along the route in the next couple months to obtain right-of-entry agreements, with easement acquisition beginning in March 2008.