Heco ripped for
changes in Waahila
power plans

Heco rebuts the claim by
Life of the Land that it has
kept its tactics secret

By Harold Morse
Star-Bulletin

Life of the Land is accusing Hawaiian Electric Co. of introducing new tactics in the power company's plans to link high-voltage lines through Manoa over Waahila Ridge.

That would necessitate another impact study, the environmental group contends in its latest criticism of the proposed project.

But Heco said it has held more than 150 public meetings and about 200 meetings with government officials on its plans, and nothing has been secret.

For three years, Heco has been asked if it would take existing 46,000-volt lines out of service while constructing new 138,000-volt lines, Life of the Land said.

Although it previously circumvented the question, Heco at last made the revelations in its final environmental impact statement, the group said.

Heco's intention is contained in its response to Life of the Land's comments on the Kamoku-Pukele Draft Environmental Impact Statement, it said.

The impact statement reference says: "Existing Pukele 46-kv circuits will be de-energized, connected to temporary poles and re-energized without outages to customers. Following installation of the new steel poles, the 46-kv circuits would be permanently relocated onto the steel poles."

For the first time, Heco is disclosing its plan to build a parallel line for existing 46,000-volt lines while hand-digging holes for "proposed massive towers," said Life of the Land, which claims this will be a new project with impacts never explored or mentioned before.

"We feel an environmental impact statement for this brand-new, never-before-mentioned project is absolutely necessary," said Henry Curtis, Life of the Land executive director.

"We've submitted a thorough environmental impact statement," responded Heco spokesman Chuck Freedman.

The draft document was presented for public comment earlier this year, he said.

"Prior to that, we had over 150 community meetings and about 200 meetings with government agencies."

It's difficult, if not impossible, to satisfy every community concern, and Heco must balance this with providing its customers reliable service, Freedman said.

In this case, that will mean a line to connect northern and southern transmission corridors to give Heco the capability to route power either way for reliability, he said.

The northern corridor of transmission lines brings electricity from Leeward Oahu power plants to the rest of Oahu, and a southern corridor also has been completed, Freedman said.

"This last line will connect the two corridors so we can route power either way to our customers," he said, calling this an important project for reliable service.

"We have to do our very best to balance (community concerns with) overall concerns of our customers for reliable power at a reasonable cost," he said.