Cathy Yosten can sit on her deck with a cup of coffee and look out over a pasture, the same way she has for most of the 42 years she and her husband Keith have lived on their land outside Cheyenne.
Now, she fears a high-power transmission line will soon replace that open view.
“I realize they need to do the energy line,” Yosten told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday. “But why can't they find a better route where they're going through vacant pastureland instead of running right up in between residences?”
That was one of several questions Yosten said went unanswered at a public hearing Tuesday evening, where Laramie County commissioners took up the application for a transmission line tied to the Chalk Bluffs Wind Project, which Weld County, Colorado, commissioners just approved.
Chalk Bluffs Wind LLC, a subsidiary of Enyo Power Partners, wants to build a 16-mile, high-voltage line with a 125-foot right-of-way to carry power from Enyo’s main substation in Colorado to the greater Cheyenne electrical grid.
County rules require a public hearing before any transmission line with a right-of-way wider than 100 feet can be built.
For Yosten, that process felt like a mere formality.
“I feel it's like, ‘We’re going to let you talk and say what you want to say, and then we're going to do as we darn well please,’” Yosten said.
‘Erin Brockovich Kind Of Thing’
Yosten wasn’t alone in her concerns. Several other people spoke at Tuesday’s hearing, including Wendy Volk, a Cheyenne real estate agent and landowner.
Volk told commissioners she understands that each energy project is approved separately but she’s concerned about the total impact of the wind farms and data centers going up in and around Cheyenne.
“Each one may appear before you as a separate application, a separate permit and a separate hearing,” Volk said. “But the people who live here do not experience those impacts separately.”
Yosten tried to make the issue personal to the commissioners and the Enyo Energy representatives, asking them whether they would want a high-power transmission line in their yard. She said she also approached the representatives directly after the meeting.
“I invited them to come to my home and look at what we have,” Yosten said. “Because we have a lot of mature trees, large trees. We have a historic log cabin that was built back in the 1920s, which is one of our rentals.”
She doubts anyone will take her up on the offer. To her, the property next to the proposed line is a home, the result of more than four decades of work and a place several tenants also live. But she understands that Enyo Energy likely sees it as just a plot on a map.
She said neighbors share her worries, but nobody knows what power they have against a large company.
“Kind of like an Erin Brockovich kind of thing,” Yosten said.
‘Hold Them to a Bar’
Tuesday’s public hearing wasn’t a vote from the Laramie County Commission. The wind farm itself isn’t in Wyoming yet, and only the transmission infrastructure that would carry its power to the Cheyenne grid crosses into Laramie County.
Gunnar Malm, chairman of the commission, told Cowboy State Daily that because the project crosses state lines, approving it is out of the commission’s hands.
“The commission has no role in approving the transmission lines, just like we don't with pipelines if they're interstate pipelines,” Malm said.
That doesn’t mean the county is out of the picture altogether. Enyo also wants to bring a small piece of Chalk Bluffs into Laramie County, including 15 turbines and possibly a second solar installation.
Justin Arnold, the county’s planning and development program manager, told Cowboy State Daily the Planning Commission will vote on that proposal Nov. 12, with the county commission making the final decision Dec. 1.
In the meantime, while the county has no legal mechanism to decide on the transmission line, Malm said commissioners have an informal tool.
Enyo Energy will still need permits to cross-county roads and rights-of-way, and the county can use that need as leverage until the company reaches agreements with the landowners themselves.
“We do what we can to ensure that they have roughly 80% of the easements in place before we discuss giving them easements from the county,” Malm said. “So we try and hold them to a bar of either compensating or negotiating with private landowners, and doing that in good faith.”
At the public hearing, an Enyo representative did not give a specific percentage but said the company has secured easements from some of the landowners along the route. Enyo is still working on the rest as it tries to “thread the needle through a neighborhood there.”
The representative also said the company has worked to engage the public, including a previous community meeting with adjacent landowners.
Yosten is an adjacent landowner, but she said she never received a letter or any other notice that the company was holding a community meeting.
“Several other people I had heard did not know about it either,” she said. “So I don’t feel like they're communicating very well.”
Enyo Energy did not respond to Cowboy State Daily’s request for comment.
‘High Winds And Ice’
Now that Yosten has personally given her contact information to the company’s representative, she hopes communication will improve. Though she feels the fight is lopsided, she said she’s going to keep pushing to make sure her concerns are addressed.
“I guess I'm just not willing to lay down and die,” Yosten said. “I want to torture them a little bit.”
That torment, she said, is not for fun. Beyond the view from her deck, Yosten is worried about the health risks of living close to a high-power transmission line day after day, and she wants the company to give her real answers.
She also wants to know what Enyo Energy will do to keep ice from falling off the lines in winter, a question she said any local would ask.
“If you're from Wyoming, you know we get high winds and ice,” Yosten said. “So what happens with that? And they couldn't answer me. One of them is from Washington state. They don't have ice up there.”
For families along the route, Yosten said, falling ice would not be an occasional worry but an everyday hazard.
“You’ve got kids walking to school underneath these power lines,” Yosten said. “That's a safety issue in my mind.”
Emma Jane Jackson can be reached at emma@cowboystatedaily.com.
