Mountain View County council has deferred a decision on a Fortis request to twin power lines along Rge. Rd. 20 along the southern boundary of the Town of Olds.
The move came by way of motion during the recent regularly scheduled council meeting.
In March, Fortis officials made a presentation to council, saying the twinning proposal was part of a plan to increase power available to an industrial park located just inside the Town of Olds.
To accommodate the upgrade, Fortis is proposing running power lines on both sides of the roadway.
Twinning the overhead lines would be much less expensive than burying the lines, said Rob McTavish, project manger with Fortis Alberta Inc.
County policy #4019 states that “twinning of distribution power lines is not supported by Mountain View County” and that “requests for approval to twin power lines will be referred to council for direction.”
During the presentation, councillors requested Fortis come back with cost estimates for twinning the line and for burying the line. Fortis provided those numbers to council prior to last week’s council meeting: $675,000 for overhead lines and $2.5 million for underground lines.
Following the March presentation, Reeve Bruce Beattie said the county has concerns that twinning the lines would create a traffic hazard.
“Our main concern is obviously safety in terms of having power poles on both sides of the road,” said Beattie. “Plus these are heavier poles, bigger poles, and they are closer together, about 10 metres closer together than normal power lines.”
At the April 10 council meeting, councillors deferred a decision on the twinning line project, instead asking Fortis to come back with other possible options such as taking the power lines into the industrial park. A date was not set for Fortis to return with the followup information.
