Been here before? Check out the Updates page.


What you can do TODAY to help:

  • Please contact me to be added to the action alerts email list and/or to request a yard sign. If you can help with making signs, you can download the image here and print your own; or call the Sir Speedy location in West Lawn at 610-670-2090 and pay for a batch of ten more “burytheline.org” double-sided yard signs (around $100 total) and let me know when they’re ready for pick-up.
  • Write to FirstEnergy/Met-Ed at transmissionprojects@firstenergycorp.com with “Van Reed Transmission Project” in the subject line. Let them know that you oppose the proposed routes, your reasons for doing so (for example, defacing the countryside, harming property values, imact on the environment, possible increased risk of childhood leukemia), and that you support a more direct, much-lower-impact direct route along the river. If you are directly in the line’s path, tell them that you WILL NOT SELL RIGHTS TO YOUR LAND AT ANY PRICE and they’ll have to try to take your land through eminent domain (several people have already taken this stance, and we need as many people as possible to do so).
  • Inform your neighbors! Only a select group of local residents was notified of the power company’s plans; together we can get the word out to the whole community.

A high-voltage line will cut through our community, at our expense but not for our benefit.

The Met-Ed power company is pushing a project to build an above-ground high-power line along one of two proposed routes near Bernville Road west of Route 222 in Berks County, Pennsylvania. It will not serve local residents — instead, it will loop around through a long indirect path across the countryside to connect an existing line to the proposed “Berks Park 183” business park near 222, along with other power customers in that area. The project will decrease residential property values and severely impact the natural beauty of the countryside in a wide swath along its path. And instead of seeking community approval for the project through proper design and routing, Met-Ed is trying to push through the cheapest possible plan (and perhaps looking for a route with maximum cell-tower coverage), attempting to pit one part of the community against another by proposing routes across two different populated areas of the countryside as if these are our only choices. (There was an earlier proposed route as well, which shifted around as individual residents mounted challenges; we must fight this project as a community!)

There are alternatives.

I am a resident of this area and I have set up this website to help the local community organize against this project as it is currently planned. (While I initially viewed burying the lines out-of-sight as a viable alternative, I have come to realize that this is not an ideal solution for many in the community, nor is the vastly-increased cost palatable to the power company; the alternate meaning of “bury the line” has always been “killing the plan”, and that’s turned out to be the best goal.) At a Met-Ed event about the project at the Berks Agricultural Center on July 17, scores of local residents turned out to express dismay that Met-Ed had seemingly abandoned consideration of more direct routes with far less community impact. When questioned directly, none of the reps I spoke with at the meeting indicated that residential property value decreases had been factored into the cost of the project in any way — they are looking out for themselves, not us. Rather than forcing local residents to take a financial hit and defacing the landscape, we must unite in our opposition to Met-Ed’s proposed routes... if we make enough noise as a community, and if enough of us refuse to sell sections of our land to them regardless of the amount we are offered (thus putting Met-Ed in the position of having to expend the time and money involved with the eminent-domain process), then they will turn their attention to other routes outside our area that are less costly for them to pursue.

We need to work together.

We as a community must band together and do what it takes to make sure that our residential area is not seen as “the path of least resistance”! Please contact me if you are willing to put a sign in your yard and/or are open to receiving emails from me at critical points when we can unite our voices and have a real impact.

Please check out the Updates page to see what’s going on!