WFMZ 69 News has done a story on our issue... sort of. Many thanks to all of you who showed up on very short notice to lend your comments and support! Alas, despite our carefully articulating our concerns, whoever edited the video boiled it all down to “local residents concerned about property values, versus progress and business growth”. Needless to say, this is a gross over-simplification. (Not to mention that rather than getting FirstEnergy/Met-Ed’s response to our specific concerns and proposals, they were interviewed before us.) Here is a link where you can see what was broadcast and read a transcript:

https://www.wfmz.com/news/berks/bern-residents-want-to-bury-met-ed-power-line-proposal/1119338616

Here is a message I sent to the reporter and editor after watching the video:

subject: Clarifications needed for your story about Met-Ed's power-line proposal.

Thanks so much for bringing more public attention to our issue! We'd appreciate it if the text version of this story that was just posted, could be appended to mention several key points that were omitted from the final edited video:

• It would be highly appreciated if you would put our website address, www.burytheline.org, in the text version of the article so that people interested in the issue can find out much more detailed information than could be presented on-air.

• We are fighting the proposed transmission-line routes not only because of aesthetic and financial concerns (which is all I was shown mentioning), but also because of the environmental impact to our wildlife-rich area and, most troubling, the potential for an increased risk of childhood leukemia (as discussed on the National Cancer Institute's web page about electromagnetic fields and cancer) to those living near the proposed routes. Leaving these concerns out of the final video makes our motives look purely self-interested, particularly when paired with the statement the power company provided before we were interviewed. With its July proposal, FirstEnergy has tried to pit one section of the community against the other with the "A" and "B" routes; but we made a conscious decision to stick together and fight for what's right and good for the whole area, not just what's convenient for one group or another.

• We have proposed detailed alternate routes to allow the power company and the county to achieve their development goals while not causing the above-mentioned problems for the neighborhood. These were not mentioned in the story or shown in the flashing graphics prepared from Met-Ed's proposal map; as a result, it looks like an "us-versus-them" situation in which either the line gets built and progress prevails or the line doesn't get built and new businesses can't be set up... rather than the actual situation where we are proposing alternate routes as solutions to meet everyone's needs (and those who have made these proposals to FirstEnergy have then not received follow-up).

Thank you again for your time and attention to our concerns, and we hope that these essential corrections will portray our cause in a more accurate light.

-Eric F. Keebler.

As if there weren’t enough reasons to oppose the Van Reed Transmission Project: we can add a possible correlation between high-power lines and childhood leukemia to the list. The bottom line is that the National Cancer Institute has provided information about three metastudies (studies combining the results of smaller studies together in order to better determine the statistical significance of their results) and it is possible that exposure to EMFs from transmission lines could be correlated with a 40-to-100% increased risk for those living near enough the lines to be exposed to at least 3-4 uT (micro-Tesla). I will shortly be putting together a risk map of the local area based on calculations derived from the line’s power capacity, voltage, and the likely tower heights (80 to 100-foot metal towers) to show the areas of greatest potential concern for parents.

At the July 17th meeting at the Agricultural Center, a number of people asked the Met-Ed representatives about running the new line north via a seemingly-obvious and much shorter path, as opposed to the meandering “A” and “B” routes proposed by Met-Ed. (Those routes were proposed by Met-Ed after an earlier route was shifted around due to opposition from various individual land owners... beware, just because the line isn’t projected to be directly on your property now, doesn’t mean the plan won’t change!) The alternate community-proposed plan would apparently impact just two vacant residential properties and run along the edge of just one occupied property, as opposed to severely impacting a great number of people in the valley and hills along and to the north of Route 183; and is far shorter than the “A” and “B” routes as well. Here is a map of this short and sensible alternate route, as prepared by my neighbors.

(Side note: there are some who suspect that Met-Ed’s proposed routes are as indirect as they are because Met-Ed wants to make money by putting cell-phone antennas atop the transmission-line towers; and if you live in this area, you can see how sections of these routes run parallel to the sections of route 183 with poor reception... the initial proposed route did so even more closely. Met-Ed would be generating an ongoing revenue stream and we’d pay for it with lower property values!)

Going forward, when we raise objections to Met-Ed’s current proposals, it is important to rally behind an alternative route. Development can obviously be a contentious issue in and of itself, but objecting to running any new lines, period, would be a much, much harder battle to fight as the areas that the line is intended to serve are already well into the development process. (This fact should encourage us all to keep a close eye on what’s going on in local and regional government -- it’s far easier to uproot a sapling than a mature tree.)

Seven members of the community were able to attend -- many thanks for that, the meeting was at an inconvenient time and I’ll try to give more advance notice in the future. We asked lots of questions and gained some interesting information:

• Bern Township has so far only approved Phase 1 of the Berks Park 183 project. As the township must also approve all subsequent phases, this provides us with possible leverage should that prove strategically useful. (Mindful of the “legal opinion” letter on the Bern Township website regarding what they supposedly do and do not have the power to disapprove, I have obtained a copy of the Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code to further investigate for myself the extent to which the township could potentially put the brakes on the project.)
• BCIDA board members said they planned Berks Park 183 around an initial 3-megawatt transmission line buildout that it paid for (and said the upgrades to the Muhlenberg Substation are already complete), and that the Van Reed Transmission Project is not something they asked for and is rather intended to serve the overall needs of that area. But they readily acknowledged the increased development opportunities presented to them by having more power available (heavier industry, refrigeration facilities, etc.).
• The BCIDA board says that the requirement in the Phase 1 plans for underground cables only refers to cables on-site.
• I requested a copy of the EPRI report from which the BCIDA board drew its conclusions, and was told that they will look into making this available to the community. (I was given a board member’s business card and told to follow up with him.)
• I pointed out that the BCIDA is a major Met-Ed customer and that the BCIDA’s mission is supposed to include environmental preservation and service to the community, and asked that they push Met-Ed to support the alternate route proposed and supported by several of my neighbors who were in attendance and who arranged to send that route information to the BCIDA.

While our main opponents are clearly Met-Ed/FirstEnergy and its planning subcontractor, there can be no doubt that the Berks Park 183 project and the decisions it has made on the nature of its desired tenants contribute substantially to the “need” for the Van Reed Transmission Project. How we handle that fact going forward is something to think about carefully.

This line is from the end of this Reading Eagle story from August 5 -- I don’t know how I didn’t notice it until now! It could mean that Met-Ed has abandoned the routes we are objecting to and is now planning to follow the common-sense short route across the river to the Muhlenberg substation. But I for one haven’t received any follow-up notification from Met-Ed that their plans have changed, nor have I heard from anyone else that they have; and furthermore, Met-Ed’s webpage about this project doesn’t appear to have had any updates since the company made its short-notice presentation to the community on July 17th. This will be question number one at the BCIDA meeting tomorrow -- we deserve to be kept better-informed, as currently the very threat of these lines running on or near our properties is a large financial liability that we would be obligated to disclose in the event of a real estate transaction.