January 29, 2021 • EPE Related News
El Paso Electric building power lines on East Mesa: What we know
LAS CRUCES – As the East Mesa beyond Las Cruces, sloping up toward the Organ Mountains, continues to attract residential and business development, demands for reliable electric power and other services are growing.
That means infrastructure projects are coming to areas that once were remote and depending on where the work is taking place, neighbors might not get much warning before the crews begin.
Liz Coll and her husband bought their home on El Centro Boulevard in 1985, at a time when the land around them was mostly vacant.
"I'm spoiled. I live out here and I'm used to having a nice view in all directions, " she said. "But I'm also realistic about it. I know I don't have control over more than my four acres."
Over the years, more settlement and commercial development have arrived in the area, and when she heard trucks the morning of Jan. 15 she assumed it was related to a nearby business. Later, on a walk with her dog, she saw bulldozers on a patch of vacant land.
The crew work for Summit Line Construction, and have been preparing the land for new 100-foot-tall power lines connecting two substations in the area. Coll, who says she scans legal ads in the newspaper regularly, assumed public notices or hearings would be required, but because the power lines are being erected on city rights-of-way, work simply began.
A worker at the site explained that the preliminary work was for El Paso Electric's Jornada-Moongate Transmission Project, and Coll along with another neighbor learned more by calling the contractor as well as the utility company, which prepared a letter for neighboring residents a week later.
Coll said she would have lobbied for buried power lines if she had time and a venue to do so. Taking it as a wakeup call, Coll said she was learning more about the Public Regulation Commission, the New Mexico agency that regulates utilities.
"Now I'm fired up," she said. "I realize we're too late on this project, so my next goal is to find out how regulations on this sort of thing come about, who decides what the regulations are, and if there's any hope of affecting it that way."
What is the project?
The Jornada-Moongate project involves a new El Paso Electric substation near the intersection of Moongate Road and El Centro Boulevard in Doña Ana County.
Summit Line Construction, a contractor headquartered in Utah, is preparing the ground to install 8.8 miles of above-ground, 115-kilovolt transmission lines connecting the new substation to the Jornada substation on Thurmond Road.
The power poles will be erected on a mix of private and public land. According to EPE, the public parcels consist of state trust lands and rights-of-way owned by the City of Las Cruces.
Per a project map provided by the power company, the route follows El Centro west before crossing southwest to Mesa Grande Boulevard south to Peachtree Hills Road, westward to McGuffey Street, and south to Thurmond before moving west to the substation near Calle Paraiso.
The utility states on its website that "due to high growth in the area, the project is necessary to meet increased demand."
The contractor features on the project on its website but referred all questions back to the utility company.
How were neighbors notified?
El Paso Electric spokesman George De La Torre said the project, which has been in the works since 2018, did not require public hearings in advance.
"We've met all the land owners where we're crossing the right of ways. That is actually the only noticing requirement required for us building transmission projects," he said, "unless we're crossing, like, a national monument or land that belongs to the Bureau of Land Management, where there are additional noticing requirements."
Since the right-of-way the project crosses belongs to the city, he said the written notification to neighboring property owners was a courtesy but not a requirement.
El Paso Electric provided the Las Cruces Sun-News with a form letter scheduled to be sent on Jan. 22 by Tierra Right of Way to property owners adjacent to the project area notifying them that construction crews "have begun clearing and grubbing of the easement areas from Peachtree Hills Road to the new substation at El Centro and Moongate," and predicting installation of the poles will begin in mid-February.
De La Torre said EPE is working on updates to its web page describing construction projects, www.EPelectric.com/company/projects, to include detailed descriptions as well as to list contractors performing the work.
He said residents are also welcome to call the company with questions about projects, though he admitted there may be hold times due to high call volume. The toll-free number is 800-592-1634, and the New Mexico line is 575-526-5555.
Fears about electromagnetic fields
El Centro Boulevard residents voiced concern about electric and magnetic fields generated by power lines, saying they would prefer for health and aesthetic reasons to see the lines buried — a costlier project.
El Paso Electric Company builds a substations near Moongate and Centro Roads in Las Cruces on Friday, Jan. 22, 2021.
However, despite longstanding rumors, research data suggests little consistent evidence of cancer or leukemia risks to people living near power lines.
Previous research in the 1990s suggested possible links between electromagnetic fields (EMF) and increased childhood leukemia and occupational risks for leukemia in adults, but the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences states on its website, "The few studies that have been conducted on adults show no evidence of a link between EMF exposure and adult cancers, such as leukemia, brain cancer, and breast cancer."
According to literature from the National Institutes of Health, both electric and mean magnetic fields rapidly decrease with distance, greatly reducing exposure beyond 50 feet or a typical right-of-way.
In 2005, a task group designated by the World Health Organization also concluded from medical research that no substantive health issues were linked to exposure to the kind of electromagnetic forces the general public is exposed to from power lines.
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