News

LIGHTNING TOP 10: No. 1

By Bill Moss, Published: December 23, 2015

No. 1: Beat Duke

When Duke Energy held its first public information meeting on a 45-mile high-voltage line from Campobello, S.C., to Asheville on a mid-summer day in July, a line of residents waiting to get in stretched way out the door. “You’re going to need a bigger room,” someone might have said. Yet, no matter how big the room, the crowds always exceeded the capacity. Over the ensuing weeks, from early July until November, property owners, farmers, real estate agents, business leaders, city and county officials, tourism officials and state legislators told the utility they did not want the power line crossing the Blue Ridge Mountains over farms, schools, neighborhoods and tourist attractions. Crowds at hearings were often emotional and angry but behind the scenes opponents compiled detailed reports on burying power lines and produced whitepapers challenging Duke’s energy consumption projections. The Edneyville Grange, HOAs, environmental watchdogs, the county Tourism Development Authority, AgHC and every municipality in the county urged Duke Energy to reconsider. If it was David v. Goliath, in the end it just turned out that there were too many Davids. By mid-September, it was clear that the utility giant had been surprised, even rattled, by the volume and persistence of the opposition. On Oct. 8, when Duke announced it was delaying a decision on the route and considering other alternatives, the writing was on the wall. On Nov. 4, citing more than 9,000 comments it received from the public, Duke announced that the transmission line was dead. “The process worked,” Lloyd Yates, president of Duke Energy’s Carolinas Division, said in a news conference.