By William Opalka

ALBANY, N.Y. — A Rochester-area farm family scored unusual concessions on Thursday when state regulators approved a plan for a substation and power lines that removed previously approved facilities from their property (11-T-0534).

The New York Public Service Commission approved a modified Certificate of Environmental Compatibility and Public Need for the Rochester Area Reliability Project south of the city. The original plan approved by the PSC in 2013 would have taken arable land out of production from the Krenzer family farm, according to the family’s rehearing petition.

The plan also would have taken the most valuable land on the property used for farm infrastructure, according to the family. The family grows wheat, corn and soybeans on more than 3,000 acres.

$37M Increase

Avangrid, whose Rochester Gas & Electric is building the project, said the delays and changes will increase the project’s cost by $37 million to $291 million. The company said $23 million is related to changes in site costs, routing and structure types, with $14 million linked to the delay and extended construction timeline.

RG&E began eminent domain proceedings in 2011 to route the project through the farm.

The family says it was unaware of the proceedings for about a year, a charge RG&E denied. The family said it had informal meetings with RG&E representatives in their home in November 2011, but no definitive plans were discussed that indicated their property would be condemned.

The utility said it had a series of meetings with family members to discuss the project and produced a June 2011 letter sent to a family member that indicated financial compensation for the acquisition of the substation site.

After granting rehearing, the PSC appointed an administrative law judge in 2013 and conducted hearings in 2014, but efforts to negotiate a compromise were unsuccessful.

Negotiations restarted earlier this year, which culminated in a joint proposal filed in July. It was endorsed by the family, RG&E, PSC staff, and the state departments of Environmental Conservation and Agriculture and Markets.

Marie Krenzer told RTO Insider that Thursday’s order prompted “a lot of mixed emotions, but we were pleased with the outcome.” The family spent “well into six figures” on attorneys’ fees and other costs through the process, she said, money that they will not recoup.

“We didn’t know what we were taking on when we started this, but we knew this wasn’t right,” she said.

‘An Example of Government Working’

PSC officials lauded the outcome as an example of regulators responding to competing interests in a difficult case. “This is an example of government working,” PSC Chair Audrey Zibelman said at the meeting. “The commission listened to the Krenzers and took their concerns seriously” while also fulfilling its obligation to preserve system reliability.

“We didn’t really understand the nature of the local opposition,” Commissioner Gregg Sayre, a Rochester-area native, said at the meeting. “But once we did, I think we came up with a good result.”

Several local and state officials became involved, including U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer.

The affected property would have totaled about 670 acres. The substation would have taken 12 acres, while the remaining land would have been used for a “zig-zag” pattern of transmission lines across the farm’s productive fields, which would have cut the farm in half.

The order approved Thursday moves the substation from the Krenzer farm about 1 mile east to vacant land across the Genesee River. The routing of two new 115-kV lines eliminates the zig-zag route through the property and instead will go through land with a U.S. Department of Agriculture conservation easement to reach an existing New York Power Authority line.

The project calls for the construction of approximately 23 miles of new 115-kV transmission lines, reconstruction of 2 miles of an existing 115-kV line, a new 1.9-mile 345-kV line, a new 345 kV/115-kV substation and the improvement of three existing substations.

The new substation site will damage or destroy existing wetlands, so 17 acres of the Krenzers’ property will be used for site mitigation.