Greg and Cindy Mann's Carey-area farm is a 1,100-acre bit of greenery sandwiched between dry, sagebrush-covered hills that rise up from both sides of the bubbling Little Wood River.
Here, four miles north of town, the Manns raise alfalfa and barley in a rural area far off the beaten path. They've been farming the property since 1997, when they sold off croplands they owned in the Bellevue Triangle.
Life has been good for the Manns since they pulled up stakes and transferred their operation 15 miles northeast to the Little Wood drainage. Prior to the move, they searched across Idaho and the Pacific Northwest for a place to put down roots, Cindy Mann said. It only took one visit to the Carey farm to convince her they'd found their new home.
"I walked on to the land and went, 'Oh my God, this is it,'" Mann recalls.
The Manns now feel their idyllic existence is under siege. That happened when they learned of a major power transmission line proposed for southern Blaine County by NorthWestern Energy, a Sioux Falls, S.D.-based electricity and natural gas utility.
Last fall, residents around Carey and Picabo got their first views of the 390- to 430-mile transmission line backers hope to build as soon as 2013. Called the Mountain States Transmission Intertie, the 500-kilovolt transmission line would stretch from Townsend, Mont., to a midpoint substation just south of Shoshone on the east side of U.S. Highway 93.
The big question is how the powerlines would get to the substation.
One alternative proposed by NorthWestern would hug the northwest boundary of Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve west of Arco before passing by the Manns' property. In the Picabo area, the route cuts across private ranchlands just east of Silver Creek. From there, the transmission line would head southwest across the high desert, eventually connecting with U.S. Highway 26 about halfway to Shoshone.
The Manns had hoped to keep their property open, possibly through a conservation easement. The powerline project would end that possibility, Mann said.
"I don't have a desire to develop," she said.
NorthWestern Energy's preferred route—which it announced to the support of Carey and Picabo residents in July—would run alongside existing powerlines that pass through the Idaho National Laboratory on their way to a substation west of Pocatello. From there, the transmission line would head west and end at the Shoshone-area substation.
The Manns and many other local residents—Mike Stevens, president of Carey-based sheep producer Lava Lake Land & Livestock, included—are pinning their hopes on the southern route. Spaced every 1,400 feet, the project's 110- to 130-foot-tall lattice steel towers would dominate the skyline if constructed in the sparsely populated Carey area, Stevens said.
"We're talking about the biggest structure in Blaine County, every 1,400 feet," he said.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management will wrap up its scoping period Oct. 10, and begin an environmental impact study. The comments its gets during the scoping period will establish the range of issues the agency will investigate. No matter what route the company prefers, BLM officials could still identify the Carey route as the preferred alternative.
"We can't tell the BLM how to think," NorthWestern Energy's chief transmission officer, Michael Cashell, said in July.
During a series of meetings hosted by NorthWestern Energy in Carey last fall and earlier this year, local residents lined up to criticize the proposed transmission line.
In the case of Lava Lake—which owns the 24,000-acre Lava Lake Ranch and has grazing privileges on 730,000 acres of public land in the area between the Pioneer Mountains and Craters of the Moon—the alternative route would literally cut to the heart of its business. The environmentally conscious sheep producer employs 17 people in its various ranching and conservation activities. Lava Lake, which has instituted a number of habitat improvement projects on private and federal lands in the area, markets its premium lamb to buyers nationwide.
Stevens said recent maps of the northern Carey route show it cutting across a 7,000-acre portion of the ranch that's protected by a conservation easement held by The Nature Conservancy. Also threatened by the powerline would be Lava Lake's 60,000 acres of U.S. Department of Agriculture-certified organic rangeland, he said. To keep that certification, herbicides cannot be used to control noxious weeds. The powerline construction—and the roads that come with it—could introduce weeds into the grazing area, threatening the ranch's profitable organic business.
"There is no way we're going to be able to stay ahead of that weed issue," Stevens said.
Carey-area farmer Cindy Mann lifts a bale of alfalfa hay while completing the day’s work on Tuesday.
Photo by Willy Cook
