Mason County Powerline


When the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA), a legislatively-created state agency, began making plans to place a Competitive Renewable Energy Zone (CREZ) transmission line through Mason County, Texas, the community organized, formed a 391 Sub Regional Planning Commission and invoked coordination with the LCRA and Texas Public Utilities Commission (PUC).  Eighteen months later, they were no longer the preferred route for the line — they were removed from consideration.

Here is their story …

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Mason County is a premier destination spot in the Texas Hill Country.  It still retains the “Norman Rockwell” quality of small town America where not one stop light, Walmart or fast food chain exists.  Because of this, Mason is frequented by tourists in the spring who drive across the state to view wildflowers and take tours.  In the fall, hunters descend on the county to hunt prized deer, turkey and other native and exotic wildlife species.

Mason County is 99% privately owned with many of the current landowners direct descendents of original settlers.  Mason County has retained its charm and pristine landscape through the wise stewardship of its landowners and its fierce resistance to industrialize the land.  Here cattle, wildlife and wildflowers flourish under the watchful hand of private landowners.

The Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) had plans to change all this.  They had been directed by the Texas Legislature to construct an 18 story-high electric transmission line (known as a CREZ line) by 2013 that would connect the wind farms in West Texas to the population centers of Austin and San Antonio.  The shortest path is through the Texas Hill Country.  On October of 2009, Mason County was added as an afterthought to their route selection process.

The transmission lines would have condemned a right-of-way up to 260 feet wide, clear-cutting everything in its path.  The line would have passed through the landscape offering no opportunity to those communities and landowners impacted to tie into the lines and use the electricity.  The landowners, cities and towns would harbor all the impact, and yet receive none of the benefit.

The City of Mason and the County Commission formed a 391 Commission, which could invoke coordination with the state agency, and immediately sent notice to LCRA and the Public Utilities Commission (PUC).

The residents of Mason also wasted no time and created the Texas Hill Country Heritage Association (THCHA) to organize the public opposition to the CREZ line and public support of the 391 Commission.  The Association supported the coordination effort and kept the public informed and involved in the process.

After holding coordination meetings with four federal and state agencies involved in the environmental and route selection process for Mason, the following was achieved:

  1. Require that if the line was to be routed through Mason County, a rigorous Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) would need to be completed as opposed to the planned Environmental Assessment (EA);
    (During their first meeting with LCRA, the agency representative informed the Commission that a NEPA study would not be necessary since there was no “major federal action” involved in the project.  The Commission disagreed and pointed out a number of “significant” impacts as defined by the CEQ regulations, which require that a full EIS be completed.  In this first meeting, Mason SRPC noticed LCRA and PUC that if they did not conduct the full EIS they would be in violation of federal law.)
  2. U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service commit to the commission that they will be conducting a rigorous EIS.
  3. Mason SRPC sent a scoping work plan to USFWS in order to properly analyze the economic and environmental issues for Mason County in the EIS process.

The issue moved into the administrative process where the PUC Commission made the final route selection.  Parties impacted by all the routes joined in this process.  However, a day prior to the final hearing and determination of the approved route, the Commission removed the Mason corridor from consideration.  Their reasoning was that there were too many environmental concerns.

Key to this victory is that the Mason community is the only area in the path of the potential routes that invoked coordination and through this process noticed the LCRA and PUC of their legal obligations to complete a rigorous EIS under the National Environmental Policy Act.

American Stewards was honored to work with this great group of American’s.

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