When Bob Kestler opened his mailbox to find a foreboding letter from Duke Energy that his home in Landrum was among those on a possible route for a giant transmission line project, he went into attack mode.

The retired Marine pilot and Vietnam veteran mapped out the line’s possible route and drove stakes into his horse pasture to show how the lines would transect his land.

He trudged through his woods, where dozens of old-growth beech, poplar and oak trees that line an 11-acre pond would be destroyed. He imagined the sight of 140-foot tall transmission towers that would eclipse the unobstructed views of pastures and the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Kestler spoke to neighbors and they have quickly organized to fight Duke to the end on a plan they say will destroy their land, uproot their lives and threaten their livlihoods in the equestrian-based tourism economy in northern Spartanburg County and Polk County, North Carolina.

The stress has driven Kestler’s wife, Kitty, to tears at night when she’s grinding her teeth from worry that the home they’d built as their forever retirement home might not be theirs happily ever after.

When Bob retired from Northwest Airlines as an pilot 14 years ago, they looked for a place to settle. They’d seen the world – Bob flew to Amsterdam, Paris and Rome – but Kitty convinced Bob to build a horse farm in the South Carolina mountains.

They built barns for their horses Bree, Scottie and quarter-horse Tina Turner, whose black mane with shocks of white highlights reminded her of the singer. The proposed lines would slice through their corral. Lines may run over the top of their barn.

They’ve already decided they couldn’t live with that. They’d have to move, but their farm would be worthless to anyone looking for a place to raise horses, Bob said.

“I know we won’t stay here,” he said. “If they take my farm, I’m not staying here.”

Duke Energy has announced that it will construct a new substation in Campobello and a 230-kilovolt transmission line that will deliver power to a planned natural gas-fired plant near Asheville, N.C. The site is the existing home of a coal-fired plant, scheduled for demolition in about 2020. The 40- to 45-mile line will import power from a substation located near the Oconee nuclear plant.

The proposal drew immediate and adamant opposition from residents, conservationists and business owners, who have questioned both the need for the project and its impact on the rural communities.

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Route questioned

Glenn English, who just retired as CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperatives Association after 19 years at its helm, said the question Duke needs to answer first is whether it can use its existing right of way for a 100-kilovolt transmission line that already runs from Campobello to Asheville for the new lines.

English lives at the Cliffs at Glassy and said he’s spoken to electrical engineers who universally said Duke should be able to build its new lines onto its existing right of way.

It may require some expansion of right of way and construction of new lattice towers to hold the lines, “but basically they could run this line with the existing power lines that they have,” English said.

English said he was puzzled why Duke would seek all of this new right of way and questioned how hard Duke was pursuing what he views as the simplest and cheapest option.

South Carolina Electic and Gas already has shown that kind of duplication project is doable because it ran new lines along with older ones to its Jenkinsville nuclear plant within the last 18 months, English said.

“There should be no new route selected,” English said. “They should use the existing routes that they have…I think that would certainly satisfy far more people and raise less issues.”

That’s an option Duke is considering, said Tom Williams, director of external relations for the company.

“We have looked at where we can bundle existing wires together on existing lines and we are considering that seriously,” Williams said. “We would much rather add capacity to an existing 230-line than build a whole new right-of-way. We do that whenever we can. It’s significantly less expensive and less intrusive.”

Differing kilovolt lines do require different amounts of right of way, and some of the routes Duke is considering do include portions of existing paths, Williams said.

It would also requre new towers.

“You can’t run a 230-kilovolt line on a 100-kilovolt tower. The towers are specifically designed to serve the weight of the wire, the ice load on the wire, the topography based on the turns on the wire,” he said.

Duke’s proposal

Duke, using subsidiary TBP Properties that was established in 2006 in South Carolina, already has purchased 199 acres near Campobello in March for $4.96 million from Frank Nutt, according to the property title. Nutt is a developer and former Spartanburg County Councilman.

Then, one month ago, Duke mailed letters to 3,700 homeowners in the Carolinas whose properties fall along the paths of the potential transmission line route.

Duke this week finished a series of three meetings – two in Western North Carolina and one in South Carolina – where the company revealed a web of possible transmission line routes that would send energy from the Duke Energy Carolinas system northward into Duke Energy Progress.

The meetings drew hundreds of Carolina property owners, many irritated; others irate, who could be affected by the overhead transmission lines, depending on which route the company chooses.

Duke officials say the power is needed to supplement the ever-rising power needs of homes, businesses and industry in the mountains of Western North Carolina.

“There comes a time when we need to add additional infrastructure and it’s overdue,” Williams said. “A key point is when we build these transmission lines, they are built to serve long-term need. Power demand has doubled since the 1970s in the Asheville area, in the western region for Duke Energy Progress, and we expect it to go up another 15 percent for the next decade.”

The meetings were held in an open-house style, where landowners could visit several stations with electronic or paper maps, many of them crowded, and ask Duke representatives about their property or the project.

The possible routes are divided into more than three dozen segments. Some portions follow existing power line routes; most would require the acquisition of new rights of way near forested areas or homes.

Depending on the selected route, the lines may draw near the Scenic Cherokee Foothills Byway, an area conservationists have worked to protect for decades, or cross though Polk County, emerging as a destination for all things equestrian. Other segments of the route cut across farmland, upscale housing developments, long-standing mountain communities or rivers fly fishermen ply for trout.

Duke will take comments from stakeholders through mid-August and plans to select a route before the end of the year that has the least impact and still makes the project feasible, said Ryan Mozier, a Duke spokesman.

The project is destined to start a series of not-in-my-backyard fights, but before that, it’s already drawn the ire of land conservationists who say they’ve protected these mountain vistas only to have Duke potentially destroy the unbroken landscape.

“All of the proposed routes would have devastating impacts on our extraordinary Blue Ridge Mountains,” said Brad Wyche, executive director of Upstate Forever, which has protected more than 18,000 acres in the Blue Ridge Escarpment.

But it’s too early to even be talking about which route Duke should take because Duke hasn’t given enough detail to know why the project is even needed, Wyche said.

“They need to explain why there aren’t alternatives to this huge plant and these massive transmission lines, such as renewables and energy efficiency,” Wyche said. “And the South Carolina Public Service Commission needs to approve the project. And only if it is approved will it be necessary to consider the routes. Duke has put the cart way in front of the horse.”

Duke’s plans already have sparked legal action. Spartanburg attorney Patrick Knie filed a legal petition in Spartanburg County Circuit Court this week in an attempt to force Duke to release more information about the plans.

Judge Mark Hayes granted a temporary restraining order, good for 10 days, blocking Duke from doing anything that would prevent a representative of Knie’s wife, a landowner, from examining, testing or analyzing the acreage where the substation is planned.

Knie said he expects landowners to file eminent domain lawsuits against Duke once the Charlotte-based power company discloses which of various possible routes it would use for the transmission lines.

Equine impact

The announcement threw the quiet communities of Landrum and Campobello in South Carolina and Tryon and Fletcher in North Carolina into a frenzy.

The local economies are built around the equine business. Tack shops. Horse-trailer repair businesses. Veterinarians. Fence-builders. Hay farms.

“These power lines that are proposed hit every major organized trail system,” said Sally Rock of Landrum, who would be able to see the lines rising above the trees from her front porch.

And the equine economy has been booming of late, ever since investors Mark Bellissimo and Roger Smith opened the $100 million-plus Tryon International Equestrian Center in 2014.

Linda Tinkler, a Keller-Williams real estate agent, said she’d sold more than $4 million in property in the first six months of the year – all purchased in cash by out-of-state buyers moving to the Carolinas.

Once Duke’s plans went public, Tinkler said two buyers have backed out.

What’s hard to stomach for Kestler’s neighbor, Scott Homstead, is that the project whose lines could bisect his 12-acre farm isn’t designed to benefit the Upstate, but Asheville. Homstead doesn’t even use Duke. He gets his power from a co-op.

Neighborhood covenants restrict utilities to be buried in his Golden Hills neighborhood, which would become meaningless if Duke is allowed to choose that route, Homstead said.

“Everybody is grasping, trying to cling on and trying to make sense of everything,” Homstead said. “It’s very emotional. I haven’t slept more than three hours until last night. I’ve been sick about it.”

Once Duke does choose a route, it would file paperwork needed for permits, which would trigger formalized public forums.

Duke would need approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission first for the transmission lines, Mosier said. Then it would need permission from both North and South Carolina’s utility commissions.

Kestler and Rock drove through the countryside this week pointing out potential routes and the various impacts. Lines could run through corn fields, past farms, alongside the Jackson Grove United Methodist Church built in 1830 and its cemetery.

At the end of the drive, as Kestler drove up the long gravel driveway toward his house, a herd of eight deer lifted their heads from the apples they’d been munching and darted into the woods – in the exact direction the proposed route shows would be clear-cut to make way for the transmission lines.

He just shook his head.

“No Duke representative has ever come out here and done what we’re doing, looked at the impact and where they propose to put this line in comparison to most of these homes,” Kestler said. “I don’t know that they’d change their mind. Probably not. But at least I want to look eyeball to eyeball at somebody who makes these decisions.”

Kestler offered an open invitation for a Duke representative to come see him — and his horses — at his home.

Staff writer Rudolph Bell contributed.