What Say You Tooele County-To Appeal, or Not To Appeal?..
What Say You Tooele County-To Appeal Or Not To Appeal? ..............That is the question.
If you've read me before, you know how I feel about property rights, and infringements on them.
Here in Tooele County, we've been in a battle with the major power utility in the State over a proposed set of 345kv power lines running smack through the middle of the most expensive residential property in Tooele County.
To put that into perspective. our average sales price of a home in Tooele County is under 170k, and these Tooele County homes average a half a million. dollars.
Rocky Mountain Power has argued that they need this power (which no one is arguing!) and that it must go through here (which we do argue with!).
By the way, none of this power will be serving Tooele County!
If you look at a map of the County, you'll see that they actually had to work to hit residential property, as our population is centered in Tooele, Grantsville Utah and Stansbury Park, leaving 99% of the rest of the County empty. Yet, this is the route they need?
In any event, the Tooele County Commission denied RMP the Conditional use permit they need for construction , with nearly 30 different problems with the route, from going through a superfund site, to crossing our major water supply. RMP appealed to the utility facilities review commission, and they found in favor of RMP.
Now, it appears that our only chance is to appeal to an appellate court. The question is, can we afford to do so? Contrary to popular belief, all government doesn't subscribe to the spend spend spend theory. Our small cities and Tooele County can't match the deep pockets of a major utility.
So, now back to the question: What Say You Tooele County - to Appeal, or Not To Appeal?...