If you live anywhere near southwest Columbia, you may have heard the words “transmission line” muttered with a sigh at a city meeting lately. It’s not a new fight — Columbia’s been circling this one since 2007 — but it’s back on the table this month, and it’s worth understanding if you’re anywhere near the Boone Electric service area.
The proposal is a new electric transmission line cutting east-west through southwest Columbia, generally following the corridor from Vawter School Road east along Nifong Boulevard toward the Grindstone substation, according to ABC 17 News. The city’s Utilities Department put the price tag at roughly $35 million and an 8-to-10-year build-out, per ABC 17.
This isn’t the department’s first swing at it. Columbia voters actually approved a bond issue for the project back in 2015, and crews had started putting poles in the ground before enough resident pushback made the City Council pause everything, Jason West, the Utilities Department’s communications and outreach supervisor, told KOMU 8 at an open house last week. “About ten years ago, the project had actually gone through approval,” West said. “We had actually begun putting poles in the ground, but then there were enough concerns raised at the time that City Council wanted to pause the project to be able to better answer those concerns.” Now the department wants to bring it back to Council in November to finalize the design and start locking down easements, per KOMU.
The concerns haven’t gone away. At Columbia’s monthly “Let’s Talk Local” meeting, roughly 25 residents pressed City Councilwomen Betsy Peters (Ward 6) and Christina Hartmann (Ward 5) on the plan, ABC 17 reported. One resident pointed back to an earlier city task force study — the Integrated Electric Resource and Master Plan effort — that they said found the line wasn’t actually necessary. Others raised safety questions and asked what the contingency plan looks like if something goes wrong.
A specific sticking point: a chunk of the affected property sits with Boone Electric customers, not Columbia Water & Light customers — and those residents say they’re being asked to host transmission infrastructure for a utility they don’t even pay, with little outreach so far, according to ABC 17. “Columbia does not need the installation of a new transmission line,” one resident said at the meeting.
City staff told residents they’re committing to better outreach to Boone Electric customers specifically, and a second interested-parties meeting is set for early October, per ABC 17. Peters, for her part, acknowledged the scope of what’s ahead: “There is certainly a lot of citizen questions and things we need to consider as we move forward.”
Nothing is finalized. No route is locked in, no easements are signed, and the Council hasn’t voted on anything yet — this is still the public-input phase. But with a November Council date on the calendar and a second meeting coming in October, this is the moment for anyone along that corridor, or anyone on Boone Electric service in that stretch of southwest Columbia, to get informed and weigh in before decisions firm up.
Leave a Reply