Written by Don McCracken on Thursday, 21 February 2013
The Big Rock Transmission System Development between Okotoks, Black Diamond, Turner Valley, and High River is in need of an upgrade to service the rapidly growing area.
AltaLink held an open house in Okotoks Wednesday night to show off the proposed sites of substations as well as planned transmission lines.
The east-west route is largely along either Highway 7 or 402nd Avenue.
Scott Schreiner with AltaLink was asked if the Highway 7 route isn’t intuitively the better one. “It’s a long process, what we need to do in this process is look for all options. Looking at it from a mapping perspective and from a preliminary perspective a lot of the options that you see as preliminary routes rack out pretty evenly. Now is the time for us to get input and get some feedback.”
He says they determine the best route through environmental, agricultural and residential research and by holding consultations with all landowners along the route or adjacent to any of the proposed routes.
This spring and summer they hope to notify and consult with stakeholders about refined routes. They hope to file an application with the Alberta Utilities Commission by the fall of this year and if approved works would go from the fall of 2014 to winter of 2015/2016.
An information centre will be open in High River Thursday February 21 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Ramada Inn, there’s another open house in Okotoks on Tuesday February 26 from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Foothills Centennial Centre and another info centre at the Griffith Memorial hall in Black Diamond from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. February 27.