I am a wildlife biologist and not an attorney. What that means is that I will write a few articles about the overhead transmission line being proposed through the southern part of San Saba County specifically and hope to bring up a few ideas, topics and considerations to help you make up your own mind and become an informed citizen. I have worked with the proposed transmission line process many times before-in the proposed stages, the eminent domain stages, the litigation stages, the construction stages, the reclamation stages and the ranch management stages once they were completed. That means I have lots of experience dealing with transmission lines pre- and post-, and I want to help you understand the facts at hand here.
The information herein is not “for” or “against” the proposed transmission line in southern San Saba County, but rather to discuss the “pros” and “cons” that you need to be aware of moving forward.
As a ranch habitat and wildlife consultant, in every case, when I meet a new client, we go into the house and sit down for a long visit. With notebook in hand, a comfortable chair and hopefully a sweet tea in hand, we start the relationship off discussing very specific goals and objectives you have for the land. Why are you hiring me and exactly what do you want me to do for you? What are your long-term goals of this property? What about the current situation makes you unhappy, and specifically where do you want the ranch to be in 5, 10, 20 years? Is this property for investment purposes, a quick flip, or is it inherited land that you also hope to hand down to the next generation? Read those last few questions again to yourself and ponder those answers with as much detail as possible. Now imagine how a new transmission line would impact your goals and objectives, positively or negatively.
There is much research available relating to the property values with and without a transmission line in place, especially the huge ones that are being proposed. The majority of people do not want them on their land, nor do they want to SEE them from their own land, so it impacts neighbors and sometimes their neighbors too! The line being proposed in southern San Saba County is huge, among the largest to be constructed. It will be tall, it will be wide, and it will be silver and it will shine in the sunlight like a new dime as it rises and falls over the hills and across the valleys. So if you are concerned about real estate values only, know this line will negatively impact the land they stand on, the next door neighbor and even beyond! So if you have an investment property to sell, this proposed line will hit your pocketbook hard. If you own the property that the structures stand on, it could, according to research, decrease the value of your property by as much as 30 to 50% in some cases. If your neighbor has the structures on their land and next door to yours, it could decrease the value of your land roughly 20-35%, and if the line is in the immediate eyesight of the sunrise or sunset horizon, it will still impact your land values. But what if you are a BUYER? Cheaper land, less competition in the buying process, lower property taxes are all good reasons to buy if you don’t mind looking at the towers and lines.
Folks buy property for lots of different reasons, and if you want to bulldoze all the brush and trees to plant grass for livestock, transmission lines may not be a detriment to you if you can buy the land that much cheaper. What if you want to buy the land for wind turbine and/or solar farm development? Cheap land, cheaper taxes and you need the transmission lines already in place to deliver your product, so why not take advantage of the depressed market and buy up all the impacted land?
Aesthetics are more important to some folks than others. Aesthetics could mean no other signs of human intrusion—no rooftops, no night lights, no road noise, just you and Mother Nature, the wind and the stars at night. While other folks don’t even know they miss these things, they don’t care about rooftops in the horizon, vapor lights dotting the far hills and they are so used to vehicle activity that they can’t really “hear” it anyways. The quiet nights and sound of winds and crickets may actually make them nervous because they are not used to hearing “nothing.” So a line of sparkling silver towers straddling the hill in front of you may ruin your own view, but it may not even register for others because they are so used to the chaos and clutter of civilization that they literally cannot see them. Some would refer to a view with a transmission line as “ruined” while others may never even notice it at all. So aesthetics are important to everyone, but in very different ways.
There is a lot to think about here already. We have much more to discuss. Stay tuned and find a comfortable chair and put the tea kettle on.