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The towering power lines Sheldon Hansel sees when he surveys his dairy Winfield-area farm are a painful reminder of a battle he and dozens of other residents fought - and lost.
"I pretty much abandoned the land. I didn't want to be out there," said Hansel, who helped organize residents more than 20 years ago to stop a New York Power Authority line from cutting across more than 200 miles of untouched landscape in many of his neighbors' backyards.
Today, history could be repeating itself. New York Regional Interconnect is proposing a similar behemoth power line stretching through much of a region that is still adjusting to life with Marcy South. By the time it is completed in 2011, the $1 billion line would be carried by towering poles erected about every 700 feet for about 200 miles from Utica's suburbs to a site near the Hudson River north of West Point.
The proposed line stirs emotions for some people living along the proposed routes. Hundreds have turned out at recent informational meetings and state lawmakers in Central and Southern New York are lining up to oppose the project.
Hansel, 72, has one piece of advice for residents who have concerns about the newest proposal - something that helped his neighbors defeat a similar plan 10 years after Marcy South - get heavily involved in the process, and do it early.
Hansel lost 40 acres of his 500-acre farm to Marcy South, which stretches from the Utica area through Otsego and Delaware counties, then heads east to East Fishkill near Poughkeepsie. The line brings hydroelectric power from Canada to meet the energy needs of the New York City region.
The line proposed this year would start in Marcy and travel into central Chenango County to Norwich and continue along one of two proposed paths.
Banding together
Residents along Marcy South banded together as Prudent Residents Opposed to Electric Cable Transmission (PROTECT). Hansel said he learned more about fighting the plans through the legal system that he'd ever expected through the court cases the group brought to try to stop the line's construction.
"If you're going to be involved, you've got to know all phases," he said. "I'm not a person to just lie down because someone wants to take something from me."
That's the attitude Cyndy Andela embraced when fighting against a New York State Electric & Gas Corp. power line proposal in the 1990s. Similar to others who were moved to become involved against Marcy South, Andela's property stood in the proposed line's path.
"It bisected my backyard, and I would have been basically living under the line," said Andela, 46. Her family has owned a farm of several hundred acres near Richfield Springs since the 1960s.
Andela wasn't involved in the Mary South battle, but she and others drew on the real-life expertise of those who mobilized against power lines before, including her husband's uncle Walter Andela.
"I think of it every time I'm out there," Walter Andela, 69, said about the Marcy South line traversing his property in West Exeter, Otsego County. "You're always looking up at a power line instead of looking at the scenery. The next generation probably won't even realize it."
Cyndy Andela also learned not to be afraid to ask tough questions. She and others asked for a cost-benefit analysis to justify the need for yet another power line.
The state Public Service Commission, which has final approval over power line projects, couldn't produce one. The project went away.
"The response was so big, negative and well-organized," Andela said - a fact she attributed to the Marcy South battle.
New York Regional Interconnect has even learned from the Marcy South project about giving residents the opportunity to comment early and often even before the formal application process to the state Public Service Commission begins, spokesman Jonathan Pierce said. NYRI has said it expects to file an application for the project with the Public Service Commission by May 31, Pierce said.
Plans for the newest line grew from the increased energy demands of the New York City area, Pierce said.
Though Marcy South continues to send electricity downstate, demand is still growing, said Ken Klapp, spokesman for the New York Independent System Operator, the nonprofit group that operates the state's electric-distribution system. Energy demands are growing about 2 percent annually in New York City and Long Island - exponential compared to upstate demands, Klapp said.
But that argument hasn't convinced state Sen. James L. Seward, R-Milford,. Seward, who fought Marcy South more than 20 years ago, believes the capacity of the existing line should just be increased to lessen the impact on the communities already coping with it. He's also started a petition on his Web site - www.senatorjimseward.com - for residents to make their opposition known.
"We've already got one" power line, he said. "We should really fight a second one."
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