City Council Approves Land Transfer For OPD5 Switchyard

By VERNON ROBISON

The Progress

The Mesquite City Council approved the transfer of a small city-owned parcel of land to Overton Power District (OPD5) at a meeting held on Tuesday, Nov. 8. The 5.6 acre parcel will be used for the construction of a new electrical switchyard on the site.

The parcel is located at 1575 Hardy Way, just adjacent to the southeast corner of the Mesquite Regional Sports and Event Complex (SEC).

In the meeting, Deputy City Manager Martine Green explained that OPD5 had agreed to provide $60,000 in credits for electrical service impact fees for the city.

City Engineer Travis Anderson clarified that the impact fee credits would go towards future electrical hookups on city park projects or streetlights hookups on new roads in the city.

Green said that the new switchyard would enable OPD5 to install a new transmission line heading south on Lower Flattop Drive to the new Raptor Substation which will be located west of the Crown Holdings manufacturing facilities near I-15 exit 118.

“The new switchyard will also allow OPD5 the ability to provide a loop feed to existing substations to give redundancy and backup power to the Sun City and Commerce areas,” Green added. “It will help meet and provide the capacity for new growth already planned for the City of Mesquite.”

But residents in the new Sun City neighborhood expressed opposition to the project in the meeting. Most were concerned about the visual impacts that it would have to the area. Many said that they had recently purchased homes in that neighborhood because of the views there. They felt that the switchyard would take away those views and affect their property values.

There were also concerns expressed about public health. During public comment, area resident Pete Contreras asked why the usual environmental impact studies had not been done, and why the neighbors had not been involved in that process. He expressed concerns about stirring up dust from the parcel during construction.

“We know that there were atomic tests done in the state of Nevada where radioactive material had been settled into our soil,” Contreras said. “I think that further studies need to be done. Stirring up contaminated soil could cause cancer to nearby residents.”

But Anderson responded that the environmental impact studies had already been done on the property many years ago when it had first been taken down as BLM land to the city.
“There were NEPA students done including biological and cultural studies before we could even do any grading activity at all,” Anderson said.

City Councilman Brian Wursten observed that the initial grading for the SEC, as well as the more recent grading for the large neighborhood of new homes in the area, had done much more stirring of dust than would be done with this small parcel.

OPD5 engineer Boyd Evans corroborated that environmental studies had been done earlier on the parcel. “Before anything was built on that side of the freeway, OPD5 went through a BLM process to acquire the 100 foot easement through that property,” Evans said. “When we did that, we went through the full permitting process and did all the environmental studies. That was quite a while ago.”

Evans emphasized that the district already has a 100 foot easement through the parcel, which would be enough to build the switchyard on now without purchase of the parcel. But the district also needs to protect the facility with block walls and space to maneuver vehicles and equipment on the site. That is why they are asking to simply purchase the land from the City, he said.

Evans also added that the project is on a tight timeline as the transmission line will need to be in place to meet the construction needs of Crown Holdings.

“We looked at many other areas to go to (for this project), including to the west and to the east,” Evans said. “Because of time restraints and the difficulty of going through the BLM process, which is typically at least a 2-3 year process, none of them would work for the time constraints of this project.”

Councilman Brian Wursten made a motion to approve the land transfer to OPD for the switchyard. The motion was adopted by a unanimous vote of the council.