Our Story

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Reprinted by permission.

By Pat Peckham

Tom Kreager fought long and hard against the controversial Arrowhead-Weston power line since 1999. He knew the high-voltage line would pass through his rural, woodland property and within a stone’s throw — literally, it turned out — of their house. 

When Wisconsin Public Service and the American Transmission Co. finally powered up that new line Jan. 23, there was a new owner in the home Kreager and his wife, Marge, built with their own hands just south of Nine Mile County Forest. They walked away, moving to the city of Mosinee rather than having to look out their window daily to see the power line they had battled for so long. 

To the rest of us, the line is some inches-thick wires strung on 125-foot steel poles out in the country. Even the new owner of the former Kreager homestead doesn’t mind the line, though “If you go for a walk under the high-line, you can hear some crackling,” she says.

To the Kreagers, it was deeply personal. They bought the vacant, wooded property in the town of Mosinee in 1986, a year after they had married, when they were only 22 years old. The Kreagers were ahead of most when it came to designing an energy efficient home. They incorporated things like 4-foot eaves to shade out the summer sun, while the lower, winter sun flows in to warm the floors. 

For several years they lived there “off-grid,” meaning they had no outside source of electricity. Later they got one 15-amp circuit in their home, which freed them from having to run a generator several hours a day. They had 100-amp service to the shed for power tools.

The Kreagers even logged trees on the property and had a friend cut them into lumber for the construction. “We pretty much did everything except the drain pipe underneath the basement floor. The house really was us… Our blood and sweat went into it. It was home. We had no intention of living anywhere else.”

So it was that he was driven to take on what he says was essentially a second full-time job to fight the line. He opposed it from the time the first application was filed with the Public Service Commission (PSC) in 1999. When Public Service held an informational meeting, he stood and spoke about some of his worries. Somebody afterward asked him to speak in an adjoining area. Then he got more requests and it snowballed. 

“The next thing you know, I was doing these three to five times a week for two to three months.” He went to every regional informational meeting between Marathon County and the Minnesota state line. The 44-year-old office machine technician took more than a week of vacation days so he could get to meetings. He changed his e-mail address to one with a built-in message, “NoLine@mtc.net.”

Long controversy

The line that drove Kreager to lead what he says became the largest grassroots organization in the state has been in the news for years. Actual construction began in late 2004 in Minnesota and fall 2005 in Wisconsin. The line was finally powered up for real last month. It carries electricity from hydroelectric dams in Manitoba down into the Minnesota “arrowhead” and into Wisconsin via Douglas County near Superior. The line enters Marathon County near Abbotsford/Colby and comes east. It crosses farm land and wooded areas, then part of the Nine Mile County Forest before ending at the Weston power plant in the southwest corner of Rothschild. 

Some of the objections to the line came from people unhappy that the power was largely to sell to more densely populated areas in southeast Wisconsin and Illinois. Wisconsin Public Service says the power is enhancing the reliability of electric service around the state. 

For Kreagers, it was better to move to the city of Mosinee than live with the 345-kilovolt line stretched over their property, just 150 feet from their home. Kreager recalls an initial promise that the line would not be closer than 300 feet from any occupied dwelling. Pete Holtz, project manager for ATC, says the utility must inform the PSC of any home less than 300 feet from the 120-foot right-of-way, but there’s no requirement that they skirt a dwelling. “We try to keep as far away as possible.” 

They listed their place with a real estate company in January 2007 and – after a lot of lookers turned tail upon seeing the power line – sold it in August to the first person to make an offer, a woman who says she has no concerns that the line could affect her health. 

“We wanted to be the heck out of there before they ran any power through those lines,” Kreager says. 

So the Kreagers and their son, John, have lived for the past year in one of a row of ranch-styles south of the high school in Mosinee. One of their concerns is the electromagnetic field the line creates. 

In 1999, the Kreagers illustrated that concern by taking a photo of themselves holding long fluorescent lights under an existing large power line that already skirted a corner of their property, but some 1,500 feet from the house. The bulbs are ghostly illuminated by the stray electromagnetic energy from the wires. The prospect of another line so close to their house was just too much. (The Arrowhead-Weston line actually hooks up with that old line and follows that right-of-way for a short distance). Research in Europe has raised the question of whether the electricity might cause brain tumors or childhood leukemia, but evidence is not irrefutable. “That’s something that will go back and forth,” he says, “but we knew it was not something we wanted to take a chance on. We don’t want to be the guinea pigs.”

The new owner of the Kreagers’ 43 acres, Dee Dee Peterson, had lived in Mosinee. She wanted to be in the country and says she has no concerns about the line. In her daily living, Peterson says she doesn’t really notice being under a big power line, other than the crackling she can hear. “The wooded area is still beautiful and I like the house.”

After a long property search, the Kreagers found another 40 and they’re not taking any chances this time. This one is in the sparsely populated Town of Hewitt in northeastern Marathon County. It’s 1.5 miles from the nearest power pole of any sort and they want to keep it that way. “We will be off the grid,” Kreager says, supplying all their own power. 

Finding the land was tough. “They have not only ruined our 40 acres, but they’ve ruined a lot of Marathon County as far as places I’d consider rebuilding.” 

Scrappers and little people

Kreagers and others along the line route formed the group that would become ATC’s nemesis. Called SOUL, it stands for Save Our Unique Lands. The group organized protests, generated crowds for public hearings, sounded the alarm statewide and hired well-known attorneys such as Ed Garvey to challenge those who would support – or even allow – the line. As things progressed, SOUL worked to inform those whose land was being condemned about how to get the most out of ATC.

Those who forced ATC to go through the condemnation process before a panel or court of law did better than those who just accepted payments based on an appraisal. After one Town of Mosinee farmer hired an attorney and got twice what ATC had offered, ATC rather quickly settled with remaining hold-outs, paying a comparable amount per acre. 

From that experience, Kreager and a fellow power line foe from Douglas County, Mark Liebaert, are starting a sideline business. Intended to assist people fighting utilities and government agencies over things like power lines, they are calling the new consulting company, David and Associates —a reference to the biblical story of little David taking on Goliath. 

The two men will advise landowners along the routes of future power lines like the one going from the Weston power plant through Marathon and Shawano counties. “We’re taking our hard-earned education and trying to put it to use for other people,” he says. Things got rolling with a meeting recently in Clintonville. 

He now believes that the PSC regulators are too chummy with the utilities and politicians. His opinions come out when he talks about why he couldn’t stay in the home where he had spent 20 years. “It would be a reminder that the corrupt system had cheated us out of our dream. You can’t look out the door every day and see a reminder that the system didn’t work the way it was supposed to protect everybody involved.”

The biggest mistake, Kreager says, was in the route. He still doesn’t understand why the line couldn’t have followed the existing right-of-way along Hwy. 29. 

Agreeing with that is Greg Stark a Town of Wien resident. His father wears a pacemaker to keep his heart going and cannot go onto parts of his own property, near the line. The electrical interference could be deadly. And it might seem minor, but the line has ruined their TV reception. His home is 1,300 feet from the line and, “It’s just snow.” Stark says, “There were better routes, but us little people don’t have the common sense they think they do.”

In the end, private landowners overall weren’t paid enough, in Kreager’s opinion. They certainly weren’t being offered much in the beginning. The Kreagers were offered $7,500, even though their appraiser said their property was worth $60,000 less because of the line. He’s not saying now what they settled for, other than the settlement came after the initial court case and was fair. 

Such major power line projects would not be needed if power plants were built closer to where the power is needed, he says. 

He thinks the Public Service Commission should drop the “public” from its name and be known as the Utility Service Commission. Kreagers points out that the newest commissioner on the PSC is a former attorney for American Transmission Corp., which build the line. A recent commissioner has a twin brother working for ATC. “It’s way too cozy down there.”

From ATC’s vantage point, it was a successful end to a massive undertaking. They finished construction seven months early and had few lost-time accidents. Cost finished up at $439 million, still within the range of what had been approved. They laid and later removed 27 miles of log mats in order to cross wetlands with heavy equipment without lasting impacts.

Operating at 345,000 volts, the new line can carry 600 to 800 megawatts, enough to power 250,000 homes. 

The Kreagers will start constructing their off -grid home likely in May. Plans are for an energy-efficient insulated concrete form structure incorporating passive solar and solar panels for hot water, heat and electricity. Like the first time, the Kreagers plan to do much of the work themselves. 

The payouts

Tom Kreager says the environmental impact fees are “basically a bribe to influence decisions.” The admitted critic of nearly all things ATC says opposition in small-population towns tends to dissolve when officials who normally have an annual budget of less than $100,000 suddenly have the prospect of receiving a one-time payment of nearly three times that amount with additional annual payments of $20,000 to $25,000. 

The Town of Frankfort, for example, dropped about $168,500 on a new road grader. The town’s 650 people would have been hard pressed to afford the new machine on their own. 

The Town of Emmet, just west of Mosinee, spent its entire $180,000 impact fee on a new, furnished three-stall garage. A plaque on the building recognizes the farmers and other landowners who paid the price of the power line. “They fought hard not to have it, but after it went though, they should be recognized,” says Frank Zebro, the town clerk and county supervisor. “All the names of the landowners are on that plaque.”

Town of Hull $243,854

Town of Frankfort $246,800

Town of Wien $318,000

Town of Cassel $186,700

Town of Emmet $179,000

Town of Mosinee $347,000

Town of Rib Mountain $75,000

Marathon School District $240,000

Marathon County $2.64 million.

(Some municipal officials were only able to provide approximate figures.)