Agenda - Council - 06/25/2013 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Enterprise Park to Crooked Lake 115 kV Transmission Line March 2012 Environmental Assessment • A potential reduction in sale price for single family homes may range from 0 to 14 percent; • Adverse effects on the sale price of smaller properties could be greater than effects on the sale price of larger properties; • Other amenities, such as proximity to schools or jobs, lot size, square footage of a house, and neighborhood characteristics, often have a much greater effect on sale price than the presence of a power line; • Adverse effects created by the presence of a power line appear to diminish over time; • Effects on the sale price of property most often are observed for property crossed by or immediately adjacent to a power line. However, effects also have been observed for properties that are located farther away from the line; and • The value of agricultural property is likely to decrease if the power line poles are placed in an area that inhibits farm operations (PSCW, 2000). The FEIS study also demonstrated that homes not directly adjacent to the ROW or beyond 200 feet from the ROW were affected to a much lesser degree than those abutting the line or ROW (PSCW, 2000). Based on these observations, however, the authors concluded that "It is very difficult to make predictions about how a specific transmission line (would) affect the value of specific properties" (PSCW, 2000). Other authors evaluating the potential impacts of transmission lines on property values determined that a negative impact on value diminished with the distance from the power lines and became negligible at a distance of 200 meters (656.2 feet) (Colwell, 1990 and Hamilton and Schwann, 1995). Likewise, another author determined that prices could be expected to be affected within 100 feet of a transmission line, but that little effect would be perceived beyond that distance (DiMento, 1982 as cited in Kroll and Priestley, 1992). In other evaluations of property values, some authors demonstrated that individual perceptions of property values were dependent on the size of the support structures (i.e., the height of the poles) and the amount of voltage carried. In this regard, larger transmission lines were perceived to have a greater impact on property value than lower support structures and lower voltage lines (Hamilton and Schwann, 1995). Other types of studies that evaluated perception suggested that those with higher status employment were more concerned over the presence of a transmission line than those with lower job status. These individuals often were concerned not only with property value, but also health and safety (Priestly and Evans, 1990 as cited in Kroll and Priestley, 1992). Conversely, within a professional study of property sales in New England, the author found no evidence of systematic effects of either distance or visibility of a 345 kV transmission line on residential property values. Instead, the author of this study found a slight negative effect due to the presence of the transmission line easement on adjacent properties (Chalmers, 2009). 55