PLATTEVILLE — The builders of the Cardinal-Hickory Creek power transmission line say work is 3/4 done west of the Mississippi River, and is well under way east of the Mississippi. 

The connection between the Iowa and Wisconsin portions of the project awaits this fall and a decision in the federal court system on whether the project can proceed.

The federal Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals will hear an appeal in September of a district court decision in March that stopped work in the Upper Mississippi National Wildlife Refuge. 

The subject of the court decision and appeal was the location for a tour for news media Wednesday hosted by two of the project’s developers, ITC Midwest and American Transmission Co. to reinforce what the builders see as the positives of the project.  

ITC Midwest manager of marketing and communications Rod Pritchard describes CHC as “an Interstate highway to carry electricity” with the “opportunity for renewable, clean low-cost electricity” to be transported from Iowa and South Dakota while improving “the reliability of the system. … It’s not just a one-way line either.”

It is also not just a power line for renewable energy, Pritchard added when asked. 

ITC Midwest is doing the work in Iowa and up to the under-construction Hill Valley Substation in Montfort, while ATC is doing the work from Montfort to the project’s eastern end, the Cardinal substation in the Dane County Town of Middleton. ATC’s work is going from east to west, according to ATC corporate communications project manager Alissa Braatz. 

In Southwest Wisconsin, the project starts at the Nelson Dewey Substation on Grant County VV northwest of Cassville, the former Alliant Energy Nelson Dewey coal plant site, and goes near the U.S. 61/Wis. 81/Wis. 129 south intersection in Lancaster, heads northeast to Montfort, then roughly follows U.S. 18 to Dodgeville and U.S. 18/151 around Mount Horeb before going northeast to the Cardinal substation. 

Pritchard said 95% of CHC follows existing transmission line rights-of-way. 

The developers of the project believe the crossing at the Nelson Dewey Substation northwest of Cassville, the former site of the Alliant Energy Nelson Dewey coal plant, is the best location for the crossing. That crossing will allow for the retirement of the 69,000-volt line that crosses the Mississippi at the Stoneman substation, near the Cassville boat landing, and another 138,000-volt line that goes through the Stoneman substation to be moved to the Nelson Dewey substation. 

The Nelson Dewey site was chosen by developers over two other sites in the refuge, the Stoneman site and Lock and Dam 10 in Guttenberg, Iowa. Four crossings outside the refuge were considered — Lock and Dam 11 in Dubuque, the U.S. 61/151 Dubuque-to-Wisconsin bridge, the U.S. 20 Julien Dubuque bridge, and another crossing of a 161,000-volt power line between Dubuque and Galena. 

Pritchard said the Lock and Dam 11 site would not have gotten approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and other Dubuque crossings would have gone through residential areas. 

Pritchard said all but one tower would be 75 feet from ground level, which he said was “treetop level or even shorter than that.” One tower will be 187 feet high due to U.S. Coast Guard regulations, he said. The total number of towers used for existing power lines would be reduced in half, he said.

The Iowa crossing just south of the Cassville ferry landing would connect with the Turkey River substation skirting an area of privately-held farmland that is not in the refuge. Vegetation in the area — with about 35 trees 10 inches or more in diameter — would be replaced with native plants and pollinators, Pritchard said. 

Work on the crossing would take place between October and February to minimize impact on wildlife, Pritchard said. 

That assumes the crossing eventually is built. U.S. District Judge William Conley ruled March 1 that the project could not cross the refuge, calling the approvals by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service and the Interior Department’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service “arbitrary and capricious.”

The Driftless Area Land Conservancy, National Wildlife Refuge Association, Wisconsin Wildlife Federation and Defenders of Wildlife filed suit challenging the approvals, including the approval by the state Public Service Commission. The Iowa Utilities Board also approved the project. 

ATC, ITC Midwest and Dairyland Power Cooperative are appealing the ruling. The U.S. Justice Department filed a brief arguing that Conley’s ruling that the USFWS had no authority to approve the wildlife refuge crossing was incorrect. The brief also argued the groups that filed suit lacked standing to challenge the RUS’ environmental impact statement.

The four environmental groups also have filed in federal court for an order to stop work on the project outside the wildlife refuge while the lawsuits in federal and state courts proceed. The federal appeals court May 6 denied a motion to stay Conley’s ruling pending the appeal. 

The developers filed a notice with the PSC last month that the initial $492 million cost of the project would be exceeded by at least 10 percent, partly due to raw materials cost increases and partly due to the ongoing litigation. The notice included “uncertainty” about whether the project would be completed by its scheduled December 2023 completion. 

The question that remains unanswered is what happens if the developers’ court appeals fail and the project is not able to go through developers’ preferred crossing.

“We don’t want to speculate on that backup plan,” said Pritchard.