Last year, Westside residents were surprised to learn that Kansas City Power and Light had plans for a new power substation in their collective backyard. Even worse, by the time they were invited to the table, all they got was a one-way conversation from KCP&L dictating where the company had decided to plunk down its transformers.
Irritated by the lack of involvement, community activists rebuffed KCP&L's offers for further meetings. But they didn't go away. Yesterday, they showed up at City Hall to suggest their neighborhood already bears more than its fair share of the city's unpleasant infrastructure.
In order to construct the substation at 2530 Southwest Boulevard, KCP&L needs the City Council's blessing to amend the area's land use plan. The first stop at City Hall for such approval is the City Plan Commission.
Yesterday, KCP&L's attorney, Douglas Stone, had a multimedia presentation aimed at convincing the commission members that residents of the Westside would barely notice the big-ass electrical equipment.
He displayed slides that looked like a page out of a high school math book, showing how a man standing on Southwest Boulevard wouldn't be able to see the guts of the substation thanks to an 11-foot brick wall. He filmed vantage points from the neighborhood to prove the substation would be mostly hidden by, say, the lovely view of elevated railroad tracks. He suggested that, given other industrial uses in the area, the two 125-foot-tall electrical poles would fit right in.
"This is not going to have an adverse affect on the residential areas," he said.
More than a dozen such residents stepped to the microphone to tell the commission otherwise.
Michael Duffy, a Legal Aid attorney representing the Westside Neighborhood Association, pointed out that, if KCP&L moves forward, the Westside will be the only residential neighborhood in the city with two substations. He passed out a map of other substations in the area and three of them hug the Troost Avenue corridor. Notice a trend?
Duffy also said that KCP&L's logic is backward. The fact that the area is already hemmed in with industrial uses is a reason to avoid, not further burden, the historic quarter.
Lynda Callon, a community activist and director of Westside CAN Center, fired off a litany of environmental impacts already diminishing the quality of life, including 600 trains that rumble through each week, the cars spewing exhaust from the freeways and the unpleasant aroma of several waste water treatment plants. "It's an environmental justice issue," she said.
Commissioners asked the KCP&L representatives why they couldn't choose another site. Stone said the location has to be precise so the station will fit into the electrical grid. The commissioners wondered why KCP&L couldn't just bury the power lines to avoid the towering metal poles. Too expensive, the company rep responded. By the end of the two-hour hearing, a pair of commissioners remained skeptical that KCP&L had done everything it could to avoid pissing off so many people.
"In this case and cases going forward, you need to involve people who are directly affected upfront," commissioner Jeffrey Krum said of the utility's rocky relationship with Westside residents. "That needs to be part of the process so you're not displaying the arrogance and highhandedness the neighbors are claiming."
"I must admit I'm influenced by KCP&L's history of insensitivity to the built environment and existing conditions, so I worry about what will really happen," commissioner Stephen Abend said of the company's promises to make the site as unobtrusive as possible. "And I don't believe they've done everything they can to mitigate the problems voiced today. ... I think they have more choices."
"You've hit some articulate opponents," commissioner Evert Asjes warned the KCP&L reps.
Articulate enough that all three men voted against the land use amendment.
Still, the measure passed 4-3, giving it the commission's official blessing when it goes before the Planning and Zoning Committee.
After the meeting, I caught Callon on the way out. She didn't seem dispirited. She's already getting ready for the next round. "Now we have to hit all the council members," she said.
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-We all know whom KCP&L is servicing, stockholders, and shareholders. Fat cats, greed and mismanagement, some of the reasons our nation is in this depression.
- I do not feel that KCP&L is trying hard enough to look for additional locations, it�s just the fastest, cheapest and the most profitable (GREED). Furthermore KCP&L is committed to providing its stockholders, shareholders and board with the highest amount of returns. If KCP&L is truly continually improving it�s electrical service and delivery then putting down the old style and old technology should not take place. In my research there are ways with new technology and talented engineers, that we can either hide, bury, and make smaller these substations. Look at the type of substation they are proposing, nothing new about that technology, look at the towering poles they are allowed to install, discussing and irresponsible.
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