Task force pushes for electric project action

A task force investigating infrastructure in town considered how to address electric capacity in central city.

Columbia Water & Light told the task force in the last several weeks about diminishing space for power to the aging area of town. That includes downtown Columbia, a hub for businesses, and more recently, multi-story apartment complexes. The task force is in the midst of assembling its report and recommendations regarding electricity in town. That will become part of a larger report dealing with sewer, streets and stormwater, along with an overview on how to handle the systems moving forward.

The group considered what recommendations to provide for the city council at Tuesday night’s meeting, given the information city staff provided. Water and Light estimated the central city had ten megawatts of capacity remaining in 2015, adding the expected usage of large apartments in construction. The 13 circuits serving the area, bounded by Business Loop 70 to the north and Stadium Boulevard to the south, “ideally” provide seven megawatts of power to the area. While that would provide 91 megawatts total, Water and Light said they consider 77 megawatts the capacity to avoid using all available electricity in the case of an emergency, which is required by federal regulations. Should a circuit go down, assistant director Ryan Williams said it would be a loss of eight megawatts – leaving the area with only two megawatts of available space before exceeding levels that could cause events like cascading blackouts.

Task force members asked about the future of a transmission line project aimed to add electric capacity to town. The Mill Creek substation, planned for a city-owned lot north of Rock Bridge High School, would potentially provide 14 megawatts of power for central city, when connected to the system of substations through transmission lines. The Columbia City Council put that project on hold, following a lengthy public hearing in January to delay the project first approved in 2013. Williams told the task force Water and Light was still reviewing Mayor Treece’s idea for greater electric capacity – an idea that many city council members expressed interest in at a May meeting on the topic.

Task force member John Conway called the impending energy troubles for central Columbia a result of “bad governance” regarding the transmission line project. A member of Columbia’s Water & Light Advisory Board, Conway said the city needed to move as soon as possible on the Mill Creek substation given central city’s needs. Voters also approved a bond issue in 2015, allowing Water & Light to raise the electric rates to borrow millions, that Conway said was driven in large part to the transmission line project.

While the task force has yet to decide on what to give to the city council, chairwoman Tracy Greever-Rice said the city held a transparent process in selecting the transmission line route, and should move quickly to get the project moving.

“We’ve got a plan in place,” Greever-Rice told ABC 17 News after the meeting. “It should be moving forward. We have a contractor contracted, and the project should be and needs to be moving forward sooner than later.”

Council members have agreed on the necessity to add higher-voltage transmission lines in the city to deal with growth. Members voted to put the project on hold in fear of how close poles would be to existing homes and to get more information other, low-impact routes to homes and schools.

The task force will give its final report to the city council in October, Greever-Rice said.