The Valley Signal

Growth & Land Use

Fall River's Midway Substation: Industrial Lots or the Denied Site

Fall River wants its Midway Substation on residential land it was denied, and told Teton County it passed on a nearby industrial parcel over price.

By Wade Williams · ·

DRIGGS — Fall River Rural Electric Cooperative wants to build its Midway Substation on residential land it already owns, the same site Teton County denied three months ago, and told county commissioners on June 23 that it passed on an industrial parcel nearby over a price it called too high.

The commissioners denied Fall River's special use permit for the residential site 2-1 on March 23. The cooperative then withdrew a reconsideration in May, after concluding its application was missing a county-required wildlife study, and has signaled it will file a new application. At a June 23 conference with the Board of County Commissioners (BOCC), Fall River reviewed the alternative sites it had evaluated and explained why it kept returning to the parcel it had been denied for.

One of those alternatives was Log Cabin Lane, a property along the transmission line that Bryan Case, Fall River's chief executive, described as industrial. Case told the board that Fall River approached the property, but the land already had development plans underway. "They gave us an outlandish number. It just was crazy," he said. "They had things lined out already, and it was just multiple million dollars." Case added: "If you want to buy it, that will buy it."

Log Cabin Lane sits in the Industrial Research zone, according to the June 8 written decision approving the subdivision. That decision also shows the parcel is no longer a single 19-acre block. On May 11, weeks before the conference, the commissioners approved a plat carving out 18 lots, most about an acre, from the 19.26-acre tract, for a development the written decision describes as facilitating businesses and employee housing. Commissioner Ron James noted the board had approved that subdivision only weeks earlier, and Case agreed those plans were why the price ran so high. What made the whole parcel expensive is now an approved subdivision, split into individual lots.

A substation is not permitted outright anywhere in the county. Teton County's land-use code classifies it as a "major utility," a special use that requires a permit in any zone, industrial or residential alike. The code says the Industrial Research zone is "intended to accommodate manufacturing, light industrial, office, and research uses," while the rural-neighborhood zone where Fall River wants to build is "intended to accommodate primarily residential uses." That kind of infrastructure is arguably more suited to an industrial zone and the uses around it, not to a residential subdivision. Compatibility is one of the tests a special-use permit must meet, and the county found the residential site failed it in March.

Fall River says it needs 1.75 acres of equipment on a footprint of about two acres, and calls five acres with a buffer its ideal site, a fraction of the 19-acre tract. A few of the new one-acre lots would cover it. Buying a small cluster is a different proposition from buying the whole development at the multimillion-dollar figure Fall River was quoted. Whether a right-sized cluster of the platted lots could be had for less, or whether Log Cabin is foreclosed on cost as Fall River presented it, are still open questions.

Fall River put the cost of the substation itself at about $5 million. "When we're investing $5 million, you want to invest it in the right spot," Case said. That figure covers the equipment. The cooperative did not disclose what it paid, or was asked to pay, for any parcel.

The residential site is land that Fall River already owns: two five-acre lots it bought because the transmission line runs through them, and it argues the zoning contemplates their use. Case told the board that the RN-5 and RN-10 rural-neighborhood zones anticipate the need for a substation in a residential setting. The equipment would cover 1.75 acres, leaving the rest of the site as a buffer.

Commissioners were not uniformly persuaded in March, and James returned to the objection on June 23. "I just don't like the idea of popping a substation right in the middle of a subdivision that's already been established," he said. "When you put a substation on those subdivisions, your property value is going to go down."

To address that, Fall River proposed compensating adjacent owners through a mediator and an appraiser, citing studies that found a 3- to 6-percent short-term effect on nearby property values. The cooperative also acknowledged that the residential siting could draw legal challenges. Those costs, plus a second permitting process, fall on the residential side of the comparison that Fall River asked the board to weigh.

The industrial land carries a complication of its own. The Bonneville Power Administration, a federal power agency, holds a transmission easement across the Log Cabin subdivision, and on July 13, Joshua Chase, the county's planning administrator, told the commissioners that Bonneville had denied the landscape buffer that was part of the basis for the subdivision's approval, forcing a redesign. Taylor Cook, the subdivision's engineer, told the board that Bonneville is planning a future rebuild of the transmission line that crosses the property and now wants any vegetation kept outside the right-of-way. Fall River had already won Bonneville's approval for low-growing trees in the same corridor to the north, Chase said, a sign the cooperative can work within the easement and a reminder that whoever builds on the industrial land answers to the federal agency that controls the transmission corridor.

What to watch: whether Fall River tries to buy enough of the subdivided industrial land to hold the substation, or brings its special use permit back to the county for the residential site it already owns. Either route requires a fresh permit through the Planning and Zoning Commission, and then the commissioners; the residential application also needs the wildlife study that the county said was missing. No timeline is public.

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