DRIGGS — Fall River Rural Electric Cooperative has filed a second application for the Midway Substation, returning to the parcel Teton County commissioners denied in March, with the wildlife study it concluded its first application had lacked. The county's Planning and Zoning Commission is set to hear it September 8.
Nine documents went up on the county's public hearing page on August 19, in a folder the county labeled "Fall River Sub Station 2nd Application." The application form is dated August 5.
Commissioners denied the first Midway Substation permit 2-1 on March 23, over the dissent of Commissioner Brad Wolfe, and adopted their written findings on April 13. The denial rested on two standards in the county's Land Development Code (LDC), both printed on the county's application form itself.
The first asks whether a use "is compatible with adjacent uses in terms of location, scale, site design, hours of operation and operating characteristics." The board found it was not.
The second asks whether adverse impacts "will be effectively mitigated or offset." On that standard, the written decision says the board "could not condition approval or otherwise effectively mitigate or offset" the impacts, and that "although buffering would be helpful, it would not be enough to mitigate all the adverse impacts."
Wolfe "expressed that he felt he could support approval of the application if there was a way to adequately mitigate visual impacts and noise," the decision records, while Commissioners Ron James and Dan Powers "did not believe other likely impacts such as visual impacts and potentially lower property values, could be mitigated."
Announcing in May that it was withdrawing its reconsideration, the cooperative said that "after carefully reviewing the commissioners' written denial, it became apparent that an additional study is needed that was not included with the original special use permit application." County staff then supplied the scope.
The commissioners' denial rested on two criteria. The planning commission, recommending denial in November 2025, had cited three; the extra one was for "LDC Chap 5 General Development standards not being met specifically, Section E about wildlife mitigation studies." The commissioners did not include it in their findings, and the special use permit application form still does not require a wildlife study, even though the county's development code has required habitat mitigation since 2022.
