Marfa
City Council members could soon decide the fate of the much-debated AEP electrical substation, and they held a public hearing on the issue on Tuesday—although with the back and forth the project has gone through for more than a year, nothing is certain. At the Tuesday meeting, the council heard from several speakers, the majority objecting to the AEP plan, although a handful supported it.
The council took no action on approving a special use permit needed by AEP to build the substation on land zoned residential.
The Planning and Zoning Commission met on April 7 for a final public hearing on the project. The P&Z voted 4-1 to deny recommending approval of the permit, but the council has the final say on the matter.
P&Z Member Lee Mediano was the lone vote against the motion to recommend that the City Council deny the permit. He said that in his conversations with Marfa residents, 80% were for approving the substation location, although he acknowledged that 80% of the people who showed up to the commission’s meetings were against it. “We just spent 18 months on endless meetings,” he said. “We could have had this project up and functioning. So that’s my big frustration right there.”
The chief concerns from residents opposing the project are the precedent it would set for rezoning residential land (or allowing special uses on it), the impacts to property values for landowners adjacent to the site and possible noise and environmental impacts. Also frustrating residents is what they view as an inadequate effort for the power company to locate an alternative site.
AEP’s proposal involves purchasing an approximately four-acre lot at the corner of Oak and Aparejo streets and erecting a new substation—eight times larger than the existing Oak Street station near Sal Si Puedes and triple the capacity, increasing from 5 MVA to 15 MVA (megavolt-amperes)—an estimated $7 million to $10 million endeavor. The increase in capacity is cited by the company as crucial to meeting both existing and future needs for Marfa’s electricity usage. Critics said the utility did not explore options for the substation farther out of town. AEP said it looked at alternatives and none met the criteria it needed for both logistics and cost.
Since the land is zoned residential, AEP initially applied for a rezoning to industrial to proceed with the purchase of the property to build the substation. After that rezoning was tabled by the City Council, AEP complied with a request from council members to get a special use permit to build and operate the substation under residential zoning.
That new AEP application does provide considerably more detail on the project, and P&Z members have walked through questions about the project one by one—from everything to the types of fences and landscaping surrounding the structure to how many decibels of sound it would emit.
For an in-depth look at the history of the rezoning, see bigbendsentinel.aep-rezone.