Tension over a Power Line

Minnesota farmers resist the march of the tall towers

Outside, the stuffed figure of a Minnesota state trooper hangs in effigy, buffeted by the blowing snow. Near by, a white turkey, caricaturing Minnesota Senator Wendell Anderson, twists slowly in the wind. Inside the red brick town hall in Lowry, a hamlet of 257 in west-central Minnesota, angry farmers talk bitterly about Governor Rudy Perpich and his invading "redcoats" and vow never to give up the fight. Declares one white-haired farm wife: 'They're building this line in enemy territory."

The hated "line" is a 400,000-volt power transmission cable. After a two-year court fight, the line is beginning to slice a 160-ft.-wide swath through the dairy and grain country. It is supposed to run 427 miles, from the lignite coal mines of North Dakota to the vicinity of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Ironically, it is being constructed by two rural power cooperatives--the very sort of company that barely 40 years ago was warmly welcomed by farmers whose remote homesteads had been bypassed by the electrical revolution.

Though farmers would be served by the new power cable, they want no part of it. As the line's intimidating 150-ft.-tall towers march through relatively small family farms, a landowner can find his hard-won acres chopped up. The high wires also discourage pilots from doing increasingly important aerial spraying and seeding. Besides, Minnesota farmers are fully aware of the experience of people living near similar high-voltage lines elsewhere. The lines literally snap, crackle and pop, and they set up electromagnetic fields that can produce jolting, if nonlethal, shocks in anyone touching ungrounded machinery and other metallic conductors within 200 ft.

Still pursuing higher-court relief, 1,000 farmers flocked to the capitol in St. Paul last week to demand a moratorium on construction of the line. Others have taken more forceful action. When power-company survey crews invade their fields, farmers harass them with onrushing snowmobiles. They block construction machinery with pickup trucks and boulders. They shove welding rods into the radiators of the power companies' tractors, sprinkle sand and gravel into gas tanks. Four masked men on horseback menaced one work crew; up to 100 chanting protestors have played "ring-around-the-tripod" to heckle surveyors. Math Woida, a Sauk Centre farmer, became a local hero by picking a particularly windy day to spread manure: the stuff was blown all over a survey crew and its truck. Unamused, the power companies have filed an excessive $500,000 suit for real and punitive damages against the farmer.

Perpich's hair has grayed noticeably in the year since he became Governor, and he blames the power dispute. Says he: "This is the hard one." To enforce the law as interpreted by the courts, he has sent some 150 maroon-jacketed highway patrolmen into Pope County to protect work crews. More than 40 farmers have been arrested, for interfering with construction. Perpich has proposed the creation of a "science court" that would have-no legal status but would assess the line's potential dangers, if any, to the health of the farmers, their crops and their livestock. The court would presumably put to rest such wild rumors as the claim by one farmer that he and his fellows will have to wear chains around their ankles to avoid shocks when the line becomes operational.

The clash is a result of society's increasing demand for energy and the refusal by some of its members to meet that demand by despoiling the land. The companies protest that the only alternative, burying the line, would be economically and technically unfeasible. Farmers have suggested running most of the line through state-owned land. But the state does not want the line either. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources claims that the line might "affect the behavior of animals and change wildlife habitat and affect the physiological state or conditions of plants and animals." Harrumphs Farmer Art Isackson: "I guess a skunk is worth more than a farmer."

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