PERRY COUNTY, Pa. (WHTM) — When Don Halke rattles the feed bucket on his Perry County farm, the sheep come running. But lately, he senses a wolf with a voracious appetite for power.
Two electrical towers stand just over the hill in front of his property. They’re out of sight, out of mind. But then he got a letter from PPL Electric Utilities saying it’s adding a 500,000-volt line that he estimates will come down the hill.
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“This will be terrible,” Halke said.
In a statement, PPL said it’s “expecting its peak electric demand to double over the next five to six years — growth that took over a century to reach.”
A PPL employee who emailed Halke said “our primary goal is to reach a voluntary agreement through transparency and fair compensation.”
But Halke said he can’t put a price on his health. He’s asking questions, like how will living near a high-power transmission line affect his double pacemaker? He said he’s been told it’ll generally be OK.
“If you go down that rabbit hole on the World Wide Web, generally means a lot of different things,” he said. “All of them not good.”
Halk said he’s not getting a straight answer on when construction will begin for the line. He’s heard a year and a half. He’s heard a couple of years.
Pennsylvania man turns down $15 million to turn farm into data center
Public officials have not been helpful, he said. His lawyer turned down the case, sensing he couldn’t beat a utility that has all the power.
Though there’s not much he can do about it, that doesn’t stop him from talking about it.
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