MADISON, Wis. (CN) — Environmental groups are once again taking federal agencies to court over the construction of giant high-voltage multistate power line, the latest in years of litigation over the massive utilities project.
The National Wildlife Refuge Association, Driftless Area Land Conservancy and Wisconsin Wildlife Federation sued the Rural Utilities Service, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and individual members of those agencies in a district court in Madison late on Wednesday, claiming they violated multiple federal laws by approving a land exchange which would allow parts of the Cardinal Hickory-Creek transmission line to run through a wildlife refuge along the Mississippi River.
The 345-kilovolt, 17-story, 102-mile power line extending from Dubuque County, Iowa, to Dane County, Wisconsin, has been tangled in lawsuits from environmentalists in state and federal courts since at least 2019 when the project got underway in earnest.
Opponents say the power line is unnecessary, expensive and could be catastrophically destructive of the land it traverses. Of particular concern is the Driftless Area, a region of forested ridges unaffected by ancient glaciation across parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois.
Much of the litigation, including Wednesday’s complaint, has challenged permits and other approvals required for construction. Lawsuits against state-level public utilities regulators, namely the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin, have yielded mixed results. Last May, a Dane County Circuit Court judge upheld key state approval of the power line, leading to the dismissal of a long-running federal action against the same parties over similar issues.
The tug-of-war over the Cardinal Hickory-Creek project has taken multiple trips to the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, including once over allegations of bias against Wisconsin utilities regulators environmentalists claimed were too cozy with the transmission companies developing the project.
The same allegations, all of which ultimately failed to prevail in court, tied up the Dane County Circuit Court case for around two years with appeals that led all the way up to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
The Seventh Circuit has also ruled on the issue of the land swap germane to Wednesday’s lawsuit. In January 2022, U.S. District Court Judge William Conley — who is also the presiding judge in Wednesday's lawsuit — said federal law barred the power line from crossing the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge via right-of-way or land transfer, but a Seventh Circuit panel vacated his order on the technicality that there was no final agency decision ripe for appeal.
Since federal agencies have, as of late February, made final decisions approving the proposed land swap, the environmental groups who seek to block it are taking another bite at the apple. All the while, they say in their complaint, the transmission companies — specifically the American Transmission Co., ITC Midwest and Dairyland Power Cooperative — “have nonetheless built their high-voltage transmission line and very high towers right up to the borders of the protected refuge.”
The advocacy groups claim in part that the federal agencies did not issue draft copies of three crucial documents approving the land swap for public comment. They cite the Administrative Procedure Act, National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act of 1997 and the National Environmental Policy Act as laws having been violated in the process of approving the land swap, which would allow the power line to cross the refuge near Cassville, Wisconsin.
The plaintiffs are asking the court to set aside the land exchange and land transfer, as well as for injunctive relief against construction of the transmission line through the federally protected wildlife refuge and any agency approvals that would allow for it.
In a press release Wednesday night, the Environmental Law & Policy Center — a Chicago-based firm that has spearheaded much of the litigation over the Cardinal Hickory-Creek project, including Wednesday’s lawsuit — said the power line, if built as planned, would “cut across a major north-south migratory bird flyway used by hundreds of thousands of birds annually,” including species of cranes and eagles.
Wisconsin Wildlife Federation President Kevyn Quamme noted in the same release that “building a transmission line through the refuge also will serve as a deterrent to locals and tourists alike who visit the refuge and contribute to the local economy.”
“The transmission companies did not evaluate the alternative crossings outside of the refuge in their environmental impact statement, and we should not set a precedent that a simple land swap is all it takes to plow through a national treasure,” Driftless Area Land Conservancy Executive Director Jennifer Filipiak said in the statement.
Representatives with the transmission companies and federal agencies could not be immediately reached for comment on the lawsuit.
Construction of the Cardinal Hickory-Creek power line — estimated to cost nearly half a billion dollars — has chugged along despite continuous legal battles. The transmission companies announced in December 2023 that the eastern half of the line was finished and energized. At this point, they anticipate the western half to be up and running by June.
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