Months after Duke Energy employees held a final meeting for residents in rural Green Pond to share concerns about a new transmission line that will cut through their rural community, the utility company announced it has selected the power line’s route.
The new line will now slice through the middle of the Green Pond community, located near Woodruff in the southwest corner of Spartanburg County. The transmission line will include an already existing de-energized line, plus just under four-and-a-half miles of new line leading to a new substation near Green Pond Baptist Church.
According to Duke, it’s the best option for both the community and the environment. Prior to constructing new lines, the utility company conducts many studies and hears from residents.
However, residents in Green Pond have long said they don’t feel heard. They formed the Green Pond Rural Alliance to fight for the preservation of the area. Many of the landowners are farmers, while others moved away from urban areas to be closer to nature.
Now that a route has been decided, representatives will head out to talk to Green Pond residents whose homes will be affected. They’ll offer compensation for the amount of land they need to construct the line. Residents may not agree, but since power is a public service, the utility company can use eminent domain to obtain the land anyway.
Michael Gault, a lawyer with Bell, Carrington, Price & Gregg, said companies that provide services in place of the role a government would typically play can generally benefit from eminent domain.
“They are quasi-governmental entities, for lack of a better phrase,” Gault said. “They offer a certain type of service that a government would to the public, and so anybody that offers that type of service can generally benefit from in the domain, if it's for a public purpose.”
How did we get here?
Residents have been fighting Duke on the transmission line and a new substation for years.
Substations act as a go-between for power generation sources and distribution. They lower the electric current, making it safe to travel to homes and businesses. Power travels through transmission lines, starting where it’s generated and moving to a substation before it’s eventually distributed. By the time it reaches a home, power can have accumulated from several substations.
Duke bought roughly 17 acres in June 2022 to construct a new substation in the Green Pond Community. It’s called the Big Ferguson substation, named for a nearby creek. Residents say they learned about the purchase through a letter that fall.
Since then, Duke has conducted studies to assess environmental concerns in the area and held several meetings with residents. In March 2024, about 200 people gathered in a church gym to discuss the project with Duke employees for the final time before the company decided on the transmission line’s route.
One of the key points of contention surrounding the project is the lack of oversight. Utility companies like Duke are regulated by the state’s Public Service Commission. But if transmission line projects are small enough, they don’t require additional permission or oversight.
In this case, Duke is building a 100-kilovolt line. State oversight is required when a line is 125-kilovolts or higher.
In March, Duke presented a variety of different route options for the transmission line on printed maps for residents to see. All of them weaved through the Green Pond community. Some residents, including Green Pond Rural Alliance President Rodney Neal, suggested that Duke should place the substation on busier roads nearby, where development is already occurring, rather than cutting through the rural area.
But Duke said the Big Ferguson substation is the most efficient placement for the existing power grid.
The new line will zigzag from the de-energized line near Highway 290 and cross four roads before it reaches the new substation, which sits at the intersection of Highway 417 and Greenpond road.
What’s next for Green Pond?
The transmission line route requires a 68-foot right-of-way to operate. Duke will send out representatives to talk to residents whose land will be affected, and they will be compensated for the land the utility needs to build.
In a statement to The Greenville News, Neal said the residents whose land is part of the transmission line’s route are concerned.
Neal said that in addition to changing the visual appeal of several roads, the new substation runs directly next to Lower Shady Grove Baptist Church and its cemetery. Neal said some of the graves in the cemetery date back hundreds of years.
Neal also said the route runs directly over a local beekeeper’s operation, as well as a site recently purchased by a family to sell strawberries, which they bought to be further away from development.
“Two young brothers who own a sporting location for dove hunting, are in the process of rejuvenating and encouraging re-population of a rare local species, Bob White quail, now find the transmission line route running right over the top of an area where they were planning to build a support facility for their new operation,” Neal wrote.
Neal and other residents have submitted about 60 letters of protest to the Public Service Commission. They’re contesting Duke’s Integrated Resource Plan, which they say does not fully address the plans for the Green Pond area.
“It’s our position that Duke has done this to keep the planning process out of public and PSC view to prevent the public and PSC from adequate oversight of their intentions and the ability to intervene prior to momentum building around a project,” Neal wrote in his statement.
Meanwhile, Duke spokesperson Ryan Mosier said the utility company will continue engaging with Green Pond residents as the project moves forward.
“We will work closely with the individual property owners on the selected route to discuss the impact on their property, consider adjustments within the route as appropriate, answer questions concerning surveying and how compensation for right of way acquisition works,” Mosier wrote in a statement to The Greenville News.
More information about the project can be found on Duke’s website.
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