Eminent Domain (1995)

Last summer my neighbors dolefully watched as Oglethorpe Power carved up a piece of their property for a high-voltage power line. With the power of eminent domain behind them, this private company purchased lands from their Rocky Mountain power plant to Atlanta, slicing Northwest Georgia into a wedge and pretty much erasing the Kinneys' backyard in the process. First a timber contractor clear-cut the trees up Turkey Mountain, then the power company erected an enormous fence along the road ways. Finally, the towers arrived. Tied together by taut lines, they marched up and down the landscape like gargantuan creatures from outer space.

Some people sued; some people were reimbursed for the "inconvenience," but most of us were left wondering about the long-term effects of these unwanted invaders. In addition to generating electromagnetic fields (EMFs), the power lines and towers changed forever the long unbroken ridge residents here recognize as home. One of our friends mourns a magnificent stand of pink ladyslippers bulldozed  with the trees. Others worry about the herbicides the company will use to keep the corridor free of undergrowth and what that will mean for their springs, their wells. . . and their health.