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Three property owners along Ohio 26 are defendants in lawsuits brought by AEP Ohio.
“We’re like the last men standing, it seems,” said Dean Booth, 62, of Newport.
Booth has been locked in a dispute over easements for electric line upgrades running across the front of his property in Lawrence Township for two years.
The transmission upgrades of AEP Ohio’s Rouse-Bell line were planned to run through the front, low-lying portion of his Newport property along the Little Muskingum River.
The Rouse-Bell Ridge 138-kV Transmission Line Project involves building approximately 13 miles of a power line between the Rouse and Bell Ridge substations located along Ohio 26 west Archers Fork and north of Rinard Mills.
The overall project for southeast Ohio is designed to upgrade an outdated 23-kilovolt infrastructure needing improvements for reliability. The whole project investment to a 138-kV infrastructure is $110 million according to past reports from AEP Ohio.
“I’m all for upgrading and helping the people, but I’m people too, and AEP swings a big bat,” said Booth. “It’s my impression that if they can’t come to an agreement on the price of your land, they come after you. I’m a defendant watching my retirement be devalued.”
Booth had worked for a time to reconstruct and restore a log cabin built by German settlers but said Monday his work has stalled pending the litigation.
But Booth is not the only landowner along that stretch of the upgrade corridor under pressure from the utility company to give up easements.
Both Gary and Ruth Cochran, of New Matamoras, and Kevin M. Valentine, of Springboro (near Dayton), are also named as defendants in AEP-led lawsuits for easement rights.
Attorneys Aaron Kenter and Clinton Strahler, both of the Columbus firm Goldman Braunstein Stahler Kenter LLP, represent all three defenses but neither returned requests for comment Monday.
The Valentine case is scheduled for a civil jury trial in Judge Mark Kerenyi’s courtroom on May 12 at 9 a.m. while the remaining Cochran and Booth cases are still going through court procedures for case management hearings and motions scheduled into the remainder of February.
AEP Ohio’s Scott Blake said the company could not comment on pending litigation.
“But the Bell Ridge to Devola is underway,” said Blake, noting construction on the north-western line has not begun.
Janelle Patterson can be reached at jpatterson@mariettatimes.com.
At a glance:
• AEP Ohio is suing three Washington County landowners over easement rights for transmission line upgrades along Ohio 26.
• The three properties under suit are owned by:
• Dean and Katherine Booth.
• Gary and Ruth Cochran.
• Kevin Valentine.
• Each lawsuit was filed in the summer of 2019 in Washington County Common Pleas Court.
• The Valentine case has been set for a civil jury trial in May.
Source: Washington County Clerk of Courts.