Interstate power lines threaten farmers’ land in southeastern Colorado

Quay County, New Mexico, is best known as a neon blip along historic Route 66, with a cluster of retro motels in its county seat, Tucumcari, about halfway between Albuquerque and Amarillo, Texas. Besides that, it’s a relatively rural part of the country, populated by multigenerational farmers and ranchers.

Ed and Patty Hughes are some of those ranchers. And Ed was surprised to find his property on a different kind of map last year: smack in the middle of a path for new power lines drawn by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The map shows one of three proposed routes for a National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor, the result of a Biden administration program to accelerate transmission projects in areas where coverage could soon falter.

The proposed Southwestern Grid Connector would travel 600 miles from south-central New Mexico, along the eastern side of the state, through the Hughes’ ranch, and into Baca, Prowers and Kiowa counties in southeastern Colorado.

Plenty of Colorado landowners were just as surprised to find their land on that same map.

By being designated a national interest corridor any proposed projects would have been eligible for $2.5 billion in public-private financing and $2 billion in federal financing. Those programs, however, are now under review by the Trump administration.

The national interest designation also enables the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to issue permits for siting transmission lines when a state does not have the power to do so, hasn’t acted on an application within a year or has denied an application.

It is this federal permitting power that Colorado residents in southeastern Colorado fear amounts to eminent domain.

Dozens of residents gathered at the Prowers County Courthouse on Feb. 11 to oppose the plan to designate the corridor in which the transmission upgrades would occur. Their main concern is that the federal government could force them to turn over their land in exchange for better electric service, which they say they don’t really need.

“We don’t have any (energy) problems, nor do we foresee any,” Hughes said. “It’s just not true.”

Residents were also mad that they were hearing about the plan with only three days left in the public comment period. The comment period was supposed to close Feb. 14, but has since been extended to April 15. 

The process of selecting transmission corridors started in December 2023 when the Department of Energy’s grid deployment office began accepting public submissions. 

Ten sites were selected last May as potential corridors — some states, like Kansas and Missouri, immediately, and successfully, fought the designation. 

It has been difficult to build interstate transmission lines. The Grain Belt Express from Kansas to Indiana is a case in point. It was first proposed in 2010 and is still not under construction, but is moving forward.

An earlier federal draft linked the Grain Belt Express to the Southwest Grid Connector, but that link was removed from the plan in December.

“Colorado and New Mexico, we’re easier pickings,” Ed Hughes told the Prowers County commissioners. “We’re a rural area and we don’t read the Federal Register.”

The public engagement phase will continue through the rest of the year, and includes soliciting public comment and drafting environmental reviews. The U.S. Department of Energy will publish its final selections in 2026. 

“Condemnation is not a short-term situation. It is perpetual,” Dallas May, a local rancher, told The Colorado Sun. May is the commission chair for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, but emphasized that he was speaking as a rancher, not as a representative of the state agency.

“The prosperity that hardworking people have spent their lives working for will be taken from them with the swipe of a pen,” he said.

May knows a thing or two about having hard work ripped away — in April 2022 a grassland wildfire burned 9,000 acres of his property, scorching not only valuable agricultural lands, but thriving riparian habitat the ranch had crafted as part of a long-term program to show how modern ranching can be done without degrading natural resources.

A Prowers County Sheriff’s Office report concluded the fire likely started from sparks coming off a power pole.

National energy needs

Experts have for years warned that America’s baseline power demands, combined with increases in extreme weather that stress electrical systems, are surging past the nation’s capacity to move energy.

What we refer to as “the grid” is actually three grids — one in the East, one in the West and one in Texas. Within each of those grids are independent operators with piecemeal territories and competing interests.

The system was designed by connecting thousands of smaller utilities over the course of decades, but even as that happened, little changed in state and federal statutes to better regulate this growing mass of electricity.

That fragmentation presents challenges when extreme weather hits power supplies, like widespread grid failure in Texas during a 2021 winter freeze, which had rippling effects that reached Colorado in the form of natural gas price hikes for Black Hills Energy and Xcel Energy customers. It also makes large, structural changes — like a national transition to clean energy — close to impossible.

At least, it was thought to be nearly impossible until last year, when federal regulators in May approved sweeping changes to speed up the process.

The new rules pushed utility providers to be more proactive in their planning, requiring a 20-year outlook that accounts for changing demands, solar and wind availability, and extreme weather events.

A second rule created a federal backstop in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission if states refuse to comply with the proposed energy overhaul. The commission can permit projects regardless of state or local approval, as long as they occur in a National Interest Electrical Transmission Corridor — also known as, that thing farmers in southeastern Colorado are fighting.

What does Colorado need?

At some point in the next 20 years, Colorado will have to confront a critical lack of power infrastructure, according to a report by the Colorado Electric Transmission Authority.

The report, published in December, concluded that the state needs to address immediate gaps in the San Luis Valley, metro Denver and an unspecified area of eastern Colorado in the next 10 years. In addition to that, an estimated $4.5 billion worth of investments is required to tackle growing grid needs over the next 20 years.

That includes increasing demands for power, as well as grid resilience during harsh weather and increased connectivity to renewable energy sources like solar and wind power.

The old grid was built to tie into coal and gas power plants. Renewable energy production is often sited in more off-the-grid areas, figuratively speaking — kind of. The result is a continuing reliance on energy plants that are on their way out, with little planning for the facilities needed to replace them. 

The Transmission Authority’s report points out that most of those issues can be addressed by replacing existing lines and repairing older facilities. But even with the potential upgrades, the state would still need up to 550 miles of new lines.

May, the Lamar-area rancher, is not trying to stop or delay any renewable energy projects. “Quite the opposite,” he said. “We are trying to facilitate private property owners’ ability to work with those companies, rather than to have their land and livelihoods forcibly taken.”

“We all want critical infrastructure to be built, but in a way that does not damage rural families, communities and economies,” he said.

Patty Hughes, the rancher in New Mexico, echoed concerns about using condemnation to turn their five-generation cattle ranch into a power pathway.

“When you look at the processes (the federal government) has developed, they’re putting themselves in the driver’s seat,” she said. “They hold the future, the rest of us just become placeholders until they come take our land.”