Residents who live along the Redbud Trail through the MacDonald and Fairmont neighborhoods are protesting Evergy’s intent to place huge, 105-foot power poles in the backyards of residents in order to bring power to the WSU campus.
They are encouraging residents to show up to a District 1 Advisory Board meeting on Monday night to make their objections heard. The meeting will start at 6 p.m. in the Atwater Neighborhood Center at 2755 E. 19th St.
Construction is scheduled to begin in 2025, according to notices sent out by KDHE.
Legislation shepherded through the state legislature by the late Rep. Gail Finney after the placement of the huge, unsightly poles in front yards in northeast Wichita in 2019, requires neighborhoods to be given notice of plans for new power lines and gives the Kansas Corporation Commission the authority to regulate placement.
It is unclear if the KCC has weighed in on the plans for poles along Redbud Trail.
Neighborhood activist Kim Curry, who is helping organize the fight to stop the project and require Evergy to change the route to go along a main thoroughfare such as Hillside.
Curry said the current plan calls for cutting down all the trees on the west side of the trail, which is now shaded all the way through the neighborhood to Maple Grove Cemetery by mature trees.
“I don’t understand why they can’t take another route or take the power lines underground,”
Neighborhood activist kim curry
Curry said. “We understand that the Innovation Campus needs the power, but we think they should innovate a better solution,” she said.
Neighborhood residents say their property values will be reduced up to 40%, not only because the poles are a visual blight, but because many people believe the high-voltage lines cause health problems, including cancer.
The time has passed for protest and talk. You knew anout this from what you say, when they were lesgislating this. This is the point where the grassroot people need to be educated about the true process of the gov. officials that they have elected to run their (total) lives. This is where they need to know that the elected work for them. They are the Bosses. Old School, don’t hate the player, hate the game. Stop letting them lag behind and get ahead of the game. This is the first step, The Understanding that we or this is Real Spiritual Warfare!
Wow ! WSU Need more enegy to run excess power. WHY does Northeast neighborhood predominantly
black have to always be uprooted for power pole that is hazard to our community and the health of our children. Why go to ward east of 21st and Oliver Others surrounding cities Andover beyond. I visit the Northside and notice alot of our family homes has been cleared torned down I asked one of occasion why did the tear down so many houses and this particular while man said the developer changed his mind and he was just on the vacant lot monitoring the vacant lots where one home were located . So as I see this article it was to prepare for this awful sight of a oversize pole that seem extremely of place and an eye sore not concern about people’s lives. Why can’t they go too Eastbourg community and set up this eye sore pole. My opinion elimination of Black Why !Why ! do we a peopke of color always has to be the one to tolerated unfairness when it come to living in a decent neighborhood why do we have to have our home bulldozed down and jeopardized health issues . Don’t we have the right to say no as tax payer . Manipulation is ugly and fairness will never be on our side. You put 235 through the black community and name a portion of the highway Martin Luther Kings from 9th street and ends at 21st the Canal route which it doesn’t go further than that . . It’s 2023 still been mistreated and unfairness . Route 66 was ran through the black communities and you only saw white family drive on that route. Blacks couldn’t travel or they would have been lynched harassed thrown in jail on some trumped charges just crazyness. . Wichita it time to stand up and say NO to these towers in our neighborhood.
I smell Bill Gates . He wants to depopulate people on this earth and needs to eliminated blacks through vaccine and radioactive power lines. Who made him God it’s a enough room on earth for people . Where was he when God the Creator made the universe? When he hung the moon stars sun water above water below God spoke all into insistence and it was Good . Gates money cannot dictate God original plan purpose.