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Members of Citizens Against the Kemptown Electric Substation, or CAKES, say that they oppose the construction of the substation no matter what size it will be.

They base their concerns on the "written word" of the application to build the Potomac Appalachian Transmission Highline (PATH), a 275-mile-long power line extending from a power station in southwestern West Virginia, through Virginia and ending at a proposed substation in southern Frederick County.

The application states the substation requires a fenced-in area for its equipment that "must be a minimum of 2,500 feet by 1,500 feet. In addition, buffer areas for cuts, fills, and screening must be available outside this fenced area on the property."

These figures would make the area where substation equipment be roughly 86 acres in area, or the size of nearly 66 football fields.

However, the proposed substation "footprint" is not quite that size, according to Todd Meyers, a spokesman for Allegheny Energy, one of the companies that would build PATH.

The substation's equipment would only occupy a little more than 41 acres, he wrote in an e-mail to The Gazette. The entire property is 152 acres, and remainder of the 86 acres described in the application would be a "buffer" to screen equipment from view, he wrote.

Ginny MacColl, a CAKES member, said whether the equipment takes up 86 acres or 41 acres, it would still be huge. The farm land on which it would be built is surrounded by about 1,300 homes near Bartholows Road in Mount Airy.

"There is no screening or tree that will hide this steel mill-like structure," MacColl wrote in an e-mail to The Gazette.  She added that even the tallest trees that grow in Maryland, which are about 100 feet tall, could not screen out the proposed 180-foot-tall towers for the proposed power line.

PATH is a joint venture of Allegheny Energy and American Electric Power, and both companies maintain that the multi-state power line is necessary to maintain reliable electric service in the region.

Maryland's Public Service Commission denied the project on a technicality — PATH would not be built by an electric company operating within Maryland, as state law requires — and because of Maryland's denial, Virginia's State Corporation Commission is also considering denial.

West Virginia's Public Service Commission has decided to delay its decision until February 2011.

Meyers wrote that the location was chosen because of the two existing power lines near the property, and that PJM Interconnection, a regional organization that coordinates power transmission in 13 states, including those through which it passes, and Washington, D.C., has determined that "an interconnection with the two existing 500-kilovolt lines adjacent to the site is necessary to reinforce the regional electric grid," Meyers wrote.

CAKES members gathered at a meeting at the Mount Airy Public Library on Nov. 23, to learn about ways they could oppose the multistate power line and large substation they fear will cause health problems and reduce property values.

Phillip Thurston, a CAKES member said at the meeting that he was optimistic the group could organize enough support to convince the Maryland Public Service Commission to reject the application again once it is re-filed. Allegheny plans to refile the application in Maryland through its subsidiary, Potomac Edison, by Dec. 31.

The group incorporated over the summer, has a board of directors and a bank account for hiring a lawyer once the application process resumes.

"If I didn't think it could be stopped, I'd already have my house on the market," Thurston said.

While CAKES members said that only about 14 percent of the power transmitted by PATH would remain in Maryland, and none would stay in Frederick County, instead being transmitted to higher population areas in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Meyers wrote that Allegheny has not been a study to determined what percentage of the power would stay in the area.

He wrote that PATH needs to be constructed by 2014, or the grid will not be able to reliably provide power to the region, affecting Allegheny Energy customers in central and western Maryland, the eastern panhandle of West Virginia, northern Virginia and south central Pennsylvania.

Dick Ishler, a member of the group, said he had seen studies by the Department of Energy that showed the need for electricity is down, partially because of the recession, and that federal forecasts showed that the grid should hold up through 2025.

However, because PATH begins at the John E. Amos Power Plant, a coal-fired plant in West Virginia, members of CAKES hope that if Allegheny and American Electric Power do get the rights to build the power line, that they will consider incorporating renewable energy such as wind-generated power into its design, instead of relying on "dirty" coal-powered electricity that pollutes the environment.

E-mail Christian Brown at chbrown@gazette.net.