The state's high-voltage transmission line company, ITC Michigan, has unveiled two preliminary route options for a 50-mile project that will traverse parts of Eaton, Ingham, and Livingston counties.
The company has launched an interactive map so people can see if one of the proposed lines will be near their properties, at mifuturegrid.com.
The line would stretch from the Oneida substation in Oneida Township, through northern Eaton County, just southwest of Grand Ledge, to a new substation near Sabine Lake, northeast of Fowlerville.
Ben Terrell, an ITC Michigan regional manager for local government and community affairs, said the new line would bring an array of benefits.
"This project, the Oneida-Sabine Lake Project, is going to be incredibly critical project for our region's future," Terrell said at a Thursday press conference. "It's going to improve our grid in the region, and it's going to really improve our security and our competitiveness for decades to come."
ITC Michigan was recently rebuked by the Michigan Public Service Commission for doing inadequate public outreach on other projects.
ITC Michigan President Chuck Marshall said the company is planning extensive public outreach with the new project, including seven "Community Listening Sessions" in the impacted region, starting with a January 26 session at the Okemos Event Center.
"We're trying to do a better job educating," said Marshall. "Because when we don't educate, it's easy for a landowner, for a customer to say that infrastructure doesn't benefit me. It's an inconvenience to me because it's on my property, but it doesn't provide me any benefit. When the fact of the matter is, is that's absolutely not true."
Marshall said there are hundreds of scoring metrics used to evaluate the best routes, including distance from residential areas and reducing impact on sensitive environmental areas.
Ultimately, the Michigan Public Service Commission will select the best of the two routes. Site work likely won't begin until 2027.
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