The Montezuma County commissioners declined Monday to say yea or nay to a high-impact permit to Tri-State Generation and Transmission to string a fiber-optic line along an existing route, opting instead to extend the public hearing on the issue for a second time.

Local officials, including the commissioners, have been unanimous in stressing that the improved telecommunications such a project would bring are essential to economic development in the county. The public hearing began on Feb. 28 and the matter will come before the board once again Monday at 2 p.m.

The company and a landowners group had not reached agreement on financial compensation to the residents for the use of their land, Tri-State officials said Monday.

If no agreement can be reached, they said, it’s possible the company will seek an alternate route that could bypass Montezuma County entirely.

Tri-State is a 25-percent shareholder in the fiber-optic project, which is designed to bring high-speed telecommunications to the area. Pathnet, a private telecommunications carrier, is a 50-percent partner, while the Empire and La Plata electric associations and electric cooperatives in Delta and San Miguel counties hold the remaining 25-percent share.

"We have to be realistic and look to the time frame involved," said Warren White of Tri-State at the commission meeting. "We don’t want to bypass Montezuma County but we have to be realistic. Other counties still would like to benefit from this project." He said La Plata, San Juan, San Miguel, Ouray and Montrose counties could still be served by fiber-optic cable strung along an alternate route that would bypass the route the company would prefer.

Tri-State wants to use an existing right-of-way to put fiber-optic cable from Grand Junction to the New Mexico state line, Tri-State land-rights manager Mark Murray explained. From Dove Creek to Grand Junction, Tri-State has obtained all the easements it needs, he said.

But there are more landowners involved in the stretch between Dove Creek and Durango and negotiations aren’t complete, he said.

"We’re still quite a ways apart on compensation, but we’re very close on the easement agreement," he said.

Tri-State plans to string the cable on its existing 115-kilovolt line. The poles carry three large electric wires and two smaller static, or ground, wires. The company would replace one of the static lines with a larger wire down the center of which will be a fiber-optic core carrying 144 fibers, officials said.

Most of the easements along Tri-State’s power pole route were acquired in the 1950s for electrical use. "Most of those didn’t include telephone lines," Murray said. "That’s why we’re amending these easements and negotiating with landowners.

Tri-State’s portion of Pathnet’s fiber optic project covers 220 miles from the Colorado-New Mexico border to Grand Junction. It crosses eight counties including federal, private and American Indian reservation land.

They hope to have the project finished by the end of the summer, but first need a high-impact permit from the county. Commissioners Kent Lindsay and Kelly Wilson have been reluctant to grant the permit until the landowners are satisfied with their easement agreements. Commissioner Gene Story recused himself because of his involvement in Empire Electric.

The amount that landowners are attempting to get for their easements was not released, but John Cooper, the director of corporate development for Pathnet, said that the going rate per rod, defined as 16.5 feet of cable, is around $8 or $9.

Murray said that in San Miguel County, most residents had been paid about $11 per rod for an easement. Some landowners between Cortez and Durango have already agreed to an easement for $10.32 per rod, he said.

Murray said the company had met two weeks ago with the other entities involved in the business venture, including Empire and La Plata Electric, and said "we were instructed to look at other alternatives that would allow us to move forward with this."

There are three alternate routes, White said. One would go through Montezuma County along U.S. Highway 160, using a Colorado Department of Transportation right-of-way.

The two others both would bypass the county. One would go from the San Juan Power Plant to Blanding to Monticello, White said, while the other would go from the New Mexico state line through La Plata County along Highway 550 to Silverton and west to Montrose.

"We think we have put our best foot forward in this process," White said, "and we want to provide that kind of connectivity to Montezuma County, but we have to make a decision fairly soon."

He said Tri-State is prepared to put up a $500,000 bond to cover any possible damages to private land from its construction activities.

But Bob Bement, one of the affected landowners, argued that money wasn’t satisfactory to cover damage that had been or might be done.

"We need something in that easement agreement to protect us," he said. "Money doesn’t do any good because it’s difficult to find somebody to do the work. I would like to see that they put it back the way it ought to be."

Tri-State representatives asked the commissioners to grant them the permit Monday on the assumption that something would be worked out with the landowners. They also asked that they be granted a permit for the Highway 160 route if the other did not work out.

However, the commissioners said they could not grant the alternate permit because there had been no public notice concerning that option.

Glen Humiston, chairman of the Fiber-optics Negotiating Committee, which represents approximately 80 private landowners in Montezuma, Dolores and La Plata counties, asked the board to continue the hearing another week while negotiations proceed.

"We’ve worked diligently," he said. "We are apart on what we think it’s worth, that’s true."

He said the landowners would be meeting again with Tri-State officials and hoped to have an agreement worked out soon.

On Tuesday, Humiston said there had been a meeting Monday night and it had been "positive." However, he declined to give details, saying he did not want to jeopardize negotiations.