County commissioners gave the OK Monday for a high-impact permit that grants Tri-State Generation and Transmission the authority to string a fiber optic line along an already existing route through Montezuma County.

Officials say the fiber optic line, which will eventually be strung from Grand Junction to Albuquerque, will bring increased capacity, faster service and greater cost savings to telecommunications users throughout the Southwest.

Rick Smith, director of general services for Cortez, said, "Currently, the Southwest is being serviced by two microwave links out of here that are already at full capacity."

The fiber optic line will give existing businesses in Montezuma County the ability to grow and will hopefully attract new business to the area, Smith said.

Commissioner Kent Lindsay said that approval of the permit had been postponed on two previous occasions because of easement questions that were raised by landowners whose properties will be transited by the fiber optic cable. Specifically, discussions centered around how much the easements are worth.

Glen Humiston, who represented a portion of those land owners, the Fiber Optics Negotiating Committee, stated in a letter to the commissioners that a mutual agreement has been reached among the committee regarding the terms of easements and the compensation for them.

Those terms were later documented and approved by Tri-State representatives.

If an agreement had not been reached, there was a good possibility that Montezuma County would have been bypassed by the project with Tri-State using one of two alternate routes.