Bent County approves high-voltage transmission line through protected prairie despite pushback

Editor’s Note:  The following article is being shared by permission of the Bent County Democrat

Land trust says 47-mile stretch of Three Corners Connector will cut through remaining tracts of native shortgrass prairie, alleges Grid United’s application misrepresented communication
By T’Naus Nieto / Bent County Democrat

Bent County officials voted Wednesday, Jul. 29, to approve a permit that’ll clear a proverbial slice of a protected prairie that conservationists called “irreplaceable,” for a high-voltage transmission line, with landowners and land trust representatives giving heavy pushback, arguing the application was built on a “false account” of who Grid United had actually been talking to, along with serious ecological concerns.

“Heartland Ranch currently provides a continuous wildlife corridor supporting 12 species of greatest conservation need identified by the Colorado State Wildlife Action Plan,” Kieran Andreoni, conservation director for Southern Plains Land Trust, told commissioners. “Fragmenting this corridor would permanently reduce habitat connectivity and diminish one of the largest remaining expanses of conserved native shortgrass prairie in the southern plains.”

Andreoni cited Colorado Revised Statute 33-1-101, which, according to the statue, declared wildlife and their environment were to be “protected, preserved, enhanced and managed for the benefit and enjoyment of the people of this state,” with the conservation director also pointing to a 2024 Colorado State University study that estimated that conservation easement tax credits have generated between $35 billion and $57 billion in cumulative public benefit statewide, a return of around $31 to $49 for every dollar invested.

“If a prohibited utility corridor can be placed across protected conservation lands, it undermines public confidence in Colorado’s conservation programs and weakens the value of every conservation easement supported by taxpayers,” Andreoni said.

Despite the testimony, Bent’s commissioners approved Resolution 2026-11, granting a special use permit for a 47.4-mile segment of the around 290-mile Three Corners Connector line, which is set to carry up to 3,600 megawatts of power between Pueblo, Colorado and an Oklahoma substation.

The vote, however, came after plenty of testimony from Grid United representatives, county staff and land trust members who said the project’s application misstated the company’s contact with them and understated its ecological toll.

Aside from the alleged ecological toll, at the center of the dispute was a single sentence on page 21 of the application, which stated that “Three Corners Connector LLC has been in an ongoing conversation with the Southern Plains Land Trust regarding the location of the easement.”

“We have to be clear here. We are not in an ongoing conversation. We have never been in an ongoing conversation,” Southern Plains Land Trust board member Martin Hertz told commissioners.

Herz called that statement false and read into the record an email exchange he initiated with Grid United’s Bryant on Jul. 16, asking the company to name who it had corresponded with.

“No board member nor staff person affiliated with Southern Plains Land Trust can recall any written or verbal outreach from Grid United in 2025 or 2026,” Herz’s email said.

Herz read aloud a written response, which said the company had “electronic and in-person communication with split representatives” between April and October 2023, met in person with the preserve manager on Jul. 3, 2024, and placed courtesy calls to them and the executive director on Jul. 28, 2025 , a week before filing, that were never returned.

One of them, appearing remotely, disputed that timeline directly.

“I’ve been working at Split since October 2023. There’s been zero effort to reach out and make contact,” he said. “We didn’t know that the permit was even being submitted. We didn’t know this meeting was happening.”

Andreoni told commissioners the stakes were set to go far beyond a contact dispute, saying the line would cross roughly 5.8 miles of Heartland Ranch through a 500-foot construction corridor narrowing to a permanent 200-foot right-of-way, affecting about 492 acres of land protected under a conservation easement.

Also, according to Andreoni, Three Corners had made no provision to protect crews from the ranch’s free-roaming bison herd and has offered no wildlife mitigation plan.

Southern Plains Land Trust said it has no legal authority to consent to the crossing even if it wanted to, with Herz saying the organization would face a lawsuit from the easement holder if it tried.

“If the founder, the person [who] owns Three Corners Connector, he’s a billionaire in Texas. If he even showed up here and was sitting there and said, ‘Here, $20 million. Just let it go,’ we have to say, ‘No, thank you, sir. We can’t take this,’” Herz said.

Grid United maintained it has had more contact with the land trust than with the average landowner along the broader route and that the group is the only one of the project’s landowners in Bent County that has not come to terms.

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