Southern Plains Land Trust’s Executive Director responds to recent vote by Bent County Commissioners which would allow electric transmission lines be constructed on Conservation Easement property

A herd of American Bison roam freely on Southern Plains Land Trust’s Heartland Ranch (photo courtesy of Southern Plains Land Trust)

The residents of southeast Colorado have been very vocal in their opposition to plans for electric power transmission lines cutting through their farmlands and prairies. Recently, Prowers County residents cheered at the August 12 meeting in Lamar when it was announced that the hotly-contested NIETC project would not move forward – a decision made by the Department of Energy in large part because of this opposition, including a large response to an online survey asking for public comments on the project. However, another less well-known planned project recently made state and local news when, on July 29, 2026, the Bent County Commissioners voted to approve a critical special use permit for Grid United’s  “Three Corners Connector” plan – a 300-mile, up-to-525-kilovolt, high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission line. This vote opened the door for Grid United to cut through a part of Southern Plains Land Trust’s Heartland Ranch, land protected by a Conservation Easement – an area SPLT calls “irreplaceable”.

For the sake of length of this article, here is the link to an original article published in the Bent County Democrat: https://www.bcdemocratonline.com/bent-county-approves-high-voltage-transmission-line-through-protected-prairie-despite-pushback/   We at the Prowers Journal were not aware of Grid United’s plans, nor the hearing or vote until that article was published.  A representative of Grid United sent us an email thanking us for reposting this article on our Facebook page (which we did on August 12 with permission of the publisher).  This email included a follow-up article, also by the same author at the Democrat, and is linked here:: https://www.bcdemocratonline.com/grid-united-representatives-answer-questions-following-bent-county-approval-of-a-high-voltage-transmission-line-through-protected-prairie/

Neither of these articles involved interviews with or responses from anyone with Southern Plains Land Trust (SPLT) and because of this, I have chosen to share their responses to the decision of the Bent County Commissioners for journalistic fairness.  As such, I sat down on August 22 with Dr. Henry Pollock, Executive Director of SPLIT and his wife Dr. Judith Westveer, SPLT’s Associate Director, to get their thoughts on the vote and allow them to respond to Grid United’s allegations of prior communications with them before the hearing was held.

In my interview with Pollock and Westveer, I asked them to share their thoughts about the decision as well as why they thought it had been made. Regarding this Bent County vote, I asked Dr. Pollock how long this project has been planned, since many of us in Prowers County had not heard of it.  “There was discussion with Jay (Touchton – Dr. Pollock’s predecessor as Executive Director of SPLT) before we joined SPLT in October of 2023″ he said.  “Evidently, at that time, there was conversation around potentially having the line go through Heartland.  Jay went to the board of SPLT who said they could not put it on our land as we aren’t legally allowed to have this on our conservation easement.  The way a conservation easement works is that we are the owner, and Colorado Open Lands (COL) is the holder. It is COL’s responsibility to enforce that easement.  As far as I know, they (Grid United) have not contacted COL at all. Grid United says it ‘would add 25 miles to go around Heartland Ranch’,  which is extremely misleading.  The reality is that there are multiple other routes that could go through the property of other landowners.  Those landowners have also refused but I don’t want to name names – they are our neighbors.  There is a big block of landowners in this area that are against this transmission line because they are multigenerational ranchers.  There is no easement on the neighbors’ properties. Grid United is essentially marketing this as benefiting the community and supporting the tax base.  There is some temporary truth to that, such as temporary employment while building it”.

He continued, clarifying his thoughts on the project and the route – “I want to be very clear. We are pro-renewable energy.  We would be super supportive of all the things they are saying but would like to have a robust dialogue with them about other possible routes.  There is a route that would go across a railroad, which is actually a more direct route and they have admitted that multiple times – that our route is NOT the most direct.  For us, we had one meeting with Grid United after Judith and I started with SPLT. This was in May of 2024 when we, along with a board member of SPLT, met with the Grid United CEO. He asked us at that time what the possibility of going through our property was.  We explained that it wasn’t possible because of the conservation easement and asked him if they could do something else. He basically said ‘No, you are the route. We have to go through you’.  I have had ONE email with Bryant Coon, which was in May of 2024 and in the two years since that, there was never any attempt by Grid United to reach out to anyone at SPLT”.

Asked about the claim of ongoing communications between SPLT and Grid United, he said “Grid United portrayed in the Otero and Bent filings that they had been in ongoing dialogues with SPLT.  By the time I went to the public meeting (Editor’s note: Pollock attended the meeting virtually as he was out of country at the time) on July 29, Grid United had been having stakeholder dinners and we hadn’t even been contacted.  So when they say ‘We’ve been in contact and have had great dialogue with SPLT’ they’re just lying. Bryant Coon keeps focusing on the phrase ‘Dr. Pollock was invited but declined’ when in fact, I was NEVER invited.  Mr. Coon claims he left voicemails but he didn’t. Even if he had tried to call me once in 2024 inviting me to a dinner and then made a courtesy call in 2025 as he claims, that is not evidence of ‘robust engagement’.  If he truly wanted engagement, he should have come to our office or at the very least sent a letter”.

Dr. Pollock then explained why they feel the commissioners’ vote was detrimental and how it could jeopardize the work SPLT has done over the years to develop this area of protected grasslands and wildlife.  “This is not a case of us (SPLT) being a private landowner doing our own thing.  We have been funded by millions of dollars of public money including money from Great Outdoors Colorado, which is public tax money.  We have provided a huge amount of income to Bent County.  We pay a ton of property taxes ($25,000 yearly) when we don’t even have to – we do it because we want to support the community and be good neighbors.  We also have national and international partners we collaborate with.  There are 12 threatened species we protect at Heartland Ranch, so the conservation value is substantial, with the re-introduction of black-footed ferrets as an example.  There are a lot of species at risk here.  Our business is at risk.  Our mission – everything we stand for – is at risk.  When I take people out to show them what we do, the first place we visit is Heartland Ranch.  It is intact and really conveys the wild nature of the Great Plains.  Putting a giant piece of infrastructure there not only impacts wildlife, which is the main thing I am concerned about, but it also impacts our ability to tell the story of the vast open space in SE Colorado that is the American Serengeti”.

When asked how the project would affect the landscape of Heartland Ranch in terms of infrastructure, he said “If you look at the Bent County permit, the infrastructure footprint is not just the huge towers….it also includes giant swaths of land around them… roads, tons of concrete, power stations, etc.  A lot of prairie species are sensitive to vertical structures because those are not a part of the native landscape and a lot of our wildlife will avoid those areas”.  Dr. Westveer added “Grid United’s solution to protecting the workers on the project from our large wild bison herds that roam freely on Heartland Ranch would be fences, which is a part of everything we don’t want, including roads cutting through the land.  Again, there are alternate routes”!

Pollock continued, saying “Grid United has stated that going around Heartland would add roughly 25 miles to the project.  It would be MUCH better to go around Heartland. They keep acting like going through Heartland is a ‘win’ for wildlife.  It’s not a win.  It would subdivide an approximately 45,000 acre property – fragmenting it into two chunks. They call it the ‘least impactful option’ but in fact they just don’t want to pay the money to go around.  I wish I could sit down with Bryant and have an honest conversation, where we could discuss the other routes and I could ask him why they aren’t pursuing them. They are targeting us and I don’t know why.  When we did talk that one time in 2024, we asked the CEO of Grid United ‘Is any other way to do this including options like going underground or using other routes’? and we were told ‘No, it is too expensive.’.  That’s their bottom line but you can’t put a price on wildlife”.

“There is also the educational factor of Heartland Ranch” he said.  “This year alone, we’ve had students in multiple college courses come out, including CSU-Pueblo, Otero college and Western Colorado University.  We collaborate with the Smithsonian, the World Wildlife Federation, and dozens of universities doing research projects. This is not just a place where wildlife can thrive – we also want to study and understand how best to preserve these species.  As part of our restoration efforts, we employ local youth corps who, along with volunteers, replant willows and reseed old fields”.

Asked about SPLT’s immediate plans as they await any legal decisions, he told me “Our hope is that, through awareness, we can get them (Grid United) to have honest conversations with us about the impacts and alternative routes. We only found out about the July 29th hearing because people in the community told us about it.  Now we’re in this semantic battle – but we didn’t say anything that isn’t true.  They are trying to spin it and it’s frustrating.   If they obtain public power to condemn, all we can do is get the most monetary value for the land for the conservation. We just want people to know the truth, which is that we would be willing to talk with them to negotiate and have an open conversation about other routes that don’t go through this property.

In the meantime, I want to focus on the positive things SPLT does, not focus on the energy company or make them out to be the big, bad enemy.  The real message is that what we are doing is important, is affecting lot of people, and is beneficial for restoration conservation. This is not just about the land and protecting the land – that’s important – but it’s about all the things that go on there and everything we’re trying to build as an organization.  The majority of the prairie species will have some negative impact from this, whether it’s bison or bumblebees”.

More information about SPLT and their work can be found at www.southernplains.org

By: Barbara Crimond