DAKOTA CITY – The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors heard from several landowners during Monday’s board meeting concerning temporary accesses constructed during work on a new electrical transmission line.

About 12 residents attended the hearing.

The MidAmerican Energy Multi-Value Project 3 transmission project involves installing new transmission lines through Clay, Humboldt, Kossuth, O’Brien, Palo Alto, and Webster counties. The new line passes through Humboldt County from north to south through Humboldt, Grove and Beaver townships.

To install the new poles, EC Source Services LLC, of Story City, was granted permission by the supervisors to construct temporary accesses.

County Engineer Paul Jacobson refrains from calling the accesses driveways.

“Although accesses were constructed as temporary and do not meet Humboldt County entrance policy, the Board of Supervisors has received some requests to keep them as permanent driveways,” Jacobson said.

The engineer’s office sent a questionnaire to all of the landowners involved, asking for their input.

Under the permit, all the accesses were to be removed and the land restored to its previous state after construction was completed. If there was a driveway already in place previously it would be restored.

EC Source Services Assistant Project Manager Tim Warren, of Dakota City, said it was the company’s understanding that all the accesses would be temporary.

“At the conclusion of the project our intention was to pull everything out, get rid of everything, have everything restored back to its original,” he said. “Our intent was not to be leaving these as full-time accesses. That was never our intent.”

Assistant County Engineer Dave Powell said there are 57 accesses. He said some landowners have two accesses.

So far, 19 out of 36 landowners responded to the questionnaire, he said.

About eight of the landowners asked to keep the accesses. Monday was the cutoff date to respond.

Some landowners questioned the reasoning of tearing out perfectly good driveways.

“I have walked every single driveway out there,” Supervisor Rick Pedersen said.

While a few of them have issues he said, “A lot of them are very good driveways.”

He thinks the board should make exceptions for landowners who want to keep them, he said.

County Attorney Jon Beaty said there were public hearings at the start of the process and there was little public input then.

“None of this should be a surprise for any of these people,” he said.

Supervisor Bruce Reimers said some people may have become more interested once they actually saw the driveways.

Jacobson said at some point EC Source Services is going to be removing accesses and they will want to know which ones to leave and which ones to pull.

If a landowner wants to keep the access as a driveway they would have to pay to bring the access into compliance with county policy.

However it is up to the county to keep the driveway maintained, Jacobson said.

Landowners who desire to keep an access need to contact Powell prior to the next hearing on Sept. 21. Otherwise the access will be removed.