ComEd Grand Prairie approval to shutter Burlington business

As a clinical social worker, Deborah Hirschberg knows the stages of grief well. She began to live the stages herself when plans for ComEd's Grand Prairie Gateway threatened to erect new power towers carrying 345,000 volts within 150 feet of her Burlington-based practice.

First, she and her business partner hired an attorney to fight the plan. They were in denial that the $200 million project would affect their business, because an administrative law judge issued a nonbinding ruling indicating ComEd needed to provide more alternate routes in its plan.

But at the end of October they learned the Illinois Commerce Commission approved the path of the new power lines without revision to the segment that approaches their Hope Reins Equine Therapy Facility at White Oak Acres. And Hirschberg got mad.

“I'm so angry about the injustice,” Hirschberg said. “We went through all this garbage and the ruling completely disregarded that judge's recommendation. The ICC did not do what it was called to do, which is protect its citizens.”

More than 50 taxing bodies, including Kane County and Elgin, formally opposed the path of the 60-mile route from Ogle through DeKalb, Kane and DuPage counties. There were also several neighborhood groups between the Byron and Wayne substations that will be connected by the project that fought the plan.

Even some individual properties, like White Oak Acres, hired attorneys to try to prevent new power lines from crossing over, through or near their land.

It didn't work. Now Hirschberg must find a new location for her business and hope her clients follow.

Acknowledging that fact was a devastating blow, Hirschberg moved her practice once before and lost most of her client base in the transition. She wants to stay near to her current location, but she said it's hard to find places suited for pairing horses with clients managing autism, depression or anxiety in a therapeutic setting.

But she's accepted that's the challenge now facing her.

“We were pretty shocked and devastated at first,” Hirschberg said. “But we're committed to making sure this doesn't disrupt our clients. We know what we do works. We don't want to let them go.”

Part of accepting the reality of the move also means accepting that a change in her business model is now necessary for survival. Her for-profit practice will look to file for not-for-profit status in hopes of raising outside funds that will cushion the blow of relocating and likely selling the current location at a loss. Hirschberg has not yet found a new location.

Construction of the Grand Prairie Gateway is slated to begin in the second quarter of 2015 and be in service in 2017.

ComEd Executive Vice President Terence Donnelly said in a written statement that the new transmission lines are necessary to improve customer service.

“As the competitive electricity market expands, transmission lines become congested over time, just like highways do as the communities around them grow,” Donnelly said. “This congestion impedes the flow of low-cost energy, increasing the cost of delivering that energy to our customers, and we're obligated to solve that problem. We are pleased that the commission has recognized the need for this important new line, which will offset those increases just as soon as it's energized.”