It’s a textbook example of corporate obfuscation: First, tell people you’re going to build power lines through their valley in order to provide for their future electricity needs. Next, propose several different routes as part of an elaborate shell game to keep public opposition from building against any one route. Then develop arbitrary “siting criteria” any route must conform to — criteria that, when applied, only fit the routes you’ve already proposed. Finally, solicit gallons of input from the public, accepting any suggestions in line with what you want to do.

Rocky Mountain Power has gone through all these machinations and more in planning its Mona to Oquirrh transmission line, which will run through Tooele Valley. The company can point to several meetings, Web sites, public documents and newspaper articles as evidence they have conducted an exhaustive public outreach program to inform residents about the project. But the noise of all that “communication” is really the sound of a community being railroaded.

RMP has talked a lot but it hasn’t listened or reacted to residents concerns in any significant way. In fact, several government leaders have said the company has basically ignored their painstaking efforts to devise an alternative route that would avoid building transmission towers along Tooele’s undeveloped southeast benches.

Tooele City Mayor Patrick Dunlavy said of the company, “It became apparent at the last couple of meetings that their deadlines were coming up and that they had basically, in my opinion, not really negotiated in good faith.” Tooele County Commissioner Jerry Hurst seconded that opinion, saying, “I don’t know what kind of game we’re playing here, but I don’t like it.”

Comments like those make us very cynical about RMP’s public outreach campaign. It appears this company came to the Tooele Valley with a specific plan in mind, and no amount of local opposition was ever going to be enough to dissuade them.

Well, sorry, Rocky Mountain Power, but your Tooele benches route simply doesn’t meet our siting criteria. Our hillsides mean too much to us. In fact, city officials have fought hard this decade to keep our hillsides open so that we don’t repeat the overdevelopment mistakes that have blighted large areas of the Wasatch Front. We aren’t about to sacrifice one of the most beautiful and defining characteristics of this valley without a fight.

And this fight isn’t over yet.