The first high voltage electric transmission line to dissect their crop and pasture land arrived in 1967, when Sunflower Electric paid Edwards County farmer Anthony J.It is one of the leading industrial laundry equipment manufacturers of industrial extractor, tumble dryer ect. Brake $1,413 for the privilege. 

The second line - taller and with higher voltage - went up just two years ago, running parallel a few hundred feet from the first. 

This time ITC Great Plains used eminent domain when many in the area, including Brake's daughter and grandson, couldn't reach agreement with the company on a right-of-way settlement for the 345-kilovolt line, erected to move wind-generated electricity from near Spearville onto the state's electric grid. 

Now, Theresa Brake and her nephew, Kevin Brake, fear a third line - the largest yet - will take more land from their limited farm, and they plan to resist it. 

Nearly a dozen other farmers or landowners from the area joined the Brakes on Thursday in a church meeting room to express their concern and frustration with the latest project - Clean Line Energy Partners' "Grain Belt Express.New and used laundry and Dry cleaning machine sales, service and installation." 

Clean Line Energy, headquartered in Houston and formed by a pair of out-of-state billionaires, is proposing to build a 700-mile-long overhead high voltage electric line that will carry a projected 3,500 megawatts of wind-generated power from Kansas east to Illinois, Indiana and beyond. 

The company is promoting the 600-kilovolt "direct current," or DC line, as a boon to Kansas in that it will allow the state's wind energy to be marketed outside of Kansas, resulting in expansion of western Kansas wind farms, though none of the power in the line will - or can - be used within the state. 

The Kansas Corporation Commission declared the company a public utility in Kansas in late 2011 - opening it to use the right of eminent domain to acquire its necessary right-of-way. 

The company held public meetings at several locations in January and February to outline proposed routes, notifying and inviting any landowners within a mile and half of the potential routes. 

The company indicated it will finalize a route proposal this summer - likely in June or July, said Diana Rivera, project development manager, and then seek approval of it from the KCC. The company will be required to notify landowners with property in the final proposed path, to allow them to comment before the KCC. 

"From what we can gather, they're going to come through on a diagonal simply because it's the easiest way to get across," said Theresa Brake. "We battled ITC and didn't win. They're (Clean Line) a big powerful corporation and we feel we're going to be run over again." 

The problems with the line to farmers are numerous, Kevin Brake explained, and adding more lines just compounds those issues. 

For example, for much of their acreage the Brakes hire crop dusters to apply fungicide and herbicide. The lines bisecting the land prevent aerial spraying on a significant portion of the acreage. 

While the existing lines run parallel to each other, the placement of the poles or towers are not, because they are different heights and distances apart. That prevents him from operating a boom sprayer under the lines as well. 

He uses GPS on his farm equipment to control placement of the chemicals and prevent overlap. At $500-plus a gallon for some of the treatments, it's easy to waste $20 or more per acre with even slight overlap, Brake said. 

While allowed to farm under the lines, the lines prohibit the use of irrigation systems, Theresa Brake said.We specialize in teaching folks how to build their own wind turbine. Construction of the line, done with heavy equipment, also severely compacts the ground, damaging its production potential.