The Towers Are for Power. The Motive Is Control.

They call it progress. But what’s really happening in Jerome County, Twin Falls County, and across the Magic Valley is the quiet dismantling of property rights, public trust, and local control. The Southwest Intertie Project, or SWIP, isn’t just a high-voltage transmission line. It’s a 285-mile energy corridor engineered for California’s grid, paid for with Idaho land, and rubber-stamped using permits older than many of the families now living in its path. This isn’t a planning process. It’s a coordinated takedown. Global corporations want control of the land. Tech giants need the power. Financial interests see profit. And government officials, either asleep or complicit, are clearing the way. They’re using outdated permits and legal pressure to force it through, hoping no one will notice until it’s too late.

The project still relies on legal groundwork from the early 1990s. The federal Record of Decision was finalized in November 1994, and many of the private easements being enforced today were secured between 1991 and 1994. That was over 30 years ago — back when I was in junior high and had barely started hitting puberty. These documents, signed under different conditions and often with little public scrutiny, are now being treated as legally sufficient to justify the construction of 500-kilovolt towers through family farms, residential land, and historic areas.

Since that time, the Magic Valley has changed dramatically. Farms have passed hands, new homes have gone up, families have moved in, and entire communities have grown around land they believed was safe. But none of that mattered when Great Basin Transmission, a subsidiary of LS Power, and Idaho Power marched into a public hearing armed with outdated paperwork and told us, with a straight face, that we had no say.

One resident testified that he was in the process of getting a pacemaker, and that a tower would be located roughly 50 yards from his home. He said that when he bought the property eight years ago, there was no indication of a high-voltage transmission line in his paperwork. During rebuttal, representatives from Great Basin Transmission stated that the easement on his parcel dated back to 1991, and the only response they received from him was a text message asking them not to contact him again.

This was a recurring concern throughout the hearing. Several residents testified that they had never received direct or meaningful notice about the project. Some said they only learned about the transmission line days before the public meeting. Others stated that their property records contained no mention of Great Basin Transmission, only references to Idaho Power. A few discovered the issue through neighbors or word of mouth. What many thought was a minor notification turned out to be the gateway for a billion-dollar project—advanced through decades-old legal documents and state laws that now shield utilities from meaningful opposition.

That’s where Idaho Code 31-881 comes in, a law passed in 2023 under House Bill 106. At first glance, the bill looked harmless, even helpful. In reality, HB 106 was never about infrastructure. It was designed to protect consumers from being forced into all-electric or renewable-only utility connections by local governments. The law applies to service connections, not the siting of transmission lines or energy corridors. There’s no language in HB 106 about land use, permitting, or zoning authority. The idea that it strips counties like Jerome of their power to deny a special use permit is a misinterpretation—or worse, an intentional misuse of the law.

And this is the deeper problem. We pass bills with the best of intentions, but we don’t always think through how those bills will play out five, ten, or thirty years down the road. Or how they’ll be used by those with the money and the motive to stretch them to their advantage. That’s what’s happening now. A law written to protect Idahoans is being used to silence them. A policy meant to preserve access is being used to override consent. This is how liberty erodes. Not all at once, but in small, quiet rulings no one thought to challenge until it’s too late.

But the people of the Magic Valley did challenge it. They stood up. A veterinary student warned that electrical interference could corrupt medical equipment and livestock diagnostics. A ranching family described how their drone systems and irrigation equipment fail under the current lines. Another resident explained how he’s been shocked while working on fencing. And yet, all of it was brushed aside with boilerplate. The project is “in compliance with national safety standards.” We’ve heard that line before. Trust the science. Trust the codes. Trust the process. But we’ve also learned that science can be bought, codes can be manipulated, and process can be used as a shield to justify nearly anything. As long as the paperwork is in order.

And it’s not Idahoans who benefit. Idaho Power will control just under a quarter of the SWIP line’s capacity. The remaining three‑quarters will flow south—largely to California, Nevada, and other markets with higher buying power. Meaning most of the benefit, and all of the cost and disruption, are being exported out of Idaho. The energy leaves. The damage stays. Our land is compromised. Our skies are marred. Our property values fall. And then we get the bill. Because the truth is, this project isn’t about reliability or local need. It’s about open market sales, federal subsidies, and exporting power to the highest bidder while Idahoans are left with higher rates, damaged land, and fewer rights.

We’re told burying the line isn’t feasible. It costs too much. But if California is buying the power, let California pay the price for the infrastructure that delivers it. Idaho shouldn’t have to sacrifice its communities to support someone else’s grid. And if this is really about the public good, why hide the project behind outdated permits, federal legal shields, and undisclosed archeological records?

And maybe it’s time we start telling the whole truth. Because this isn’t just about an electric line. It’s not just about outdated permits or private easements. It’s not even just about Jerome or Twin Falls Counties. This is about Idaho, and what it’s being turned into. While they distract us with talk of resiliency and economic development, something much bigger is being built behind the scenes. A Google data center in Caldwell. A Meta campus in Kuna. Micron’s massive expansion in Boise. These projects will consume more power than our farms, our schools, and our small towns combined. They are power-hungry, always-on, and tied directly to the next frontier: artificial intelligence.

AI doesn’t sleep. It doesn’t cycle. It needs constant voltage and endless bandwidth. That’s the real driver behind the transmission gold rush. Not your power bill or your reliability. And the elites building this digital empire aren’t putting the infrastructure in their own backyard. They’re putting it in ours.

And here we are. Watching the landscape change. Watching billion-dollar projects like SWIP carve through farmland that’s been in families for generations. Watching the state government pass laws like HB106 that override local control. Watching county commissions get boxed in by legal threats and federal carve-outs. And no one, not even those of us in elected office, can seem to stop it.

I know that even by writing this, utility companies and their allies will take note. They will use your money, your ratepayer dollars, to build a campaign against me. They will work behind the scenes to discredit this message, pressure local officials, and ultimately try to remove me from office. Not because I lied, but because I told the truth. Because I took a stand for the people I represent instead of going along to get along. But I didn’t run for office to play it safe. I ran because I care about this state. I care about its people. And I am willing to do the right thing, even when it costs me personally. Re-election doesn’t matter if we lose the ability to govern ourselves. What matters is that someone is willing to say it—plainly, clearly, and now—before it’s too late.

This isn’t just about one transmission line. It’s about the path Idaho is being pushed down. The Southwest Intertie Project is only the beginning. It is a visible sign of something much larger. Control is quietly shifting away from the people who live here and toward corporations, data systems, and decision-makers who never set foot in our communities. Every acre seized, every voice ignored, every law bent to serve power instead of the people is part of that shift. The time to draw the line is now. Because if we wait until it’s mandatory, we’ve already lost.

Now is the time to BE BOLD, BE BRAVE, BE FREE.