Peninsula Homeowners vs. Consumers Energy: Long-Running Dispute Heads To MPSC Hearing

A years-long dispute between Consumers Energy and a group of local homeowners is escalating.

The Michigan Public Services Commission (MPSC) has granted a formal public hearing to a cadre of neighbors who reside at the base of Old Mission Peninsula. That group filed a complaint against Consumers earlier this summer, raising concerns about easements which give the utility broad latitude to cut down trees and restrict property rights. Consumers argues the easements are crucial for maintaining reliable power service to customers on Old Mission. Homeowners feel the utility has overreached and isn’t being transparent about future plans.

Christina LaMie, who lives on Peninsula Drive near Eastern Avenue, says the drama with Consumers started in 2017. That’s when the utility replaced a power line servicing the peninsula with a bigger, higher voltage line. At the time, Consumers grabbed modest easements, spanning 15-20 feet on either side of the lines.

Following a string of power outages around the state in 2021, the governor’s office and the MPSC began putting more pressure on utilities to improve grid reliability. Soon, Consumers was back on Old Mission, now seeking 80-foot easements on either side of their lines.

According to Heather Shaw, a city commissioner who lives on West Orchard Drive, Consumers sent documents in 2023 asking property owners to sign over their easement rights for a dollar. Many neighbors refused. Recently, the utility sent the same document again.

“There’s a few thousand dollars in there for trees, depending on who you are and when you got the offer, but the $1 for the easement has not changed,” Shaw tells The Ticker.

Beyond requiring the removal or trimming of trees, the easements give Consumers “the right of unimpeded ingress and egress” to the property and also restrict most types of land improvements – including sheds, outbuildings, septic systems, wells, and swimming pools. Recent communications from Consumers also demanded personal information from affected homeowners, including whether they work out of their homes, if they “grow, manufacture, or sell any products” on their land, and details about anyone renting, leasing, or buying any part of their property.

Shaw says things came to a head this spring when an “elderly neighbor had to go into assisted living and needed to sell her house right away.”

“Our attorney had a fit about it, because he didn't want her to sell her house; he wanted to force Consumers to buy it, because the easement is gobbling up like 80 percent of the property,” Shaw says. “The neighbor ultimately lowered the price by $50,000, and then added a coda to the buyer's agreement, acknowledging that the price was lowered specifically because of this ongoing uncertainty and essentially saying the buyer’s family would continue to fight Consumers.”

The MPSC complaint followed shortly thereafter, with homeowners asking the agency for more “public oversight” of Consumers. Residents claim they should have been notified when the power lines were upgraded that Consumers might return later to seek “dramatically expanded easements.” The complaint also asks whether property owners received “sufficient engineering justification and transparency” from Consumers to prove that the expanded easements are “reasonably necessary”; and whether Consumers explored “alternative routes, underground options, or narrower easement configurations” to reduce impacts on property owners.

Initial responses to the complaint from the MPSC and Consumers argued the easement dimensions “are consistent with Consumers Energy's long-standing standards for high-voltage distribution (HVD) easements of this nature,” and that Consumers “has identified the need for additional vegetation management rights on this line to bring them up to HVD standards.” Per Consumers, “falling trees and branches are the single largest cause for power outages” across the utility’s electrical system, and HVD easements “are intended to support the safe and reliable operation of the electric grid to the benefit of all customers...”

“Consumers’ response refers generally to ‘HVD’ standards, but this line has been described to residents as a 46-kilovolt (kV) line,” Shaw fired back. “Please confirm the voltage of this specific line and provide Consumers’ written standard for easement width, vegetation clearance, no-build area, and danger-tree rights for a 46 kV single wood pole line in an urban residential setting.”

Shaw says she received a subsequent response from the MPSC, “granting us a formal hearing before an administrative law judge.” She’s now working with her group’s attorney “on the strongest way to frame the complaint.”

While neighbors are hopeful the MPSC will intervene and rein Consumers in, they fear the utility’s ability to invoke eminent domain will make for a steep uphill battle, with their property values and privacy hanging in the balance.

For her part, LaMie is mostly hoping for some transparency.

“I have a feeling something bigger is coming,” she says. “We’re all concerned about the level of voltage Consumers might be planning on putting in [in the future], but they will not answer any of our questions, so we have no idea. All we know is they put the lines in a few years ago and now they're coming for our property. They call it an easement, but it's so restrictive it feels like they're seizing our property.”

Shaw concurs, noting that the Consumers employee who responded to her initial MPSC complaint was Lisa DeLacy, the company’s director of real estate.

“Consumers has real estate? Easements are real estate?” Shaw asks. “It seems that yes, our property becomes Consumers real estate once the easement is granted. When I responded directly to Ms. DeLacy, I suggested that, with an 80-foot easement covering 80 percent of my property, they should just buy it.”

Consumers declined The Ticker’s interview request for this story, instead providing the same written statement included in the utility’s response to Shaw’s MPSC complaint. Consumers media relations specialist Matt Johnson did not respond to follow-up questions about the utility’s standards for what constitutes an HVD line.

Photo credit: Christina LaMie