HUNTLEY – The decade-long legal battle between the Kreutzer family of Huntley and Commonwealth Edison has ended. The final event was not in favor of the Kreutzer family.
An Illinois Appellate court recently ruled in favor of ComEd in the utility’s effort to place several power transmission line towers on Kreutzer family property along the south side of Kreutzer Road.
A house that stood for generations on landnow lays in rubble at the approaching power
lines. The house sat on land the Kreutzer family has owned since 1868.
A formerly rented farmhouse on the south side of the road, near the current home of Frances Kreutzer, was recently demolished to make room for the utility’s construction crews.
“The house was rented out for a while but was vacant for the last several months,” William Byrne, Frances Kreutzer’s son-in-law, said.
ComEd now will proceed to complete installation of towers and lines from Huntley Road westward along the south side of Kreutzer and then northwest along the Union Pacific Railroad tracks near one of the village’s industrial/business parks.
ComEd officials say the project will expand the utility’s ability to react favorably to storms that have caused power outages and provide more long-term power resources to the Huntley area, including Sun City.
“We fought against their plan to locate the towers on our property as long as we could,” Byrne said. “Unfortunately, all of the authorities in the state agreed with ComEd’s preferred plan. We still believe there was a cheaper and better route that wouldn’t have impacted our property and other residential areas of the village. ComEd didn’t even use its own land; they decided to use ours, which they acquired through legal action.”
The dispute over the location of these towers, which also initially involved the Village of Huntley, began more than a decade ago.
Despite village objections to the Kreutzer route and recommendations that ComEd use a route farther south along Powers Road, the Illinois Commerce Commission approved ComEd’s Kreutzer route. The Kreutzer family filed an appeal to the decision, which was resolved in favor of ComEd in recent weeks.
“We’ve been pursuing this legal appeal since sometime late in 2006,” Byrne said. “We based our case on the fact that ComEd had a cheaper option. We believed it made sense. But unfortunately, the court didn’t agree.”
The road is named after the Kreutzer family, which were among the original settlers that came to the Huntley area in the late 1800s.
