A Kentucky circuit judge blocked East Kentucky Power Cooperative from seizing protected college woodland through eminent domain on April 2, 2026, handing Berea College a decisive victory in a battle over regional power infrastructure.
Circuit Judge Kristin Clouse rejected the utility's petition in a 14-page ruling in Madison Circuit Court. The company sought to carve an electricity transmission corridor across more than 1.5 miles of the 9,000-acre Berea College Forest. The utility failed. Judge Clouse ruled that the cooperative neglected to examine the specific terrain and ecological value of the institutional property before attempting to force a condemnation.
The utility refused to back down. East Kentucky Power Cooperative filed a formal notice of appeal with the Kentucky Court of Appeals later in April, pushing the fight into a higher venue.
The utility's planned Big Hill project called for an 8.3-mile high-voltage transmission line and a new substation to fortify electricity delivery across southeastern Madison County. To plot the line, the utility deployed EPRI-KY, a computer-assisted routing software designed to weigh geography, engineering constraints, and environmental data. Yet software modeling failed to substitute for physical reality.
Judge Clouse found that the cooperative relied on the automated system without conducting adequate field assessments of the college's active educational and environmental reserves. The planned path cut directly past historic geological sites, including East Pinnacle and Eagles' Nest, while encroaching on the college's dark-sky telescope observatory and the Windswept property. It also skirted the Owsley Fork Reservoir watershed, a vital system that supplies drinking water to the city of Berea and surrounding communities.
Critical landowner consultations occurred only after the utility had already locked in its preferred corridor. The court determined the utility failed to prove that the route avoided disproportionate and unnecessary destruction of academic and ecological resources. Berea College, which founded the forest for silviculture research, watershed management, and undergraduate instruction, did not contest the county's need for stable power. Instead, the institution challenged the utility's refusal to evaluate viable alternative pathways.
East Kentucky Power Cooperative maintained in filings that mounting regional electricity demand and grid stability requirements in southeastern Madison County justified the corridor. The dispute now sits before the Kentucky Court of Appeals, where judges will decide whether the utility's computer-generated route meets the statutory bar for public necessity.