A federal appeals court has cleared the way for utilities to finish building a high-voltage power line across a Mississippi River refuge. American Transmission Company, ITC Midwest and Dairyland Power Cooperative are in the final stages of constructing a 102-mile transmission line linking Iowa’s Dubuque County and Wisconsin’s Dane County. About a mile of the line would cross the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge near Cassville, Wisconsin. A coalition of conservation groups filed a federal lawsuit in March in hopes of stopping the crossing. A three-judge panel from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down that injunction.
