Rowan generates calls from power producers.

• Position: Brief Article

They lack the cachet of earth, wind and fire: pipelines, power lines and river. Nevertheless, those factors, and market forces, are coming together in Rowan County to turn an otherwise unlikely location into a billion-dollar energy hot spot.

In March, county commissioners approved a $38 million electricity plant, to be built in the western Rowan community of Cleveland by New Orleans-based Entergy Corp. It will be near a $250 million plant that Raleigh-based Progress Energy Inc. -- formerly CP&L -- will begin operating this summer. In eastern Rowan, Charlotte-based Duke Energy Corp. is considering expanding its Buck Steam Plant, near Interstate 85 on the Yadkin River. The Progress and Entergy plants, together creating 50 jobs, will use natural-gas-fueled turbines. So would the Duke expansion. All would operate only during peak-demand times.

The impact? "Basically $1 billion in virtually cost-free tax base for us," says Steve Blount, chairman of the Rowan County Board of Commissioners. "If all three go as expected, they'll add one-sixth to our entire tax base at almost no cost to our infrastructure -- no new schools, roads, health departments."

Critics include residents of the rural community where the Entergy plant is proposed, off U.S. 70 between Salisbury and Statesville. "There's been all this talk about preservation of farmlands, but the county has refused to even address that or environmental questions," Carol Satterwhite says. She and her husband, Tom, a retired Air Force pilot, live beside the site.

Opponents contend the turbines, similar to jet engines, will create noise and pollution. They also say the boost to the tax base is overblown. Entergy will get $5.7 million in incentives and property-tax breaks over five years. Progress received a similar five-year package, slightly smaller because it, unlike Entergy, is a public utility.

Why has Rowan caught the fancy of power companies? Its location -- along with energy deregulation and changing technology. Manassas, Va.based Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Corp.'s major East Coast pipeline runs through the middle of the county, and the Duke plant became the hub of a massive power-line grid after it was completed in the 1950s. The Yadkin River provides water for cooling gas-fired turbines. Little of the power generated in Rowan will be used there. Entergy and Progress can make more selling it in out-of-state unregulated markets, but they need access to the grid to transmit it.

Peak-demand plants cost less than the $1 billion-and-up full-scale ones, whose capacity is untapped much of the time. "This...