BPA drops Hockinson-area route for power line
Protesters gathered a week ago today in a park near the Portland headquarters of the Bonneville Power Administration. Today, the federal power marketing agency announced it was dropping one controversial corridor from consideration for a high-voltage transmission line between Castle Rock and Troutdale, Ore.
Originally published December 21, 2009 at 12:14 p.m., updated December 21, 2009 at 9:02 p.m.
Bowing to vociferous public dissent, the Bonneville Power Administration dropped one possible route for a new high-voltage transmission line cutting through Clark County.
The BPA dropped four segments — numbered as 27, 31, 42 and 44 — that followed an old Pacific Power easement running from Chelatchie Prairie through Hockinson to Camas. The vacant corridor cuts through neighborhoods with hundreds of homes, including some of the most expensive residential real estate in Southwest Washington.
The 100-foot-wide PacifiCorp easement dates to 1957, and was envisioned for a much smaller power line than the high-voltage line Bonneville says it needs.
“There are just too many homes in the way,” said Mark Korsness, BPA’s project manager.
Officials will now concentrate on the remaining 48 segments under consideration. BPA officials say the upgrade is necessary due to increasing congestion on its transmission grid, especially between Seattle and Portland.
Bonneville spokesman Doug Johnson said that it was prudent for BPA to consider the old Pacific Power easement. “It made perfect sense to put it on the table to look at it, to analyze it,” he said.
However, the backlash was significant.
Hockinson-area resident Richard Carson responded to the proposal by organizing neighbors, starting a Web site and mounting an independent campaign for the state Legislature. Even though BPA continues to examine other alternatives for the transmission line, he said he’s pleased with Bonneville’s decision to eliminate the route near his house.
“That’s great,” said Carson, a former director of the county’s Department of Community Development. “It’s not a concern for the 500 properties that are on route 31. That’s a relief.”
Galvanized by the prospect of living next to a high-voltage transmission line carried along towers the size of 15-story buildings, hundreds of residents turned out for public meetings and submitted comments opposing the proposal. Interest was far more intense for its I-5 Corridor Reinforcement Project than other recent transmission upgrades, which typically occur in sparsely populated areas east of the Cascades.
The agency received more than 3,000 comments in a preliminary “scoping” process that closed Dec. 14.
“Our goal is to have an open process with the public, so we appreciate getting the comments and learning about the issues that people want to share with us,” Korsness said. “But it’s not a vote.”
Last week, during a protest at Bonneville headquarters in Portland, Korsness told a group of several dozen Clark County residents that the agency would review the alternatives and then amend, add or remove segments as soon as March. The agency surprised some area residents by dropping the Hockinson line now.
“This was the low-hanging fruit,” Korsness said.
Richard van Dijk, another Hockinson-area resident who helped organize opposition, said he and others will continue to press BPA to shift the line away from populated areas. He emphasized alternatives such as routing the line west through Oregon, east through forested tracts of public land in Washington, or underground.
He wasn’t surprised BPA dropped the Pacific Power easement Monday, given the number of houses crowding up against the old Pacific Power easement.
“The further you got to Camas, the more encroached it was,” van Dijk said. “It would have really devastated the county from a tax perspective.”
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