A major new high-voltage transmission line would still cut a swath through Clark County, but the Bonneville Power Administration has updated its idea about where the route might run.
As expected, BPA added a new route running predominantly through state and industrial timberland on the east edge of Clark County.
Bonneville also has excised some route segments while adding others. It’s also added a couple of new options for the proposed northern terminus of the 500-kilovolt line, at a new substation near Castle Rock in Cowlitz County.
“The extensive public input we’ve received has helped us develop a wide range of alternative routes that include new options through less-populated areas,” BPA Administrator Steve Wright said in a prepared statement. “We know that this is a lengthy and trying process, but we need to make sure we get it right.”
Opponents aren’t declaring victory.
Leslie Bell, a Proebstel-area resident who serves as a director of Another Way BPA, said she’s already heard from residents of a gated community “livid” about the new easternmost route running near their properties.
“There is going to be a handful of people who breathe a sigh of relief,” Bell said. “However, there are going to be a lot of new people who are impacted now. It just causes a whole new wave of upset people.”
Bell said she is trying to convince the BPA to route the line through Oregon instead.
Wright is due to make a final decision on the project, previously estimated to cost $342 million, in 2012.
The ultimate alignment could change the cost, which BPA anticipates financing through enhanced borrowing authority granted by Congress last year. An alignment running through steep and remote timberland on the east edge of the county, for example, could be more expensive than lower-elevation routes farther west through heavily populated areas.
Bonneville officials said they will weigh the cost of each route against a variety of other factors including the human impact.
“That clearly seems to be one of the most prominent things we hear from landowners, elected officials and others who are chiming in on this,” said Doug Johnson, a BPA spokesman in Portland. “It’s something we’re keenly aware of.”
BPA has received thousands of comments from residents worried about health effects and the loss of property value.
Many of the proposed route segments include mile-wide corridors to provide plenty of space for BPA to select the most ideal spot for the ultimate 150-foot-wide easement.
Officials with the state Department of Natural Resources are not enthused about the possibility of running the line through state forests.
On Wednesday, the DNR generated a blog post reminding local residents that timber sales from state-owned timberland generate millions of dollars for schools, libraries and fire districts. Officials said a high-voltage transmission line would permanently remove a 150-foot-wide miles-long swath of timber from the state’s revenue base, while also complicating DNR’s ability to manage the surrounding forest.
The DNR noted that in the past four years, it has directed $3.7 million worth of timber revenue to the Battle Ground, Camas, Green Mountain and Hockinson school districts.
Aaron Everett, the DNR’s federal policy liaison, said the state will push Bonneville to compensate for future lost revenue “by all means available to us.”
Even so, state Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark recently accompanied Wright on a flight over the new route segments through state forestland in Clark County. State officials acknowledged that BPA is acting in response to a backlash from thousands of area residents who have demanded a route away from populated areas.
“We’re cognizant of all those impacts,” DNR spokesman Aaron Toso said. “At the same time, it’s our responsibility to look after the forest in the interest of the trust. That’s our job.”
The line will connect new substations near Castle Rock and Troutdale, Ore. Officials say it’s necessary because the existing regional grid has become dangerously congested.
Bonneville has had to reroute energy twice in recent summers, due partly to higher demand created by more widespread use of air conditioners in the Pacific Northwest.
However, some area residents argue that the line upgrade wouldn’t be necessary were it not for new demands by energy companies outside the region to push electricity between Canada and California.
Erik Robinson: 360-735-4551, or erik.robinson@columbian.com.
