Responding to criticism from Clark County homeowners, the Bonneville Power Administration is considering a new plan to run a proposed high-voltage transmission line through less-populated areas to the east.
BPA has yet to disclose the specific location for this new eastern alternative route, however.
A Bonneville official said Tuesday morning that BPA is planning to release a revised map, which would include the new eastern segment, in August.
“We’re considering revising the most easterly route to minimize impacts to families,” said Mark Korsness, BPA’s project manager.
The proposal is for the first major upgrade to the transmission system in Southwest Washington in four decades. The prospect of 500-kilovolt power lines, strung across towers as tall as 15-story buildings, has galvanized thousands of Clark County residents who have rallied to urge Bonne-ville to find another way.
An eastern route would carry the line predominantly through forest land owned by industrial forestry companies and the state Department of Natural Resources. Officials seem to have ruled out the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, which lies farther to the east on the Clark-Skamania county line.
Ron Freeman, the public services director for the Gifford Pinchot headquarters in Vancouver, said he received a call from Bon-neville a month ago. He said BPA asked about the possibility of using national forest land around Silver Star mountain, a largely roadless area popular with hikers.
“I got the impression they needed to ask the questions and check off the box,” Freeman said. “We suggested the DNR foothills down below, which are roaded and not as steep.”
A BPA spokesman said the agency is considering a variety of alterations to the 48 distinct segments it previously disclosed, as well as the as-yet unspecified route to the east.
“We’re talking to DNR and numerous other large landowners there to the east,” said Doug Johnson, a BPA spokesman in Portland. “We just want to make sure we talk to anybody who could be potentially impacted.”
Johnson said the agency expects to select a preferred alignment by early August.
BPA officials say the line, which will connect new substations in Castle Rock and Troutdale, Ore., is 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 contend that the line upgrade wouldn’t be necessary were it not for new demands by energy companies outside the region to push electrons between Canada and California.
U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., sent a letter Tuesday to BPA administrator Steve Wright calling on Bonneville to identify a path “that impacts the least number of people in Southwest Washington as possible.”
Murray was instrumental in providing Bonneville with $3.25 billion in additional borrowing authority to upgrade its transmission grid throughout the Northwest. Many of those line improvements will carry new sources of wind power through sparsely populated areas east of the Cascades. The 70-mile I-5 Corridor Reinforcement Project through suburban Clark County has engendered a much greater backlash from neighbors.
“I understand the Bonneville Power Administration believes this project is essential to help keep the lights on for the residents of Southwest Washington while at the same time provide much-needed additional capacity for future economic growth,” Murray wrote. “At the same time, I share the concerns, particularly around route locations, that many of my constituents have raised regarding this project.”
One area resident said she was gratified by Murray’s support, but disappointed that the senator seemed to adopt BPA’s language in expressing the necessity to build the line.
“I think it’s absolutely wonderful she’s finally responded in some manner,” said Leslie Bell, who coordinated a recent rally outside BPA offices in Vancouver. “However, I do feel like it’s very, very soft.”
Bonneville has fielded thousands of complaints from neighbors worried about the health effects of an electromagnetic field generated by a line radiating roughly twice as much energy as existing BPA transmission lines crisscrossing the county. Also, the visual prospect of a new power line strung along towers as tall as 150 feet has generated a backlash among neighbors.
Neighbors have pressed BPA officials to consider alternative routes through largely forested land on the Oregon side of the Columbia River, farther east through mostly state and federal timberland, or underground. The agency expects this summer to narrow relatively wide alternative corridors to more narrowly defined routes where the lines might actually run.
A final decision on the project, estimated to cost $342 million, is currently planned for 2012.
Erik Robinson: 360-735-4551 or erik.robinson@columbian.com.
