Clark County may soon see longer and more frequent power outages, as the Bonneville Power Administration and region’s Army Corps of Engineers lose hundreds of employees after actions by the second Trump administration to reduce the size of the federal workforce.
Corps leadership this week submitted the names of 157 probationary employees from the Portland district expected to be fired, according to a current employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The Army Corps of Engineers Portland district owns and operates 21 locks and dams on the Columbia, Willamette and Rogue rivers, according to the district’s website. The district encompasses most of Oregon and Southwest Washington.
The Corps also has a role in the review and approval of permits and permissions that the new Interstate 5 bridge designer and builder will need to acquire in order proceed with construction.
The employee said district leadership asked the Trump administration to spare the jobs of all 157 employees but that request has been met with silence.
This comes a week after mass probationary firings at the region’s top power provider, BPA.
About 13 percent of BPA’s workforce has departed the agency in the past few weeks, according to data provided by Scott Simms, CEO and executive director at the Public Power Council. The council represents the region’s consumer-owned utilities, including Clark Public Utilities.
BPA markets electricity primarily from the federally owned hydroelectric dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers and manages about 15,000 miles of transmission lines across Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and California — about 80 percent of the region’s total, according to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
Clark Public Utilities gets about 60 percent of its power from BPA. The utility declined to comment on what it thinks the BPA’s workforce reduction could mean for Clark County.
“As far as I’m concerned, Bonneville was already short-handed,” said Jim Malinowski, who recently retired from Clark Public Utilities’ board of commissioners.
BPA Administrator John Hairston said in a BPA quarterly business call Feb. 13 that about 200 of the agency’s roughly 3,000 employees had accepted a federal offer to resign but continue to be paid through September. That number is now thought to include people who took early retirement, Simms told The Columbian.
BPA also had job offers out to 90 people, which were all rescinded as part of the Trump administration’s hiring freeze, Joel Scruggs, BPA chief communications officer, said during the call.
On Feb. 13 and 14, the Trump administration and Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, took steps to fire probationary federal employees who had worked for the government in their current positions for less than a year, potentially longer for some positions. The probationary firings appear to be continuing, based on information provided by the Army Corps of Engineers employee.
Simms said he believes somewhere between 100 and 200 BPA staff members were fired. As many as 400 were thought to be in the Trump administration’s crosshairs, including engineers, electricians, line workers, and those scheduling hydropower and electricity transmission.
As federal employees are currently barred from speaking publicly with those outside of their agencies, the exact number of BPA employees impacted by the mass firing is difficult to assess.
Simms also said the move was walked back last weekend when about 30 employees deemed critical to the agency were rehired.
Malinowski said the BPA employees shouldn’t have been fired in the first place.
“Experienced employees are invaluable,” he said. “What they’re doing is losing people with the experience and knowledge about how to operate the system.”
He fears these workers will be difficult to replace.
Based on national media reports, the federal probationary employee firings are believed to be part of the administration’s efforts to save money. But BPA is fully funded by its customers, including Clark Public Utilities.
“It has no impact on the national debt,” Malinowski said.
Malinowski said he thinks the reduction could lead to longer and more frequent power outages.
“Bonneville hasn’t got the capacity to deal with weather extremes and the effect on loads that’s coming due to climate change,” he said.
Simms is also concerned about BPA’s cuts.
There are inherent risks in running a large, complex electrical system, Simms said. That risk grows with a reduced workforce.
He hopes the utilities and BPA will be able to work together to address reliability issues.
“In the short term, we may have to readjust our expectations with what BPA does and the kinds of projects it’s working to advance,” he said.
Before the workforce cuts hit, BPA planned to expand its grid in response to increasing demand for power in the region.
“The Trump administration and our new Secretary of Energy Chris Wright have made it clear that it’s a national priority to increase the abundance of affordable, reliable and secure energy, to strengthen the grid and to enable the projects that will improve people’s lives,” Hairston said in the call last week. “This is exactly what we’re working toward here at BPA.”
In the fall, the agency proposed 13 new transmission substation and line projects to reinforce the Pacific Northwest’s electric grid.
Simms said he thinks BPA could contribute to the Trump administration’s goal to advance American energy dominance.
Simms and his fellow utility trade associations sent a letter to Wright on Feb. 13, discussing the importance of BPA and the other power marketing administrations across the country.
The power marketing administrations “serve as a cornerstone of our nation’s energy system, particularly in rural and otherwise underserved areas of the country, managing vast federal power and transmission networks that provide affordable and dispatchable electricity to multiple millions of homes and businesses,” the letter reads.
Editor’s note: This article was updated to correct the relationship between the Interstate Bridge Replacement Program and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
