PGE’s New Power Line: Is This Something We Really Need?
In the past two weeks, Portland General Electric has held several public meetings about its plans for a new high voltage power line.
A view of Mt. Hood from Timothy Lake. Photo by K. Carpenter/U.S.G.S.
Called Cascade Crossing, PGE wants to build a 200-mile, double circuit, 500-kilovolt power line from Boardman to Salem. Along the way, it crosses two national forests and the Warm Springs reservation. If all goes according to plan, construction will begin in late 2012 and the power line will be operating during the first half of 2015.
Today, I had an interesting conversation with Amy Harwood of Bark, the group that acts as an environmental watchdog for the Mt. Hood National Forest. Like all of us, she’s just getting acquainted with the issue. Bark is withholding judgement on the power line until it gets more information. But her first impressions are worth passing along. They include questions all of us should be thinking about and asking. This story isn’t going away anytime soon.
Do We Really Need This Power Line?
PGE warns that our current transmission system to close to capacity. Despite the growth in population and the increased demand for electricity over the past 25 years, no new major power lines have been built. Without this power line, PGE says our grid may become unreliable, raising the odds of power outages or brown outs. It also says this line will help bring in more renewable energy from the wind farms in Eastern Oregon. It says that will help Oregon meet state mandates to get 15% of our power from renewable energy by 2015.
For now, Harwood is skeptical. “I start to get squirrelly on the reliability thing,” she admits. “A lot is being done in the name of reliability.” While not outright questioning the need for more lines, she’d like to see more attention paid to conserving energy and says some of the new projects being proposed may not be necessary. Some in the energy business, she says, are “operating on fear tactics.”
As we’ve seen recently, PGE isn’t the only company proposing a new power line in the area. The Bonneville Power Administration is looking at a 70-mile high voltage line in SW Washington and a 28-mile line that runs through the Columbia Gorge Scenic Area. In Eastern Oregon, Idaho Power wants to build a 300-plus mile high voltage line from Boardman to SW Idaho.
How Do Projects Like These Affect The Forest and Wildlife?
PGE says it wants to build this new power line along existing corridors. But Harwood says there’s too little information to see how that will be carried out. An energy corridor amounts to a path of clear cut through a forest. At best, PGE would expand a current corridor by several hundred feet. But Harwood says it could also mean a totally new path that just happens to be close to an existing one.
Harwood says energy corridors impact the forest in a number of ways. Creating a new path of clear cut makes it easier for invasive weeds to spread into the forest. Not only does it give them a foothold, but without tree cover the weeds thrive and become harder to control.
She says this will change the relationship between predator and prey. It creates more edge habitat that makes it easier for some predator species to hunt for food. This can have an impact on wildlife numbers.
The corridors interfere with the migration of large animals such as deer and elk. Harwood cites studies that show as wildlife moves from one site to another, they’re reluctant to cross these wide clear cut paths. In the winter, big mammals need trees and other cover to stay warm. Harwood says the end result is that these animals will have fewer options for habitat and tend to corral themselves into tighter groups.
Adding It All Up
It’s not just PGE that wants a piece of the forest. NW Natural is a partner in the Palomar Pipeline project. It’s proposing a pipeline that would run through the Mt. Hood National Forest to carry imported natural gas from an LNG terminal on the Columbia River to an interstate pipeline connection near Maupin.
Hardwood says Palomar is a good example of a bad plan. She says there’s no need to import natural gas and the pipeline route goes through old growth territory of the Northern Spotted Owl and other pristine forests around Mt. Hood.
Will PGE’s power line have a similar impact? Harwood says there’s simply not enough information out there yet.
But the demand for energy paths on public lands is likely to grow. Even the Obama Administration wants to speed up the process of siting these kinds of project.
Can Mt. Hood or any other National Forest handle all the new demands for power lines, pipelines and who knows what else?
As Harwood puts it, they “keep taking these little bites out of the forest.”
