Take a drive through the eastern and northern parts of Clark County, and it’s not unusual to see signs urging the Bonneville Power Administration to take its proposed transmission line project elsewhere.
Many of the signs have sat along local roads for years. It was late 2012, after all, when BPA announced its preferred route for the 500-kilovolt power line through Clark and Cowlitz counties. It was 2009 — more than five years ago — when the federal power marketing agency first floated the project.
Even if the plan has fallen off the public radar for some, it remains very much on the minds of residents who live on or near the proposed route. And the project continues to lurch forward, as officials prepare a final environmental impact statement that’s due out late this year.
BPA planners have spent much of the last two years on analysis and permitting work, said agency spokesman Doug Johnson, and going through more than 2,800 public comments on the draft environmental impact statement released in 2012.
“You’re talking about a lot of work,” Johnson said. “You’ve got a lot going on.”
The project has been delayed before. Previous schedules had the transmission line starting construction as early as 2013, with completion in 2015. Now, a final decision on the project isn’t expected until 2016 at the earliest.
Delays haven’t changed the opinions of residents who don’t want the high-powered transmission line, held up by 150-foot utility towers, to cut through their property. The long process has only added to the frustration of waiting in limbo, said Ray Richards, whose Dole Valley property sits along the proposed route.
“It’s an invasion of people’s property,” Richards said. “All of it is unnecessary when they have their own corridor they could be using.”
Richards is among those who feel BPA should build the transmission line along its existing federal right of way. In Clark County, that would send it into the Vancouver urban area and within 500 feet of thousands of homes. Instead, BPA chose a “central alternative” that crosses mostly rural parts of the county.
The line would stretch 79 miles between Castle Rock and Troutdale, Ore., connecting new substations at each end. The proposed route crosses the Clark-Cowlitz county line just below Merwin Dam. It also passes through Washougal and Camas before crossing the Columbia River.
BPA has said the $459 million transmission line is needed to ease a strained Northwest power grid and add capacity for future growth. The agency has also explored smaller fixes known as “non-wire” alternatives. But those would likely only buy time, not eliminate the eventual need for a new transmission line, Johnson said.
While many people remain wary of the project and the process, at least one group of neighbors east of Hockinson was pleased to see the route tweaked in their favor last year. After speaking with BPA about shifting the line away from a preservation area and the doorstep of several private properties in the area, the group learned that a June 2014 project update did just that. The line instead went farther east into state-owned land.
“From our standpoint, when they came out with their new map, we all breathed a sigh of relief,” said Rod Smith, one of the residents who made that case.
The city of Camas, hoping to avoid impacts of its own, earlier urged BPA to consider building the line underground, at least within its city limits. BPA did conduct an earlier analysis of the underground option, but determined it was too costly and environmentally challenging to pursue.
“Our position hasn’t changed,” said Camas Mayor Scott Higgins. The city plans to stay engaged in the process as it continues in the coming year, he said.
And if some people have forgotten about the long-running project, Higgins said, “the city of Camas won’t forget.”
