Don’t force it, FERC

There’s a curious situation playing out along Brownlee Reservoir and we’re trying — and in the main failing — to make sense of it.

Perhaps this is because the federal government instigated the whole episode.

At issue are 31 privately owned structures, 28 of them on the Oregon side and in Baker County. In most cases the structure owner also owns the land.

Each of those structures, or a portion thereof, encroaches on property that belongs to Idaho Power Co.

By way of brief background, the company, before it built Brownlee Dam in the late 1950s and so created the 58-mile-long reservoir, bought the strip of land that starts at the reservoir’s high water line and extends eight vertical feet up the bank. That means Idaho Power owns the reservoir shore below an elevation of 2,085 feet above sea level (the high water line being 2,077 feet).

With a few exceptions where Idaho Power’s property extends considerably farther above the water, much of the land above the 2,085-foot mark belongs to other private landowners.

Unfortunately, even Idaho Power admits that the 2,085-foot line is not marked on the ground.

So egregious were these trespasses that Idaho Power said. . .  well, it said pretty much nothing for about 40 years, so far as we can tell.

According to a company information sheet about what it calls the “Brownlee Shoreline Compliance Project,” Idaho Power didn’t pay much attention to the encroaching properties until 1998, by which time most of the structures were in place.

And it wasn’t until 2007 that  landowners started to have “regular contact from Idaho Power on the subject of unintentionally using company land.”

But it turns out that Idaho Power’s tolerance is irrelevant.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has ordered Idaho Power to deal with the encroaching buildings, either by having them moved or by convincing property owners to sign 10-year leases which, because they can’t be transferred to another owner, would in essense ensure the building would stay only as long as the current owner is alive.

And here’s the thing: When FERC says jump, Idaho Power pulls out the trampoline.

FERC, you see, doles out licenses that allow companies to operate hydroelectric dams. Idaho Power’s license for the Hells Canyon Complex expired five years ago. FERC has been giving the company annual extensions while Idaho Power is spending tens of millions of dollars applying for a new license.

Suffice it to say that Idaho Power, if forced to choose between three dams that supply almost 36 percent of the electricity the company generates, and 31 people who built on the company’s property without permission, the dams will prevail.

What annoys us is that FERC is forcing Idaho Power to make such a choice.

The company acknowledged in a report to FERC that of the 31 structures, 23 have “no impact to project resources.”

Why would they? It’s not as if somebody built a mansion on Brownlee Dam itself.

Idaho Power operates a dam and the reservoir behind it. These buildings touch neither.

Had any of the structures been a bother to Idaho Power, certainly the company would have taken action sooner than 1998, about 40 years after some of the buildings went up.

This is an instance when FERC ought to defer to Idaho Power.

At the least the agency should allow Idaho Power to negotiate transferable leases that would allow owners to sell or transfer their parcels.