Preferred power path

Most people, we suspect, would say the best place to build a power line suspended between 180-foot-tall towers is wherever they can't see it.

This is no hypothetical scenario for Baker County, either, because Idaho Power Co. plans to build a transmission line through the county by 2013.

Company officials are considering three routes.

From our viewpoint, one of those is clearly the best option.

That route runs through the Virtue Flat area, several miles east of Baker City.

We like that route because, at least based on Idaho Power's maps, most of the towers wouldn't be visible from the city. That's not the case with the company's preferred path, which would run along the east side of Baker Valley between the airport and the Interpretive Center.

The third route seems doomed, as it would cross both wetlands and high-value farmland in Baker Valley west of town.

The Virtue Flat alignment is not perfect, either.

There's habitat there for the sage grouse, a bird that some groups contend should be listed as threatened or endangered. Sage grouse populations around Virtue Flat this spring were about half of the long-term average.

Nonetheless, if environmental studies show that the power line can be built through Virtue Flat without significantly affecting sage grouse, we urge Idaho Power to build it there.