Locals say power line would ruin views

Idaho Power officials heard concerns about potential interruptions of farming and ranching activities, damage to viewsheds, negative health effects associated with high-voltage power lines, sage grouse and right-of-way acquisition policies during a public open house meeting Tuesday in Baker City.

“I don’t want it, zero, none,” said Wannie Mackenzie, who ranches in the Baker Valley north of Baker City.

Mackenzie said he doesn’t want the 500-Kilovolt power line Idaho Power is planning to build from Hemingway, Idaho to Boardman, Ore. to pass anywhere it would mar the scenic views from the Baker Valley, the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center or of the Elkhorn and Eagle Cap mountain ranges that make the area so picturesque.

“If that power line goes through here we are going to lose our aesthetic values, our seclusion and everything that makes Baker Valley so unique,” Mackenzie said as he perused maps of a preferred route and alternate routes displayed at the Tuesday open house at the Baker Community Event Center.

Mackenzie and others also expressed concerns that the preferred and alternative routes Idaho Power submitted June 21 to the Bureau of Land Management and the Oregon Energy Facility Siting Council for approval cross mostly private land instead of public lands, where the towers and lines might have lesser effects on viewsheds and agriculture.

Donovan Walker, an attorney representing Idaho Power, said environmental regulations protecting land around several sage grouse breeding areas known as “leks” prevented Idaho Power from choosing as its preference a route that follows BLM land farther east of the Interpretive Center.

The company’s preferred route passes about a mile east of the Interpretive Center.

Donovan said the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife began a review of possible changes to its sage grouse protection standards on July 1, which could affect where the power line is ultimately routed.

However, Donovan said the current regulations enforced by ODFW don’t allow power lines or anything else to be built within a 2-mile radius of sage grouse leks.

“The route through the Virtue Flat area (farther east than the preferred route) is the alternative route. It actually skirts the edge of some leks, and goes through some leks as well, but with the regulations as they are now, that is a non-buildable route,” Donovan said.

Mark Bennett, Baker County planning and emergency management director, said Commission Chairman Fred Warner Jr., and other county officials are worried about the effects the current ODFW sage grouse policy could have on the siting of the power line and other activities countywide.

“Fred spent an entire morning with Nick Myatt of ODFW looking at leks in the Virtue Flat area, boots on the ground,” Bennett said.

“They looked at some of the places we thought would work, but that won’t happen unless ODFW’s overall strategy for protecting sage grouse changes,” Bennett said.

Sage grouse issues aside, preserving views is a top priority for many critics of Idaho Power’s preferred route.

“I think it is a distraction visuallly, if the line runs too close to the Oregon Trail,” said Ann Rowan of Baker City. “It ruins the old trail feel, to us.”

While most people attending Tuesday’s meeting said they would prefer the alternative route farther east from the Interpretive Center, local rancher Dick Fleming likes a route even farther east than that.

The alternative route would cross land where Fleming ranches, in the vicinity of First and Second creeks, southeast of Virtue Flat.

While the BLM has strict regulations protecting sage grouse on public lands, Fleming said he is concerned that “nobody is looking out for environmental impacts on private land.”

“I’ve got sage grouse on my property, but that doesn’t seem to matter,” Fleming said.

Fleming, who is running against Warner for the commission chairman’s position in the Nov. 2 election, said he is also concerned that minimizing impacts on sage grouse appears to be a higher priority in siting the power line than is minimizing the effects on people.

“I’ve given Idaho Power a map twice of a route I referred to as the ‘minimum impact on human lives route’ that cuts up along Virtue Flat, through a low spot that is not close to houses and runs along the existing power line south of Keating. The closest it would come to the Interpretive Center would be 8 miles away,” Fleming said.

Terry Boettcher, who raises organically-grown vegetables, chickens and other crops in the Virtue Flat area, said she is concerned about the health effects of having high-voltage power lines crossing over her property.

“My concern is that there are health issues that are being ignored,” Boettcher said. “You can run a power cord across fence posts under these high-voltage power lines and get power without plugging it in.”

She said countries in Europe and other parts of the world have acknowledged links between high-voltage lines and cancer and diseases, and many countries have banned building such lines within two miles of homes or barns.

Not everyone who attended Tuesday’s open house was critical of Idaho Power’s route selection or the process used to choose the preferred and alternative routes.

Rep. Cliff Bentz, R-Ontario, who represents Baker County in the Oregon Legislature, said he thinks the community advisory process Idaho Power used to take public comment in considering 49 proposed routes worked well.

“I think people in Malheur and Baker County who came to the community advisory meetings and participated had some impact, that led to some significant changes,” Bentz said.

For example, he said that in Baker County public comment  resulted in Idaho Power taking a proposed route through Baker Valley off the table.

In Malheur County, Bentz said public input shifted the proposed route away from irrigated farm land to sagebrush-covered public lands.

Dick D’Ewart, who ranches near Durkee, said he was pleased that Idaho Power officials worked with him to at least move the proposed route that crosses his land to an area farther from his home, where the line would have a lesser effect on his business.

“It was going right in front of my house. Now it is going to stay back where I won’t see it,” D’Ewart said. “I will work with them if they will work with me on where it is going to go.”