Feb. 21, 2001: Reach's 1st policy test on line

Reach's 1st policy test on line

This story was published Feb. 21, 2001

By Mike Lee
Herald staff writer

The Hanford Reach National Monument faces its first real public policy test this spring with the possibility of new power lines crossing the protected land.

The Bonneville Power Administration is evaluating four paths for a new 500-kilovolt transmission line from near Hanford to a regional power hub north of Ellensburg.

A new line, according to BPA, would widen a regional power transmission bottleneck and help BPA import power when water is spilled for fish at hydropower dams.

"The main purpose of the line is to beef up the system," said Lou Driessen, BPA project manager. "There is a weak link."

If BPA proceeds, construction likely would start in 2004, take about a year and cost about $80 million.

But the agency will face challenges. Two of four possible paths cross the national monument, which was created last summer.

Conservationists are alarmed by the project and what they perceive as a quiet public process that hasn't included a meeting in the Tri-Cities.

"This is an important challenge and strikes at the entire concept of what the monument was designed to protect," said Rick Leaumont, conservation chairman for the Lower Columbia Basin Audubon Society.

"If we allow this project to enlarge or designate new utility corridors, we have opened the door to the gradual destruction to the monument through piecemeal development," Leaumont said in the society's February newsletter.

The Audubon Society is mounting a letter-writing campaign to keep monument transmission corridors from expanding.

Leaumont said he's fine with new lines within existing corridors - but because space is limited, he says BPA should use one of the two other routes. "Save that (monument) capacity for a project when you don't have an alternative," he said.

But the Fish and Wildlife Service, the federal agency that manages the monument, isn't expecting a big problem with BPA proposals after a meeting with other federal and state agencies last week in Yakima.

When President Clinton created the monument, his official proclamation said Columbia River transmission facilities in the monument could be "replaced, modified and expanded and new facilities constructed ... in a manner consistent with proper care and management."

At the meeting, "I didn't throw up my hands and say this is not something we would allow," said Jeff Haas, deputy manager at the Fish and Wildlife Service in Richland. "I just related to folks that there were environmental and cultural reviews that would need to be carried out."

The monument is home to several sensitive species, and Haas said he will carefully watch plans for construction and maintenance of new power lines.

Besides Indian cultural and burial sites, one of the biggest concerns is protecting an animal migration corridor between Hanford and the Yakima Firing Center. The two giant tracts of sagebrush are some of the best land left for sage-dependent species, and land managers want to keep a development-free link.

BPA has its own protected species to worry about, namely endangered salmon in the Columbia and Snake rivers. Because of them, the agency spills hundreds of millions of dollars of water over dams instead of producing power with it. That means BPA has to buy replacement power, which requires a flexible import system that a new line could enhance.

But Driessen said the biggest need for more capacity is to make sure BPA can shift power to meet demand.

"If one of the major lines were to go down, then the remaining lines that were left are too heavily loaded," he said, noting the bottleneck has come to light fairly recently in the fast-changing Northwest power scene.

The route will be selected on cost, engineering studies, environmental issues, landowner concerns and existing land uses, Driessen said.

The path selection process is still young, but Haas figures the most likely option is to build a new substation near the west edge of Hanford and a new transmission line from there to the Midway substation near Vernita.

From there, expanded lines would cross the river and run north to Vantage and west to the Schultz substation near Ellensburg. Haas said this proposal would clip "little bitty" corners of the monument.

A second possible route from the west edge of Hanford parallels Highway 24 to Moxee, then north to Ellensburg. Another crosses the Yakima Firing Center parallel to the Columbia River before turning west.

The final option runs from the Hanford substation near N Reactor and across the Wahluke Slope to Vantage and beyond. It's possible this line could be extended south through central Hanford.

More than 150 people attended BPA meetings on the project in January in Yakima, Desert Aire and Ellensburg. Driessen said there was no meeting in the Tri-Cities because it's not as close to the proposed transmission lines as the other communities.