PORTLAND, Ore. —
The Portland public will have its first chance Wednesday to comment on a controversial proposal to clear a small part of Forest Park to upgrade and expand power lines.
The plan, proposed by Portland General Electric as the Harborton Reliability Project, calls for upgrading existing transmission lines on the northern edge of Forest Park and building 1,400 feet of new lines.
Construction would require the clearing of roughly 5 acres of trees, mostly Douglas fir and Oregon white oak, which has prompted some environmental advocates to question aspects of the project.
“I'm concerned about it, and our organization is concerned about it,” said Micah Meskel, assistant director of urban conservation with the Bird Alliance of Oregon. “It’s a really important wildlife corridor for birds, for amphibians and for mammals.”
From PGE’s perspective, the project is necessary to keep homes and businesses across the region powered up.
“The Harborton Reliability Project is a critical transmission project for PGE to ensure the reliability of power supply to Portland and our surrounding service territory,” said Kristen Sheeran, senior director of resource planning and sustainability for the utility.
Sheeran said the project is necessary to relieve a bottleneck and to update outdated technology.
“We're talking about an electrical grid that was built decades ago for a much different time,” she said. “We're looking to alleviate transmission constraints in our system where we already have existing right-of-ways.”
The fact that power lines already exist in the area — owned by PGE and the Bonneville Power Administration — was one of the reasons the site was chosen, Sheeran said.
“Our project team explored over 20 different alternative routes looking at a variety of criteria, from environmental impact to impact on the local community to the feasibility of the project,” she said.
Sheeran said the utility was still working on its plans to mitigate the environmental impact, but she said that PGE was committed to being a good steward of the land.
“The bar is high to do any work in Forest Park, and it should be,” she said. “We serve the City of Portland. Many of us live in and around Portland and recreate with our families in Forest Park. We're committed to leaving the park in better condition than we found it.”
Marianne Wilburn, executive director of the Forest Park Conservancy, is skeptical.
“It's really hard for them to know what the impact is going to be,” she said, noting the site is home to numerous songbirds, small mammals and the red-legged frog, which has been designated as a “conservation strategy species” by the state due to loss of habitat.
Meskel pointed out that although the spot is within Forest Park, it's also very close to the Willamette River and adjacent wetlands.
“We have this river, which is sort of the lifeblood of this ecosystem, and in so many places we’ve disconnected it from upland habitat like forests, like Forest Park,” Meskel said.
Both Meskel and Wilburn expressed concern that even the limited scope of the proposed project could lead to further development in Forest Park down the line.
“It's been protected for a long time against development, and any type of development like this puts it at risk,” Wilburn said.
Sheeran was adamant that the project would be limited to the area where the current power lines already exist.
“If there are additional phases of this project that involve upgrading additional transmission infrastructure, those would certainly take place in our existing right of ways,” she said. “We're not looking to expand our footprint within Forest Park or in the neighboring environments.”
Ultimately, it will come down to a City Council vote as to whether the project moves forward. But PGE is hosting three open houses for the public to weigh in. The first one will be on Wednesday night at the Skyline Grange Hall at 6:30 p.m.