Cooper

One of the Stop B2H Coalition’s issues with its contested case against Idaho Power’s proposed Boardman to Hemingway transmission line is wildfire risk. An administrative judge summarized the issue as: “Whether Applicant adequately analyzed the risk of wildfire arising out of operation of the proposed facility and the ability of local firefighting service providers to respond to fires.”

As a member of the coalition, my case pointed out the susceptibility to wildfire in areas where the B2H line would cross southwest of La Grande, such as the Morgan Lake wildland urban interface, which was rated as the highest fire risk in the county in 2005. I also drew attention to the history of fire in this area, including the Rooster Peak fire of 1973 — the largest and most destructive in this region — and a fire at the base of what is now Morgan Lake Road in 1868. I questioned the wisdom of building transmission towers in the rugged terrain near Morgan Lake, where firefighting could be challenging, and evacuation routes would be limited.

I also questioned Idaho Power’s estimated response times to fire in these rural areas, which it claims are “4 to 8 minutes.” Anyone who has driven up Morgan Lake Road, even in a passenger car, can vouch for the absurdity of that estimate.

I built my case using a variety of sources: witness testimony from survivors of the Rooster Peak fire and Forest Service fire lookout staff; articles from scientific journals and regional newspapers; county and regional planning documents; and the legal deposition of a local fire official.

Idaho Power responded by hiring three expert witnesses and bombarding us with blizzards of handbooks, articles and undecipherable spreadsheets. The lead witness, who has never set foot in this region, produced a lengthy report with impressive-looking tables, maps covering huge areas but with little detail, averages of wind speeds and slope angles, etc. Idaho Power claims that prevailing wind patterns in the Grande Ronde Valley during fire season would blow any fire away from La Grande, and that fires would never travel downhill. The analysis of wildland fire in this region only went back 30 years, so it omitted the Rooster Peak fire.

Idaho Power’s lead witness sought to prove that the catastrophic fires in California and Western Oregon, caused in many cases by power lines, would not happen here due to differences of climate and vegetation. The company also claims the large steel lattice towers used in transmission lines (as opposed to shorter, wooden “distribution” lines) rarely cause fires; nonetheless, it admitted several smaller fires have started this way — one of which was probably caused by a Mylar balloon. It also conceded that its original estimates of response times to a fire in the Morgan Lake region were inaccurate.

I asked for “site conditions” including burial of the line in any areas of high wildfire risk, but one of the expert witnesses cited astronomical figures for this (in the tens of billions to underground the entire line!). Thus, if it is ever built, B2H should follow the BLM Preferred route — or, better yet, it should simply not be built.

Members of the Stop B2H Coalition are still litigating in a contested case against Idaho Power and the Oregon Department of Energy. We started with 72 issues. After 20 months of legal volleying, we still have nearly 40 total issues alive in the case. It’s been a heavy lift but we are determined to stop the Boardman to Hemingway high-voltage transmission project that would cross Northeastern Oregon. We seek to protect our region, our human and natural resources, quality of life and heritage. This is a summary of our issues relating to wildfire risk.