Well the cacophony of the swamp denizens was expected when I wrote my last article on the B2H project, and I’ve got a little bit of taste of what President Trump had to go through when he went to Washington, D.C., and took on the swamp rats. It’s OK, though, because I’m a big boy and am ready to respond to all of them.

There is an old adage that if a lie is told often enough, it becomes the truth. The Nazis were really good at that. Let’s start by examining the main untruth told by STOP B2H: “This project will not benefit Oregonians.”

For those of us who are reasonable people, I think we can all agree that the cities of Ontario, Vale, Nyssa, Halfway, Richland, Huntington, Oxbow and Unity are all located in Oregon, and are all our neighbors. What do they all have in common? They are cities in Oregon that get their power from Idaho Power.

It boggles one’s mind when you realize that our county commissioners, who hold great influence and power, have never issued a press release to correct this misinformation campaign. If Idaho Power were to pull a brilliant move and purchase OTEC, would the cacophony cease? Probably not, but their audience would dry up. Idaho Power’s service area map is here: www.idahopower.com/outages-safety/outages/map.

To respond to Fuji Kreider, I’ve been on cattle ranches in Baker. The sign at the gate says don’t let the cattle out, and it takes about a mile of driving to find any cattle. Since it was August, the cattle were all holed up under the shade of the high-voltage transmission towers, as there was no shade elsewhere to be found. Farming and ranching is a hard life, but the reality is they engage in bellyaching. It comes with the territory. As a utility company worker, I know that the landowners have remedies available to them for the concerns you mentioned. Frankly, the problem they face with wolf depredation should be a higher priority than B2H.

As for eminent domain, yes it makes it right when it benefits the general public. That is why it’s in the Constitution.

I did not say we should have permanent “off-ramps” providing a constant grid tie source. Using basic math, a month of electricity from B2H is a pumpkin pie, cut into four pieces. If Union County gets a piece, and another piece for Baker County, that leaves IP with one half the pie they started with. That’s a no-brainer no-go to start with. If our elected officials had gone to IP and said, “In the rare circumstance when the fire bell goes off, could we by chance have one small sliver of that piece of pie,” they would have stood a better chance of getting that emergency-only grid tie.

Another comment was about a utopian concept of getting rid of power companies. The average homeowner doesn’t own their house long enough to see an off-grid investment return. Most Americans are content to have a power company, and they just want the lights to come on when they flip the switch.

Irene Gilbert responded erroneously about my job. I’m in charge of the power plants at over 100 facilities across multiple states. The voltages at the sites range from 12 volts DC to 240 volts AC, with a smattering of sites that are 408 volts three phase AC. In the military, I worked on equipment that generated 10,000 volts.

As for the 900 members of the Stop B2H Coalition, if one assumes they all reside in Union County (which I find highly unlikely), it still would represent less than 4% of the county’s entire population.

The reality of the situation is that when state utility siting commissions approve a project, they almost always get built. Some of you need to face that reality. You can continue to act like a bunch of crows sitting on the fence cackling and further waste the taxpayers’ dollars fighting this. But your efforts would be better served addressing issues that are actually important. Like our lack of a kill shelter for stray dogs and cats, or lack of a county dump.