POWER
PLAY
hen springtime hits Coburg, locals roll
up their sleeves. Freshly shorn sheep
graze the pastures, blossoms streak the
orchards with color, and irises bloom on
Carolyn Kinnan’s small, neat lawn. Like
most of the town’s 969 residents, Kinnan, a 66-year-old
great-grandmother of 11, works from dawn until dusk —
but she doesn’t tend to livestock or crops. Instead, she
visits neighbors and organizes meetings in an effort to
stop a local developer from building a natural-gas-fired
power plant less than a half mile from her home.
W
he site of the proposed plant is a 100-acre plot of farm-
land next to the Weyerhaeuser veneer mill in northern
Lane County, just a few miles south of the Linn County
border. For years it has been used to grow grass seed, but the
site also has commercial potential. Nearby power lines carry
energy into the valley, and a gas pipeline runs through the soil.
This infrastructure, says developer Gary Marcus, makes the
site perfect for a natural-gas-fired power plant. The plant, if
built, will take up 40 acres, and another 55 acres will become
wetlands.
Some locals argue that the area is badly suited for industry.
Because of the 3,500-foot Coburg hills that hem in the valley
to the east, the airshed is prone to temperature inversions, when
stagnant cool air gets trapped below a layer of warmer air,
holding pollution low to the ground. On rainy days, clouds
hang in front of the hills as if too tired to surmount them.
Opponents of the plant worry that emissions from the plant’s
195-foot stacks would hang in the valley like those clouds.
The grassroots struggle against the facility began in 2001,
when Marcus submitted an application to the Lane Regional
Air Pollution Authority (LRAPA) to permit air emissions from
a 600-megawatt gas-fired power plant in Coburg. A communi-
ty group called Save our Valley (SOV), spearheaded by
Kinnan, rallied against the proposal, but Marcus folded when
Enron, his prospective buyer, collapsed.
In November 2003, Marcus emerged with a revised pro-
posal to build a 900-megawatt plant. It consists of a base load
with a 600-megawatt capacity and six peaking generators able
to produce 50 megawatts each. Marcus claims that the plant,
called the West Cascade Energy Facility, will supply enough
power to serve all of the electricity needs of Lane, Linn and
Douglas counties, and then some. Once construction on the
$485 million plant begins, the South Dakota-based Black Hills
Corporation will take over principal control of the facility.
As Marcus pushes ahead with his proposal, clashes intensi-
fy. Opponents challenge West Cascade on the basis of the bur-
dens it will place on local residents and its lack of public
accountability. Supporters say that the facility will provide
Lane County with reliable, low-cost energy while bolstering
the local economy.
Lately, the battle has intensified. Former County
Commissioner Tom Lininger and Marcus spar on the opinion
pages of The Register-Guard. Marcus courts support from
municipal agencies, and SOV forms alliances with environ-
mental groups. The arguments on both sides are compelling
and complex.
At a time when global warming threatens to change life as
T
12 APRIL 1, 2004
CAROLYN
KINNAN
we know it and the national energy industry is undergoing a sea
change, both sides may be missing the point. Looking beyond
the personal attacks, the not-in-my-backyard arguments, and
the smooth sales pitches, this becomes a local fight with glob-
al implications.
DO WE NEED IT?
Proponents of the plant liken it to an energy insurance pol-
icy for the Willamette Valley, saying that it will lessen local
reliance on transmission lines from east of the Cascades while
providing emergency backup power. Opponents counter that
Oregon already has an energy surplus, so we don’t need more
energy.
Existing power demand in Lane County is 875 megawatts
during peak hours. That demand is projected to grow by 175
megawatts over the next 20 years. West Cascade is designed to
add generating capacity in phases, as demand increases, up to
900 megawatts.
Only several hundred megawatts of reliable electricity are
currently generated inside the Willamette Valley. The rest —
about 625 megawatts in Lane County alone — travels across
transmission lines from BPA’s Columbia River dam and power
plants east of the Cascades. Utilities will need to build addi-
tional transmission lines if Lane County imports more power
from outside the valley. This is expected to increase electricity
rates.
Generating power from within the valley, on the other hand,
would relieve incoming pressure on the lines. The BPA power
that flows into Lane County now would go somewhere else.
Marcus claims that the plant has a wide range of supporters.
“This plant is backed by the public utilities commission, it’s
backed by the governor’s energy office, it’s backed by BPA,”
he says. “Anybody who knows anything about electrical infra-
structure issues is behind this.”
The endorsements are hard to verify. “I spoke to a number
of staffers and nobody seems to be able to confirm that,” says
Bob Valdez, spokesman for the Oregon Public Utilities
Commission. “It seems unlikely.” The Black Hills Corporation
did not respond to requests for comment.
But Springfield resident Garrett Paulson, a retired waste-
water engineer, supports the proposed plant. “Because the
Willamette Valley has one of the largest energy demands, this
project just makes sense,” he says. “It seems to me a win-win
situation.”
Whether there is a need for the plant or not, the fact
remains: Marcus has the legal right to build it. Oregon used to
have a need standard, which meant that when a developer
applied for building permits, the siting council considered the
need for the facility. But several years ago, the Oregon
Legislature banished the need standard because it wouldn’t
hold up in court under national deregulation policy.
A carbon dioxide mitigation standard took its place. It
requires new power plants to pay into the Oregon Climate
Trust, which funds projects to offset 20 percent of the plants’
carbon dioxide emissions. The carbon standard is the first of its
kind in the country, but the need standard is dead. “Everybody
can yell about how we don’t need it or we do need it,” says sen-
ior energy analyst for the Northern Energy Coalition Steve
Weiss, “but it doesn’t get you anywhere with the siting coun-
cil.”
WHO BENEFITS?
Customers in Lane, Linn and Douglas counties would use
the energy generated by West Cascade. But on the power grid,
use is different from sale. Although the regions closest to the
power source use its electricity, the energy can be sold any-
where on the grid.
“People inject power into the grid at one point, and then
somebody somewhere else takes it out,” says Weiss. “As long
as there’s a way for the power to travel, nobody color-codes the
electrons.”
Marcus says that West Cascade will only sell to Northwest
utilities. “We’re not negotiating with any out-of-state cus-
tomers,” he says. “There are no lines to California.” True or
not, Marcus is under no legal obligation to limit his sales to
Willamette Valley utilities. His target utilities include Pacific
General Electric (PG&E), which sells to Portland and Salem,
and PacifiCorps, which serves six states, including Oregon.
If West Cascade doesn’t sell to California, chances are good
that it will free up other facilities’ energy for export. The
Northwest already has a surplus of energy, and developers have
proposed dozens of new gas-fired plants in Oregon and
Washington. Because energy cannot go onto the grid without a
buyer to take it off, someone has to send the excess energy
somewhere.
“A portion of these new plants are intended to benefit out-
of-state consumers,” says Lininger. “When you add up the pro-
posed generation for Oregon and Washington, and it far
exceeds the local demand, that’s California dreamin’.”
“Unless he’s crazy,” says Weiss, “when prices are real high
in California, then that’s where he should be selling.”
POWER PLANNING
The Pacific Northwest Electric Power Planning and
TODD TRIGSTED WWW.TODDTRIGSTED.COM
BY KERA ABRAHAM
Does the
proposed
gas-fired
generator
in Coburg
make
sense?