Patrick Borunda lives off a winding road under the shadow of tall Douglas fir trees in the rural town of Yacolt, Washington, in northeast Clark County. His modest house overlooks a small pasture and barn, once inhabited by 30 alpacas he raised for fiber and breeding. Today, the herd has been winnowed down to four geriatric animals along with Borunda’s Anatolian shepherd Rosemary, who keeps the coyotes away at night.

“For the most part, people pretty much stay to themselves,” Borunda said of the community. “People enjoy their solitude.”

Borunda and his partner Marit Federcell moved to Yacolt in the mid-1990s. When they bought their home, they took a gamble. PacifiCorp, one of the region’s largest electric utilities, owned an easement on the edge of their property. Nothing had happened with the adjacent land since it was set aside 50 years earlier, so they figured the purchase was a reasonable risk.

That all changed in the past year, when word got out that PacifiCorp had plans to develop the easement, which fell on the path of a 40-mile transmission line stretching from the Swift Reservoir dam, just south of Mount St. Helens, through Clark County to Camas, where it would then cross the Columbia River to feed electricity to Troutdale, Oregon.

Borunda and his neighbors have a range of worries if the approximately 100-foot-tall power lines go in: wildfire risks, contamination of their groundwater from herbicides in the power line buffer, lost property values from living under buzzing lines. And they wonder how the development will change the character of their community.

“Essentially, we’re in the woods right now,” Borunda said. “All of a sudden, we’re going to be in the middle of a huge clearing.”

The Clark County project is just one example of the conflicts emerging between communities and utility companies as the Pacific Northwest electric grid expands to serve the growing need for power across the region.

Borunda and his neighbors are trying to stop the power line or lobby the electric company to reroute its path. Their group of about a dozen people goes by the name “Move the Line East,” and that’s just what they hope to do.

Their hope is that PacifiCorp will shift the transmission line east, where they believe it could travel south on federally managed land in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest with less impact on private property owners.

Electricity demand is increasing in Washington and Oregon due to the growth of data centers, increases in electric vehicle use and the shuttering of coal-fired power plants.

The TransAlta power plant in Centralia is the last coal-fired power plant in Washington state. It was set to close at the end of 2025 before being ordered to continue operating for 90 days by the Trump administration in mid-December.

The need for electricity has increased so much that one 2025 estimate by the consulting firm Energy + Environmental Economics warned the region could see rolling blackouts during extreme weather events as soon as next year.

There are also major limitations in current transmission lines owned by the Bonneville Power Administration, according to an analysis by OPB and ProPublica. PacifiCorp’s proposed transmission line across Clark County would create a new route for electricity that currently runs through BPA lines to Portland.

PacifiCorp’s proposed project will help meet the region’s future electricity needs, while lowering costs for customers, according to company spokesperson Simon Gutierrez.

An analysis by the utility showed it will save money by building its own transmission lines, rather than paying Bonneville Power for its infrastructure, he said. And the company already owns easements on most of the proposed transmission route.

“Nobody wants any disturbance in their neighborhood, but this is a need that we’ve identified to continue providing safe, reliable electricity to our customers,” Gutierrez said.

The project is still in its early stages, with construction set to begin in 2028 at the earliest. Gutierrez said he will begin public presentations about the plan in 2027 and that he’s currently meeting with residents upon request to address their safety concerns.

“Part of the route is pretty much sealed because it’s an existing easement the company purchased many, many years ago,” Gutierrez said. “Property owners should have been aware of that easement, so this shouldn’t have been a surprise for folks.”

Power lines for people – or for data centers?

The electricity will be for residential use in the Portland area, according to Gutierrez. The question of whether it could provide power for more controversial data centers is “ongoing and fluid.”

PacifiCorp has made similar arguments that its work has a public benefit before, only to have its plans change over time.

The company’s proposed 300-mile Boardman-to-Hemingway power line project was, for years, pitched as a way to get power to 805,000 customers in Idaho. But according to the Oregonian/Oregonlive, this summer, after years of planning, the project’s intended user was changed to an unnamed private industrial customer that is likely a data center.

The shift has raised questions about whether PacifiCorp can legally seize land through eminent domain it needs for a project that would have to benefit the public.

County Councilor Sue Marshall represents the largest district that would be affected by the transmission line in Clark County. She shares the concerns of residents over wildfire risk and the potential use of eminent domain if the company wants to site transmission lines on property it doesn’t own.

But even the community members’ idea of moving the development onto federally managed land would threaten forests, streams and wetlands, she said.

“Each potential path, you’d have to really look at the pros and cons of all that, and the least impactful,” Marshall said. “I would imagine PacifiCorp is looking at the least costly.”

Concerns over the electric utility’s role in wildfires are far from unfounded. In November, PacifiCorp said it had settled 4,200 wildfire claims since the 2020 Labor Day fires at a $1.6 billion price tag for the company, with more settlement payments on the way.

In recent years, the company has continued to beef up its safety protocols to guard against wildfires, Gutierrez said. Those protocols include heightened safety settings for electrical equipment to immediately de-energize power lines in case of interference or if there’s a wildfire burning near equipment. PacifiCorp proactively shuts off power during times of extreme fire risk, and the company has meteorologists that monitor fire conditions around the clock, he said.

At this stage, Marshall said, she’s trying to understand the facts surrounding the power line project.

“There’s fears of the unknown,” she said. “There’s fears seeing what’s happened to other places.”

Alida Cantor, an associate professor of geography at Portland State University, is familiar with the tension faced by local communities put in the crosshairs of energy projects. Her work focuses on how changes to our energy systems impact communities, especially when it comes to grid transitions to renewables.

There are three categories of concerns that often come up with energy siting projects across the West, she said. Do people feel like they’re adequately involved in the process? Are there less-impactful places where energy projects can be sited? And how can communities be compensated for the changes?

The Swift Reservoir transmission line traveling through parts of rural Clark County to deliver electricity to Portland is another example of a common tension: rural communities that feel they’re “bearing the burdens so that urban communities can keep on using power,” Cantor said.

Residents in Clark County likely will have limited options to negotiate, since PacifiCorp owns the right to the land it plans to develop.

Cantor said it could, however, be in the utility’s interest to create an agreement with affected community members simply to maintain goodwill.

“They do rely on communities thinking of them as a good neighbor,” she said.

At this point, Borunda and his group are mostly trying to educate residents about what the project could mean for Clark County. They hope other entities that have more leverage, like the county or state, will step in to decide if a company like PacifiCorp or a group of concerned citizens know what’s best for the region.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/12/27/clark-county-proposed-pacificorp-transmission-line/