Grant PUD Commissioners’ statement on Route 4b Transmission Line protest

Grant County PUD was at the center of a recent article in The Capital Press. Many of the comments made in the article were inaccurate with omissions, assumptions and accusations made. The Commission is responding publicly to the landowners and other public residents to correct inaccurate information.  

Public notices about the transmission line project were communicated through various processes that the PUD utilizes in an outreach process. They included but were not limited to a direct mailer to over 600 property owners within 1,000 feet of the proposed projects, social media (i.e. PUD web page, Facebook and Twitter), press releases in The Quincy Valley Post Register 1/27/2022 and 2/3/2022, in The Columbia Basin Herald 1/28/2022 and 2/4/2022, PUD press releases via online newsletter, billing inserts, and notification to state agencies and tribal government partners.  

Open houses were held in person on 2/22/2022 in George, Wash., at the George Community Hall, 5 to 7 p.m., 3/2/2022 at the Port of Quincy, 5 to 7 p.m., and a virtual option on 3/3/2022 from 6 to 7 p.m. After the three public meetings and allowing time for public comments, a route determination was made. Two of the proposed line routes 1 & 2 presented challenges not only with the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife with a land swap mitigation process but they are also highly sensitive cultural areas. Route 3 was incumbered with Department of Natural Resource and Bureau of Reclamation Land that would require an environmental impact analysis. It was determined that after public comment or lack thereof, Route 4b appeared to be the best option. From the comments received by the public, three favored routes 1 & 2, five favored route 3 and ten favored route 4b. It was also determined that the best route from a business perspective was 4b as it would allow the PUD to move the poles out of the Grant County franchise/easement on Beverly Burke Road by moving the poles approximately five feet inward from where they currently existed.   

In December 2022, a letter was sent out to inform the public of the line route selection being 4b. After that announcement there were a few landowners that expressed concern about the route and attended some Commission meetings expressing that concern. At that time an informational meeting was scheduled in George at the George Community Hall on 4/12/2023. The meeting was attended by 73 people along with PUD staff and the Commission to explain the logic of the selected line route and the pros and cons for all the line routes. Since then, there has been much speculation from some of the landowners on where poles will be placed. These landowners have not allowed the PUD a right of entry to mark a pole location to have a conversation with them about pole placements. We would encourage landowners who have refused a right of entry to allow one and have a productive conversation on what an easement is, how it affects them and how poles can be adjusted if necessary to accommodate them. 

The Commission wants to assure landowners what an easement is and is not. An easement allows the PUD permission to use a space of land in perpetuity where a pole is placed and the overhead swing of the wires for when wind moves lines back and forth as per set specifications by electrical codes. Those codes also have restrictions on building under or alongside so the lines do not get tangled up in other infrastructure that could be placed by or under the power lines such as a tall building or a cell tower. It does not restrict farming under the power lines or stacking hay with height restrictions and does not take ownership away from the landowner. It has been the Commission’s directive to PUD Staff to work diligently with landowners on pole placement so as to not interfere with the operation of irrigation equipment. Pole placement can be adjusted with adding poles to mitigate out a pole span width to allow for irrigation equipment to have ample clearance without modifications to the equipment. Unless a home is within the easement itself, the easement would not present a risk to the home or PUD infrastructure. By way of reminder, the easement is for arial concerns of the wires, the pole placement itself is minimally intrusive itself.   

The portion of the line route that is being disputed is predominately from Frenchman Hills Road north to where it intersects north of George, Wash., at the current 115 kVa line on Beverly Burke Road. On this section of the route, the poles will be moved in approximately five feet from where they currently set along Beverly Burke Road. The easement being asked for is approximately 50 feet from the landowner as the other half of the easement will be utilizing Beverly Burke Road totaling approximately 100 feet. Currently there will be pole replacement from State Highway 26 at the Jericho substation north on Beverly Burke Road to where it intersects with the 115 kVa line north of George. A total of 205 distribution poles will be removed and replaced with 296 new poles that include both transmission and distribution. Total land used for new pole placement in that section is approximately 3,720 feet or about .085 acres. Total easement acres for that corridor from Jericho to the 115 kVa line with some crossing through dryland is 86.5 acres, not 455 acres as stated. Most of the dryland areas have the right of entries or easements currently procured and the balance of that disputed section parallels Beverly Burke Road.   

The Commission has considered the routes diligently and the load growth that needs to be served. We have food processing, steel manufacturing and data centers that are requesting power. The county will continue to grow, and we are tasked with how to deal with the power delivery needs of that growth whether it is transmission or new resources. It is not the Commission’s desire to condemn any landowner’s property; we take that very seriously. Unfortunately, there are those occasions when we are not allowed to have a productive conversation with landowners about easements that force us to take such action. 

Grant County PUD Commissioners