In listening to the recent Forest Park vs. PGE hearing it was like taking a page out of all the frustrations Save Stafford Road (SSR) has experienced over the past 18 months in challenging PGE’s plan to build new high-voltage transmission lines along a 7.4 mile stretch of Stafford Road from the Rosemont substation in Lake Oswego to Wilsonville.

The Forest Park folks who complained that PGE has been unresponsive and won’t sit with the community to discuss alternative routes are facing the same obstacles we have seen. Stafford Road is a farmland road that has a Scenic Road Designation from the Clackamas County Comprehensive Plan. According to the rules of having this designation, there cannot be any significant structural changes to scenic roads.

Save Stafford Road is a legal organization formalized in August 2023 for the explicit purpose of opposing this portion of PGE’s Tonquin project. This new construction will result in the removal of over 250 trees, replacing 40-to-50-foot wood poles with 100-to-120-foot-tall industrial steel power poles and adding dangerous high voltage power lines. These are the same industrial poles one can see by driving out Nyberg Road to Sherwood where all the semiconductor equipment companies reside.

PGE also plans to condemn dozens of homeowners’ properties. Save Stafford Road has made every effort to work with PGE to find alternative routes, pole height reduction and minimal tree and vegetation removal, but all of our efforts have fallen on deaf ears. But our biggest concern is the increased fire risk.

High voltage power line failures have been implicated in at least two of the most deadly fires in U.S. history. PGE maintains that our stretch of road is not in a high risk area for wildfires. Try telling that to the residents of Lahaina, Paradise and Eaton/Altadena LA who were also not in high-risk wildfire areas.

The homes on Stafford Road between I-205 and Wilsonville are all on minimum 5-acre farm parcels, surrounded by dry grass fields, thirsty trees and crops. All of these rural residential properties are on well water, which means if there is an electrical failure and a resultant fire our water wells are inactive and our homeowners have no way of even trying to protect themselves. And being in an incorporated county, there are no fire hydrants.

And like Lahaina, from Ek Road to Southwest 65th, a 3-mile stretch of road, there is no way out. Many of the deaths from the Lahaina fire was because there was only one way in and one way out. This is the same situation with Stafford Road.

Given climate change and the increased temperatures during our most recent summers, our vulnerability to fire risk has increased significantly and by adding high voltage power lines on top of our properties will only increase the danger.

Our community accepts the need for more robust electrical services. But Clackamas County, state planning agencies and utility companies all need to seriously consider that the consequences of their decisions can endanger the public and put lives and properties at risk. There must be safer alternative routes that would serve both PGE and the community at large.