McNary-John Day Transmission Line Project, Final Environmental Impact Statement

Book excerpt: Bonneville is proposing to construct, operate, and maintain a 79-mile-long 500-kilovolt-transmission line in Benton and Klickitat Counties, Washington, and Umatilla and Sherman Counties, Oregon. The new line would start at Bonneville's McNary Substation in Oregon and would cross the Columbia River just north of the substation into Washington. The line would then proceed west for about 70 miles along the Columbia River. At the John Day Dam, the line would again cross the Columbia River into Oregon and terminate at Bonneville's John Day Substation. The new line would parallel existing transmission lines for the entire length; mostly within existing available right-of-way. Presently, the existing transmission lines in the area are operating at capacity. These lines help move power from the east side of the Cascades to the west side, where there is a high need for electricity (cities along the I-5 corridor). Because the Northwest has only recently recovered from a shortfall in electric energy supply and a volatile wholesale power market in which prices reached record highs, there are many new proposals for facilities to generate new power. Some of these facilities are in the vicinity of the McNary-John Day project; the proposed line would help insure that existing and newly generated power could move through the system. Bonneville is also considering the No Action Alternative and several short-line routing alternatives. The short routing alternatives include three half-mile-long routes for getting from the McNary Substation to the Columbia River crossing; three two-mile-long routes where the Hanford-John Day transmission line joins the existing corridor; two 1,000-foot-long routes at corridor mile 32; and two 500-foot-long routes at corridor mile 35. This abbreviated final EIS consists of an introduction to the document, changes to the draft EIS, copies of all the comments received on the draft EIS, and Bonneville's written responses to the comments. The final EIS should be used as a companion document to the draft EIS (dated February 2002), which contains the full text of the affected environment, environmental analysis, and appendices.