The mood was TENSE in today’s Mirror Pond Management Board meeting as its members, one after another, put Pacific Power representative Angela Price on the spot. The meeting was originally arranged so that project manager Jim Figurski could share the results from the latest survey. But what followed could only be described as a standoff between Pacific Power and the various members of the management board who wanted to know one thing—when is the dam coming out?
“I need to know about the dam,” said City Councilor Mark Capell.
“It’s time to turn our attention toward this fundamental question,” said Ryan Houston, executive director of the Upper Deschutes Watershed Council. “If we don’t go there, it’s really hard to know what we’re looking at.”
“All of these acts depend on Pacific Power,” said David Rosell with the Bend Chamber of Commerce.
“Forget which way we choose,” said Todd Heisler, executive director of the Deschutes River Conservancy.
But Price, speaking on behalf of Pacific Power, the owners of the 100-year-old Newport Avenue Dam, refused to reveal the utility company’s intentions. “We don’t have a date,” Price said, stonewalling her peers. She then proceeded to flip every question back on the board. “If something rises to be the preferred alternative we will support that.”
And therein lies the impasse. Pacific Power says they first need to hear from the community. But the management board says it needs Pacific Power to make the call before they can more forward. For what it’s worth the community HAS spoken. Figurski said that of the 1,224 people (most were longtime Bend residents) who took the recent survey regarding the proposed options for Mirror Pond, 47% were in favor of removing the dam, as compared with 43% who wanted the dam to stay.
Tomorrow Figurski will go to City Councilors with the results. What the ultimate fix will be and who (or which governing body) will make that call remains something of an unknown.
This article appears in Jul 11-17, 2013.
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Pacific Power needs to come clean. It makes no sense to claim that their decision depends on public sentiment in Bend – their decision depends solely on the bottom line and the requirements of the Oregon PUC. We (Bend), on the other hand, can’t really plan without knowing what they will do. They have lots of internal data on the dam and how it fits into their resource mix, and they owe it to the town that has hosted their power plant for this long to give us an idea of when it will come out.
Maybe Pacific Power doesn’t have faith in Jim Figurski and the Mirror Pond Management Board. I don’t know anything about the recent survey they carried out, but the one I took in January was terribly produced with very serious subjective wording issues. If I were Pacific Power, I wouldn’t base any decisions on the board’s findings just from that experience alone.
kms, I think you got the essence of it. PP doesn’t want to be seen to be taking sides, and it doesn’t even want to be involved in the public debate – just watching quietly.
But I think it doesn’t matter what the people of Bend want from PP’s perspective. They just have a time-money equation that estimates the date when the dam is no longer a profitable asset for them. They will make that date public when they eventually go to the PUC and ask to recover the cost of dismantling the dam from their ratepayers. But I think they owe it to us to tell us sooner, since their equation affects the heart of our town. Not to mention the fact that we are all PP ratepayers as well.
And the same obligation applies to those who want me and the rest of Bend to contribute to the ~$80 million it will take to keep Mirror Pond. Where is the money going to come from? If you’re going to raise taxes, I say funding OSU-Cascades is a more valuable short-term cause.
Also, PP probably cannot get a renewal of its permit to maintain the dam because of the environmental impacts (e.g., fish impacts). How is the City going to get one?
Keeping Mirror Pond is a much more expensive and difficult proposition than most people realize, or at least keeping Mirror Pond after PP decides it’s had enough of the dam.