Latest news with #BonnevillePowerAdministration
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Lane County at a glance: News from in and around Eugene
The Eugene Water & Electric Board is preparing to make a long-term energy supply decision that could cost nearly $2 billion over the next 20 years, according to a press release issued by the utility. The decision centers on a new contract with the Bonneville Power Administration, which supplies about 80% of EWEB's current electricity. BPA, a federal agency, sells hydropower from Columbia River basin dams to public utilities throughout the Pacific Northwest. EWEB's current contract with BPA expires in 2028, but the utility must choose a new product by July and sign a contract by the end of the year. The new agreement will span 16 years. BPA offers multiple energy products that vary in price, timing, and delivery methods. After a year of analysis, EWEB has narrowed its options to two: "load following" and "block with shaping." The utility is leaning toward the load following product, which offers greater access to flexible hydropower during periods of high demand, such as the coldest winter days and hottest summer days. "This is a choice between good choices," EWEB General Manager Frank Lawson said in the press release. "No matter what product we choose, we're still getting at-cost BPA and federal system power. That system — dominated by hydroelectricity from the Columbia basin — was built by visionary people in earlier generations and it continues to serve us well today." EWEB reported that February 2024 saw the highest winter energy demand in nearly a decade due to subfreezing temperatures. Summer demand is also rising, nearly breaking a record in July 2023. EWEB's analysis projects that the load following product would cost about $1.6 million less per year than block with shaping, largely due to reduced uncertainty around peak energy costs. PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend has named James Roundtree as its new chief operating officer, effective June 2. Roundtree brings more than 20 years of healthcare leadership experience, including roles in surgical services, physician relations, and major hospital renovations. Most recently, he served as vice president of Surgical and Cardiovascular Services at Washington Regional Medical Center in Arkansas, where he oversaw more than 400 employees and led a $75 million renovation. "We are excited to add James to our leadership team at RiverBend," Dr. Jim McGovern, PeaceHealth Oregon's chief hospital executive, said in a press release. A former U.S. Army perioperative nurse, Roundtree holds a nursing degree and an MBA from Oklahoma Wesleyan University. He has also held leadership positions in hospitals in Texas and Oklahoma. The Bureau of Land Management will enact seasonal fire restrictions beginning May 15 on all BLM-managed public lands in Oregon and Washington, officials said. The restrictions are intended to reduce the risk of wildfires as warmer, drier weather settles over the Pacific Northwest. They include a ban on fireworks, exploding or metallic targets, steel component ammunition (core or jacket), tracer or incendiary devices, and sky lanterns. "The number of human-caused fires has only increased over the years," said Jeff Fedrizzi, BLM Oregon and Washington State Fire Management Officer, in a press release issued by the agency. Grasses and other vegetation dry quickly in summer and are highly flammable, increasing the chance of wildfire sparked by human activity. According to BLM, even a single spark can ignite a large blaze. "Our first responders, local communities, and public lands will be safer if everyone follows fire restrictions and practices fire safety while out on public lands," Fedrizzi said. Violating the fire restrictions can result in a fine of up to $100,000 and/or up to 12 months in prison. Anyone found responsible for starting a wildfire may also be held liable for the full cost of suppression. The agency urges all public lands visitors to review current fire restrictions and closures before traveling. Details are available at May is also Wildfire Awareness Month. Wildfire prevention tips are available through the National Interagency Fire Center at The Regional Forest Practice Committee for southwest Oregon will meet at 10 a.m. Tuesday, May 20, at the Oregon Department of Forestry office, 87950 Territorial Highway in Veneta. The public may attend in person or join online via Microsoft Teams. The committee is scheduled to hear division and agency updates, a status report on the Habitat Conservation Plan, revisions to the Operator of the Year Program, an update on the Compliance Monitoring Project, and a review of technical guidance related to stream crossings. Public comments will be accepted during the meeting. Requests for disability accommodations or special materials and services must be made at least 48 hours in advance by calling 503-945-7200 or emailing forestryinformation@ The Walterville Grange will host its annual Play Festival on Friday, May 30, at the Walterville Grange Community Hall, 39259 Camp Creek Road. The event is free and open to the public. The festival begins at 7 p.m. and will feature two performances, one by the Walterville Grange and another by guest performers from the Crow Grange. Doors open early to allow time for attendees to find seating and socialize. Refreshments will be served following the performances. Nonperishable food donations will be collected for the Up River Pantry food bank. Contributions to support the Grange Hall will also be accepted. For more information, call 541-521-4760 and leave a message. Calls will be returned. Lane County Emergency Management will conduct its annual test of the Lane Alerts emergency notification system at 1:15 p.m. on Wednesday, May 21. Depending on each subscriber's contact preferences, the test will include emails, voice calls and text messages. Lane Alerts is a free, opt-in system that notifies residents of emergencies based on specific locations they choose. "We do this test each year for two reasons," said Lane County Emergency Manager Tiffany Brown. "First, it's a great reminder to double-check our Lane Alerts registrations to make sure the location and contact information is up to date. It's also a good opportunity to review the wildfire preparedness information we include in the test message and ready ourselves ahead of the summer season." Residents can sign up or update their information at Users can choose to receive alerts about multiple addresses, including home, work, or a child's school. Lane Alerts notifications may include information about evacuations, severe weather, flooding, police activity, and other emergencies. This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: In brief: Lane County news and events
E&E News
12-05-2025
- Business
- E&E News
Bonneville Power finalizes decision to join Western market
The largest electricity supplier in the Pacific Northwest on Friday finalized its decision to join a market being formed by Arkansas-based Southwest Power Pool, rather than one out of California. The choice by the Bonneville Power Administration — a federal agency that distributes hydropower from the Columbia River Basin — sets the stage for the West to be bifurcated between two day-ahead markets after decades of trying to organize the region. Joining SPP's Markets+ operation will allow BPA to buy and sell power on a day-ahead market with a wider footprint of trading partners. In a letter Friday announcing the decision, BPA Administrator and CEO John Hairston said the decision 'offers an opportunity to ensure a reliable, abundant and affordable energy supply for consumers in the Northwest.' Advertisement A broader day-ahead market is expected to lower costs and increase reliability by offering participants a larger pool of resources to buy from. It is also likely to boost low-cost renewable power.
Business Journals
22-04-2025
- Business
- Business Journals
Idaho Power's B2H transmission line faces continued delays
When Adam Richins gives presentations about Idaho Power's efforts to build the Boardman to Hemingway power line — B2H as it's known — he'll sometimes include a baby picture of his son Sam. "He was born in 2007, which is when B2H was essentially born," Richins, the utility's chief operating officer, says. Now, Sam is "a man, bigger than I am." B2H, though, remains unbuilt, still slogging through seemingly endless regulatory thickets. The 290-mile power line mainly in northeastern Oregon is a key piece in Idaho Power's plan to reliably meet rising demand with clean resources. The company owns 45% of the project and is leading its development. Portland-based PacifiCorp, which owns the other 55%, has positioned the line as part of enhanced connectivity between the western and eastern portions of its six-state service territory. Bonneville Power Administration plans to use the line to serve customers in southeastern Idaho. Poster child for power-line roadblocks But right now B2H is the poster child for the challenge of building transmission lines amid widespread agreement on the need for expansion in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere. The Oregon Supreme Court late last month turned aside a challenge to an amendment to B2H's state site certificate — as it had a challenge two years ago to the original site certificate. Now, though, the project is awaiting sign-off on documents and reports related to the National Historic Preservation Act. expand Adam Richins, chief operating officer, Idaho Power Idaho Power "They've had multiple reviews time and time again, and we still are in a position where we're going to have months of delays," Richins said. "We're probably hoping to break ground this summer if they can get these documents reviewed. And then we can go forward once and for all with breaking ground." A spokesperson for the Bureau of Land Management, the lead federal agency on the project permitting, told the Business Journal that "compliance with regulations that protect cultural resources continues to move forward in partnership with BLM, IPC, Tribes, the Oregon and Idaho State Historic Preservation Office and other consulting parties." Idaho Power's best-case scenario now is to have the line completed before the end of 2027. The 500-kilovolt B2H line would offer a new connection between the Pacific Northwest and the Intermountain West, running mostly through Oregon on a route between a new substation near Boardman, in Morrow County, and one near Melba, Idaho. Idaho Power is also involved in other significant regional projects, as is PacifiCorp. The projects are all about opening up corridors to move energy — including Washington and Oregon hydropower, Wyoming wind power and Great Basin and Desert Southwest solar — from where it's produced, to where it's needed, when it's needed. New transmission and "grid-enhancing technologies" applied to existing lines are seen as increasingly needed to meet rising demand, especially with intermittent clean resources. PacifiCorp's plan with B2H PacifiCorp has long included B2H in its biennial resource plans, although in a twist, it dropped the line from its "preferred portfolio" in its recently released 2025 Integrated Resource Plan. At an Oregon Public Utility Commission meeting last week, PacifiCorp officials said they did so because they learned that it faced delays in acquiring rights from Bonneville to redirect power from a new substation called Longhorn that is the terminus of the B2H line near Boardman. But it turned out that an unnamed "specific local customer" — the area is rife with data center and renewable energy development — could get to Longhorn and use the B2H path. So the line wouldn't be used to serve existing customers, and thus they wouldn't be billed for it. "So we've removed (B2H) from this (IRP) and are pursuing its construction, its arrangements, the cost of that facility, through a process outside of the IRP at this time," Rick Link, PacifiCorp's senior vice president of resource planning and procurement, told the PUC. "It does not mean that we're assuming the line doesn't get built. We're actively pursuing the things needed for that to be successful, as we speak."
Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
U.S. pauses Columbia River water-sharing negotiations with Canada amid Trump threats
Grand Coulee Dam in Washington is one of dozens of dams in the Columbia River Basin generating hydroelectricity. The river's upstream flows are controlled in part by the Canadian government, under an agreement that is hitting turbulence under President Donald Trump. (Courtesy of Bureau of Reclamation) The U.S. has paused negotiations with Canada on a keystone management plan that governs flood control, water supply and hydropower in the shared Columbia River Basin as President Donald Trump escalates his trade war and threats to Canada's sovereignty. British Columbia's energy ministry said in a news release this week that Trump administration officials notified them they would pause and review their engagement with Canada on final updates to the 61-year-old Columbia River Treaty. The U.S. Department of State did not respond to questions from the Capital Chronicle by Thursday evening. British Columbia's minister in charge of Columbia River Treaty negotiations is holding a virtual public forum on issues presented by the pause March 25. Under the terms of the treaty, Canada controls the flow of the northwest's largest river from its headwaters in British Columbia, ensuring enough water is sent downstream to meet U.S. hydropower needs. Canada also provides water storage that helps prevent flooding, supports irrigation and protects fish habitat. In exchange, Canada is entitled to some of the hydropower generated by the Bonneville Power Administration's 31 Columbia River Basin dams. The Bonneville Power Administration, in charge of marketing the hydroelectricity produced by the U.S. dams, directed Capital Chronicle questions about the pause to the U.S. State Department. The Columbia River Basin and the dams within it generate 40% of the United States' hydropower, irrigate $8 billion in crops and carry 42 million tons of commercial cargo every year. Barbara Cosins, a professor emerita at the University of Idaho College of Law and an expert on water law, said a breakdown of the treaty will be harder on the U.S. than Canada. 'If the two parties really get in a tit-for-tat over this river, Canada is the winner,' Cosins said. 'There's a saying in water law that says: 'It's better to be upstream with a shovel than downstream with a right,' because you can just stop that water.' The Columbia River Treaty, first ratified in 1964, was set to expire late last year. In July 2024, Biden administration officials and Canadian officials reached a tentative agreement, under which Canada would receive less hydropower from the U.S., but would get more flexibility when it comes to water storage. Canada would also receive over $37 million in direct payments from the U.S. under that agreement. But Biden officials could not get the tentative agreement finalized and in front of the U.S. Senate for a vote before Trump took office. Instead, a series of interim agreements have extended, for several years, certain provisions of the 2024 treaty updates. Those interim agreements are non-negotiable, according to John Wagner, an environmental policy professor at the University of British Columbia and an expert on the Columbia River Treaty. 'Trump cannot just pause these because they were approved by an exchange of notes between Canada and U.S. governments before Trump took office,' Wagner said in an email. But if Trump and administration officials decide not to resume negotiations on a final agreement, Wagner said, '(it) will be dead in the water.' Among updates to the Columbia River Treaty being negotiated were more engagement on decision making with tribal governments and more investment in fish habitat and recovering threatened salmon populations in the basin. Joseph Bogaard, executive director at the Washington-based nonprofit Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition, said the updates weren't perfect, but worsening relations between Canada and the U.S. over the basin will hurt people and fish. 'If we're not working together, we're not collaborating, we're not finding ways forward together, it's going to lead to bad outcomes for both countries. And certainly salmon are going to be increasingly a casualty, and the health of the river will be a casualty of those broken down negotiations and broken down relationships if that occurs,' Bogaard said. If the U.S. misses deadlines for negotiating a final agreement, the earlier 61-year-old treaty would be reinstated, with no resolution to the issues the updates were meant to solve. If either nation decides to terminate the treaty, it will set off a 10-year process of dissolving the nations' co-management infrastructure. 'Another way of putting it is: our two nations, which share a long border together and share the Columbia Basin watershed, are going to best be served in the near term and over the long term by healthy, collaborative, constructive, reciprocal relationships,' Bogaard said, 'And that tradition, it seems, is sort of in peril at the moment.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Baumgartner backs bipartisan bill to support fired federal workers
Mar. 11—WASHINGTON — Rep. Michael Baumgartner, R-Spokane, gave a bipartisan boost on Tuesday to a bill that aims to help federal workers who have lost their jobs as part of the mass firing led by Elon Musk's U.S. DOGE Service. The Protect Our Probationary Employees Act is cosponsored by dozens of House lawmakers, but so far only two Republicans: Baumgartner and his fellow freshman, Rep. Jeff Hurd of Colorado. Its lead sponsor is another first-term lawmaker, Democratic Rep. Sarah Elfreth of Maryland. The bill would clarify regulations that apply to a federal worker's probationary period — the first year on the job, or in some cases two years — so that fired probationary employees could keep the seniority they had accumulated if they are rehired. In a brief interview at the Capitol, Baumgartner said his support for the bill shouldn't be construed as criticism of President Donald Trump or his administration's effort to rapidly downsize the federal workforce. "There are some workers who were fired by mistake, and those workers shouldn't lose their accrued probationary status," he said. "I think it's just a good, common-sense bill." "We want good people spinning turbines and guarding our nuclear stockpiles," Baumgartner said, referring to the seemingly arbitrary termination of hundreds of workers at the Bonneville Power Administration, which runs hydroelectric dams in the Northwest, and the National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages U.S. nuclear weapons. Trump has empowered Musk, a billionaire adviser who has ignored government ethics rules and continues to run multiple companies with billions in federal contracts, to fire workers without specific reasons through an entity dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency. The group, largely composed of software engineers and other business associates of Musk, isn't technically a department — something only Congress can create — and has taken over the offices and the acronym of a small agency formerly called the U.S. Digital Service, which was also referred to as USDS. Pointing to a story published by Politico on Tuesday, Baumgartner emphasized that his backing of the bill is not "some specific pushback against Elon Musk." "That's not how the bill is intended," he said. "It's just a bill that says we need good federal employees, and if they're mistakenly fired, let's just have common sense." Even Trump, Baumgartner pointed out, has come to endorse a more targeted approach to cutting the government workforce, whose salaries account for about 5% of federal spending, according to the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute. In a social media post on March 6, the president called Musk's DOGE project "an incredible success" and said he had directed his cabinet secretaries to continue the staff cuts. At the Department of Veterans Affairs, for instance, Musk led the termination of about 2,500 probationary employees, including more than a dozen at Spokane's Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center. Then, on March 4, VA Secretary Doug Collins directed his department to lay off approximately 70,000 to 80,000 more employees within six months. "As the Secretaries learn about, and understand, the people working for the various Departments, they can be very precise as to who will remain, and who will go," Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social. "We say the 'scalpel' rather than the 'hatchet.' The combination of them, Elon, DOGE, and other great people will be able to do things at a historic level." Orion Donovan Smith's work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.
