Portland council tentatively sides with appellants, overturns hearings officer on PGE Forest Park transmission upgrade

Portland's City Council voted tentatively April 17 to grant appeals by the Forest Park Neighborhood Association and the Forest Park Conservancy and overturn the hearings officer's approval of Portland General Electric's proposed transmission upgrade through Forest Park.

The council's tentative decision means staff were directed to draft findings that would deny the environmental review portion of the permit application and uphold aspects of the record that questioned whether PGE met the approval criteria in the Forest Park Natural Resources Management Plan. The council set a final action on the matter for May 7 and staff noted that, because of prior extensions, the city must issue a final decision by May 20.

Why it matters: The project would add a roughly 1,400-foot segment of upgraded transmission line and poles through a utility corridor that crosses Forest Park, a protected urban forest. City planners said the work as proposed would permanently affect about 4.7 acres of natural resources in the park, including removal of 397 trees and impacts to two streams and two wetlands. Opponents called the scale of tree removal and wetland impacts inconsistent with the park's 1995 Natural Resources Management Plan; the applicant and some labor and utility witnesses said the work is necessary to address a bottleneck in the regional transmission system.

What the proposal would do: Portland Permitting and Development Bureau planner Morgan Steele described the land-use pieces of the application during the hearing and summarized the staff analysis: the project would upgrade an…