Growth strains electrical system

As Sisters grows, the local electric utility has to continually upgrade its system to keep up.

Jim Crowell, spokesman for Central Electric Cooperative (CEC), explained:

"The up-grading projects for each year would take way more than two hands to count on," he said. "I don't mean that we're doing nothing in Redmond, Prineville, and Madras. It's just that the biggest impacts of growth are in the Bend and Sisters area."

There are two different transmission lines to Sisters. One line runs north of the Sisters/Redmond highway (Highway 126) right next to the road. The other one, which dates back to 1962, runs east to west two miles south of the Sisters/Redmond highway.

CEC intends to upgrade the older line.

The upgrade will require larger conductors, larger wire, bigger poles, larger insulators and larger cross arms. Crowell explained that this is the type of upgrade necessary to provide greater capacity on the existing line.

"We're way behind on this and that's a big concern to us, because this is a big project," Crowell said. "We've been delayed more than a year on this. It will be 11.5 miles long, will cost about $3 million, and will take about six months to construct."

The property owner whose land the 1962 line runs across -- the Keith Cyrus family of Sisters -- is resisting the project. The Cyruses filed an appeal with the state of Oregon's Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA).

According to Crowell, "The issue was settled at the county level and the Cyruses have appealed to LUBA. When LUBA makes a decision, and we expect that to be in Central Electric's favor, we will begin construction immediately."

LUBA has indicated that it will make a decision by April 8.

Crowell is concerned about the financial implications of the delay: "Sometimes costs have a way of going up overnight. We might approach $4 million by the time we get to the end of the project."

The CEC spokesman explained that the costs of the upgrade of the transmission line would be allocated to all 20,000 members because it is an upgrade that benefits the entire system. CEC does not allocate out costs strictly on geographic areas.

Crowell is not certain when Sisters will need another substation.

"We don't have any approved sites for a substation," Crowell. "I think in every other area that we serve we do have sites that we have identified and acquired. Obviously, that's not an easy thing to do. Nobody wants a substation next to them."