News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
The Jordan Road line is a key part of the controversy over providing sufficient electrical power for Sisters.
Sisters keeps on growing but the capacity to supply electricity to new development is not keeping pace.
Central Electric Cooperative (CEC) has informed the City of Sisters that “CEC’s power supply system for the Sisters area is at or near capacity.” That means that under the right conditions, Sisters is subject to temporary “rolling blackouts.”
Such blackouts were a possibility last winter when sub-zero temperatures put a strain on the electrical system in the Sisters area. Almost all Sisters homes and business use electricity for heating and when the mercury plunges, the use shoots up. When everyone in Sisters is maxing out their use of electricity, the system can overload, forcing shutdowns.
A somewhat testy exchange of letters between City Manager Eileen Stein and CEC officials boiled down to a simple fact: CEC can’t guarantee a system free from rolling blackouts.
“You have inquired whether CEC contemplates issuing a moratorium on new construction in the Sisters area,” CEC President Al Gonzalez wrote to Stein. “If the City of Sisters desires to be without any risk of periodic blackout situations occurring during extreme cold weather, they need to notify us and that would be a factor we could contemplate in issuing a moratorium.
“At the present time, we will continue to serve additional members in the Sisters area, however, these members should understand that there may be occasions of temporary blackouts when the demands on the system exceed the system’s capacity.”
City councilors wrestled with the implications of that statement at their Thursday, March 23, workshop.
Councilor Brad Boyd told his fellow councilors that there’s trouble on the horizon — and the horizon is close.
“We’re maxed out now; it gets cold every year; you’ve got about 900 homes (to be developed) and it’ll be about 100 a year,” he said. “We’re going to have a problem here.”
Part of the problem is that CEC has been locked in a dispute with the Cyrus family over upgrading its Jordan Road powerline, part of which crosses Cyrus land. The family is resisting the installation of taller towers to accommodate new power lines and so far they have prevailed in the dispute up to the state level.
The upgrade would provide more capacity for Sisters and back-up power in the event a main line went down.
The Sisters City Council is aware of the dispute and Mayor Dave Elliott has brought both parties to the table to attempt to reach some kind or agreement — without success. He promised his fellow councilors to try again.
In the meantime, Boyd said the situation is unacceptable.
“We’re not a Third World country here,” he said. “That’s just crazy.”
He said that local residents all accept the possibility of blackouts from lightning strikes, windstorms accidents and the like. But he argued that they shouldn’t have to accept blackouts from inevitable cold spells.
“This seems to be awfully foreseeable to me,” he said. “And I don’t think that this should be the norm in Sisters, Oregon — it gets cold, we lose power, but it’s only for a little while. Uh-uh.”
City planner Brian Rankin told the council he has discussed the situation with the city’s legal counsel and explored several options ranging from informing builders of blackout potential and educating the public about reducing peak hour usage when it’s cold to seeking help from other cities in crafting legislation to require adequate capacity at peak load.
The legislative route is considered a long shot because cities are generally unwilling to involve themselves in such a process unless they are directly impacted by the situation.
The councilors agreed that they want Sisters to be free of blackout risk — and they don’t want a building moratorium.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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