State to Lane: Step aside.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Maybe PeaceHealth should call its new RiverBend hospital a power plant. That way, it could seek approval of its project from the state Energy Facilities Siting Council instead of going through the local government planning process, with all its pitfalls and appeals. The siting council, not local governments, is reviewing plans for a power plant near Coburg, and the process is as streamlined as a gas-fired turbine.

It's streamlined by design. The siting council was created in 1975, a period of predicted power shortages. The Legislature understood that the size and complexity of new power plants or transmission lines meant that such projects could be difficult or impossible to site because of local opposition and the complex review processes of multiple local jurisdictions. The siting council has operated ever since as a one-stop permit shop for power plant developers, offering a consolidated review of their environmental and land-use effects.

Oregon's land-use goals and guidelines still govern power plant projects - but developers can choose to bypass local planning review processes and seek land-use approval directly from the Energy Facilities Siting Council. The developers of the West Cascade Energy Facility, which would generate up to 900 megawatts of electricity by burning natural gas in a plant north of Coburg, chose the siting council route.

Because Lane County has planning jurisdiction over the area where the West Cascades project would be built, the siting council appointed the county Board of Commissioners to act as a "special advisory group." In this role, the board would inform the the council of the criteria that would be used to determine whether the power plant complies with land-use rules.

The board took that charge seriously. It asked that West Cascades submit a full-blown land-use application, and has maintained that the board can't fulfill its duties as a special advisory group without conducting a normal land-use review to determine whether the power plant project complies with the applicable criteria.

But apparently, being a special advisory group isn't all that special. The state Energy Department, which acts as the siting council's staff, says that if the power plant project requires a land-use decision, the siting council, not the county board, would make it.

The state agency has told the county that its role is simply to recommend which land-use provisions should be considered, then get out of the way and let the council do its job. While the Board of Commissioners was waiting for the application it had requested from the power-plant developers, the council's deadline for the county's recommendations passed - leaving the county standing on the sidelines.

Bobby Green, chairman of the Board of Commissioners, said Wednesday that "this whole process is beginning to stink." He and his colleagues are looking for way to gaining some influence over the siting council's decision - a legal appeal, seeking Gov. Ted Kulongoski's intervention, or asking the siting council for more time.

Yet the siting council holds the high cards. In a recent dispute involving the city of Turner, which sought to conduct a land-use review of a power plant project, the state Land Use Board of Appeals determined that state law clearly gives the siting council jurisdiction. Case dismissed.

The absence of local authority over land-use issues in power-plant siting is one more layer of insulation for projects like the West Cascade Energy Facility. The siting council's process is standards-based, leaving no room for judgments about the merits of a particular power plant. Further, in the 1990s the Legislature deleted the siting council's authority to evaluate the need for the power from a proposed project. Similarly, the Lane Regional Air Pollution Authority's analysis of the plant's impact on air quality will determine only whether the project meets federal standards, not whether a power-generating facility is a good use of the local airshed's remaining capacity to absorb pollution.

If the Northwest were confronting a power shortage that made the construction of new generating plants essential, a discretion-free approval process might make sense. That's not the case; current or planned projects will more than meet projected needs. The market will decide which approved projects are built. The market, however, will not take into account such factors as whether a power plant represents the best use of a local community's air and water resources.

The Legislature needs to re-examine this process. It's a product of an era that produced the financially ruinous uncompleted nuclear power plants of the Washington Public Power Supply System. When the siting council lost its authority to evaluate the need for new plants, a veneer of 1990s deregulation ideology was added to the get-it-built urgency of the 1970s. Local governments, which understand local conditions and are most responsive to local constituents, shouldn't be relegated to the role of spectators. But that's what has happened, and the process leaves everyone powerless to do anything about it.