The ongoing fight over a proposed upgrade to the electrical grid in Northwest Portland’s Forest Park has entered another round.

Portland General Electric’s Harborton Reliability Project could remove about 400 mature trees to upgrade one transmission line and build a stretch of new line. That work would happen on 5 acres of parkland in an area that’s had some transmission lines since before the park was founded.

PGE officials say it’s necessary to meet the region’s growing demand for electricity – a demand that’s driven, at least in part, by clean energy projects and other efforts to address climate change. Conservationists and the local neighborhood group say it will damage one of Portland’s most important ecological assets.

In earlier rounds of this dispute, city permitting staff first recommended against the project in January and then a city hearings officer determined earlier this month that it should be allowed to proceed.

Now the Forest Park Neighborhood Association and the Forest Park Conservancy have appealed that decision to Portland City Council. A hearing date has not been set.

A senior project manager from Portland General Electric and the executive director of the Forest Park Conservancy separately spoke to OPB’s “Think Out Loud” to make the case for each side. Here are highlights from those conversations.

Portland General Electric: This is the best option for keeping a stable grid

Much of the region’s transmission infrastructure was built in the 1960s and ‘70s, and is now in need of upgrades, including existing PGE-owned lines in Forest Park. Bonneville Power Administration transmission lines in the same area of the park date to the 1940s. Meanwhile, how people use electricity is changing, said Randy Franks, senior project manager for PGE.

Data centers – which opponents to PGE’s plans say are the company’s main reason for seeking to expand the grid through Forest Park – are one force driving up use of the grid. The boom in streaming video, online retail, cloud data storage, web hosting – and, more recently, cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence – has spurred steady growth of these operations.

The region’s climate change response, which includes a move away from natural gas appliances toward electric stoves and water heaters, as well as an increase in new wind and solar farms, is also pushing up demand for electricity.

As far back as 2015, PGE determined transmission through Forest Park had become a bottleneck for the region and needed to be upgraded, Franks said.

The company looked at digging to lay underground lines - and determined that it would be too disruptive to tree roots, subterranean water flow and federally endangered species, he said. PGE then considered reconfiguring the grid. After exploring more than 20 alternatives, the company settled on its current plan.

“The project’s necessary to make sure we can continue reliably serving electric loads in the city of Portland into the future,” Franks said. “Our experts say that as soon as 2028, there’s the risk of outages when we are trying to serve peak load in increasingly extreme weather.”

Forest Park Conservancy: If this is allowed, what will PGE do next?

At 5,200 acres, Forest Park is one of the largest urban forests in the United States, home to more than 100 bird species and more than 50 mammal species. It’s used by thousands of people every year, and is beloved by many Portlanders and visitors to the city.

Some opponents of PGE’s Harborton Reliability Project say they’re worried both about the environmental consequences of the proposed work and the precedent of allowing that work.

“It will remove 5 acres of trees that are 100-plus years old. It will fill into streams, it will fill into wetlands that have species that are on the decline, and it will potentially open the door, as the tip of the iceberg, if you will, for future expansion by PGE,” said Scott Fogarty, executive director of the Forest Park Conservancy.

PGE, for its part, has pledged to mitigate the environmental damage the Harborton project might cause by planting 400 Oregon white oaks, as well as hundreds of smaller trees, and thousands of other native plants.

But Fogarty pushed back against those promises, and against the argument that a 5 acre project in a 5,200 acre park is small given the forest’s size.

“Is 5 acres acceptable? Is 20 acres acceptable? I mean, where do we draw the line? I mean, we’re talking about an era where climate resilience is on the mind of all Portlanders, of all Northwesterners, quite frankly of all the countries in the world,” he said. “You can’t replace a 150-year-old tree with a 10-year-old tree and expect the same value to come out of that.”

Fogarty said opponents to the Harborton project are also concerned about what PGE might do next. Future phases of the project could involve another 15 acres of the park to provide electricity to data centers in Hillsboro.

“Those phases are separate projects” from what’s presently in the works, said PGE’s Franks. The company has identified a need and is working through its options, he said. But he was not able to say when PGE might proceed with more work in Forest Park. “They are very early in planning stages and so those time frames are well out into the future,” he said.

That vagueness has worried conservationists, and bolstered opposition to the current effort.

“We’ve reached out to PGE many times to see what their future plans are, and we haven’t really gotten a response,” said Fogarty with the Forest Park Conservancy. “That is the crux of the issue. We don’t know. And if we knew, then we wouldn’t be as concerned, potentially, as we are now.”

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/03/29/portland-general-electric-grid-transmission-forest-park/