Recent newspaper articles you might find interesting.
UPDATE
The Bend Bulletin, http://www.bendbulletin.com/ (this article by subscription only) concludes in its Jan. 27th editorial opinion, "Don't kill the lights on power plan," that "Oregonians who want reliable power, more renewable power and reasonable rates must understand that projects like these are necessary." (italics added)
One of many uninformed opinions by people on the other side of the state who like to lecture us so we'll be as smart as they are.
This after it asks the $64,000 question, "People have also asked why the proposal travels so far through private land rather than detouring through public land owned by the Bureau of Land Management," and then fails to answer it, instead handing us that pedantic reply that "No matter what final route is chosen, people are going to be unhappy."
At least one reader gets it, saying in the comment section:
'I saw nothing in the article questioning the need for this project. It seems the people understand "projects like these are necessary". What is not answered is the question why so many landowners will be impacted versus BLM? Sounds like a pretty simple question to factually answer. But no, let us not provide any answers to that let's just say; Shut up and sit down. It is for your own good and we know better. Perhaps the bad weather is affecting your capability to provide news so we get another editorial of questionable value.'
The Capital Press (western agriculture) article on SIP:
http://www.capitalpress.info/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=48110&SectionID=67&SubSectionID=617&S=1
The Owyhee Avalanche website dedicated to the B2H project, including maps:
http://owyhee.com/B2H/B2Hindex.html
Owyhee Avalanche articles:
http://owyhee.com/B2H/Articles.html
The Oregonian's Richard Cockle has a recent article quoting IP's Eric Hackett and Malheur County's Lynn Jensen and Stacie ("Traci") Trenkel:
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/01/critics_blast_proposed_eastern.html
Although Cockle tries to be evenhanded here, it isn't the intention of Stop Idaho Power to "pull the plug" on the transmission line, only to route it away from prime farmland and onto designated utility corridors. Hackett is again quoted making the statement that the "route decisions 'were purely resource driven.' The utility's engineers, he said, 'had no idea what was federal, private or state land' when the corridor was laid out.' "
Anyone inspecting the maps would have to scratch their heads in bafflement, since you'd think with Malheur County being 80-85% publicly owned land, that hitting private land nearly 100% of the time under IP's proposed route would be against all odds. Maybe we're just not smart enough to understand.
