Road ruts frustrates BPA, costly to customers

Bob Heye

WASHOUGAL, Wash. – Damage caused by vandals and four-wheel vehicles along Bonneville Power Administration power lines is out of control and could make power bills larger and power outages worse.

The damage is happening to roads on power-line access roads north of Washougal. These roads are used by line repair crews to inspect and repair high-tension power lines.

Many of the roads are pockmarked with four-foot deep ruts, abused by four-wheel-drive and other off-road vehicles. On Tuesday BPA officials and a KATU reporter witnessed Isaiah Oviat and a companion climbing out of their four-wheel drive vehicle.

Oviat said he didn't know he was in the area illegally. “I don't know. “It's pretty popular, I guess,” he said.

After prompting from BPA officials Oviat and his truck left.

But what's left behind by he and others are roads rutted so bad they're impossible for utility trucks to get through and will cost ratepayers $100,000 to fix.

BPA linemen like Cristi Sawtell would have to find a way around these kinds of obstacles and maybe on a dark, stormy night to repair any problem on a section of high-tension power lines.

 “When a line goes down, we need to get it back up as soon as we possibly can, and if we're wasting time just trying to get to the line itself that's unnecessary," said Sawtell.

Additionally, some damage is caused by stuck four-wheelers using winches that have bent power line towers. Insulators have also been shot out.

 The BPA has tried to keep people out by installing special gates, with special locks on them. But in just a couple of month’s time, people with four-wheel-drives have found a way around those too.

Now the BPA has sent a letter to area residents promoting rewards of up to $25,000 for information on who's doing most of the damage.

 “The smallest detail, the smallest bit of information that feeds into that circuit of information that we can provide to local law enforcement to disrupt and ultimately stop this activity can be immensely helpful,’ said Doug Johnson, a BPA spokesman.

“Eventually it all trickles back to you and I, and the money that we spend on our power bills, and it shouldn't happen that way,” said Johnson.

The BPA said most of the damage under the lines has happened this year after it repaired gates and put in additional barriers.

--

Source: http://www.katu.com/news/local/54882091.html

---

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites