Following three days of hearings and discussion, the Oregon Energy Facility Siting Council recently gave a heavily conditioned approval on a final route for a proposed $94 million Northwest Natural Gas Co. 24-inch diameter transmission pipeline.

The so-called “South Mist Pipeline” would cover 62 miles through three fast-growing counties in which residents have concerns about safety. Opponents have 60 days from Thursday to appeal to the Oregon Supreme Court.

In its announcement, the council, which has final energy infrastructure siting authority in the state under the Oregon Energy Department, noted that its approval of the pipeline was “painstakingly negotiated with dozens of conditions attached,” in an attempt to “minimize and mitigate” potential damage to the parties involved. In three days of testimony, the council heard from farmers, safety experts, landowners and others, outlining land-use issues, public health/safety concerns, and potential adverse impact on farmlands.

“This process has been nearly four years from when it was first proposed,” said Davis Stewart-Smith, the siting council’s secretary. “A significant amount of public input refined the final pipeline route.”

Northwest Natural agreed to reduce the amount of private farmland to be used as an adjacent corridor, or road rights-of-way. The concession amounts to reducing by almost half the private farmland originally approved for easements, the council said in its announcement.

Initially as part of the seven-member volunteer siting council’s three-day project review, a 200-foot-wide route was mapped with the goal of creating an eventual 40-foot-wide corridor to permit adequate maintenance room for Northwest Natural utility crews on the mostly buried pipeline.

The utility estimated the new transmission line tied to its interstate supplier, Williams’ Northwest Pipeline Co., and to the utility’s underground storage field at Mist, OR, will ultimately save its customers $180 million over 30 years. Recovery of the cost of the pipeline project in Northwest Natural’s retail rates is subject to a final decision by the Oregon Public Utilities Commission.

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