[All-Gorge] 🌡 What Science Says On CRT Heat & Magnetic Fields - EFSEC Sept '26

Washington's energy siting council, EFSEC, got its first look at 772 comments on the power line that would run along the bed of the Columbia. A Scenic Area fight, a notice that never ran in the Skamania County paper, and a hearing decision set for October. Plus a plain look at what the science says about cable heat, magnetic fields and fish.

In This Episode

• The 772 comments, sorted
• Does the Scenic Area reach the riverbed?
• The Title 22 agreement
• The notice that didn't run
• Another hearing, or not
• Cable heat: the river versus the riverbed
• Magnetic fields and fish
• How old this technology is
• Carriger Solar's cleanup plan slips
• Ostrea's ribbon cutting
• Badger Mountain withdrawn

Resources & Links

• Read the full written Dispatch at skamaniadispatch.com
• EFSEC's summary of the land use comments: https://efsec.wa.gov/sites/default/files/2026-09/20260916_CRT_CouncilLUCommentSummary.pdf
• EFSEC's EIS scoping report: https://efsec.wa.gov/sites/default/files/2026-09/20260915_SEPA%20EIS%20Scoping%20Report%20EFSEC.pdf
• Cascade Renewable Transmission project page and documents: https://efsec.wa.gov/facilities/cascade-renewable-transmission
• Our February special report on the line: https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/special-report-cascade-renewable-transmission-an-underwater-power-line-with-a-long-road-ahead/
• EFSEC meetings and join links: https://efsec.wa.gov/hearings-and-meetings

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey there, and welcome back to Open Gorge. I'm glad you're here. It's October, and our Cabinet of Curiosity selection for this episode is about what Halloween was like in the Gorge 100 years ago. Before trick-or-treating, Halloween out here meant two things, a party or a prank. The phrase trick-or-treat didn't even show up in print until 1917, in a newspaper up in Ontario. Here that same October, the Underwood School threw its Halloween party. There was a marshmallow race, apple bobbing, a peanut hunt, and a game called Hitting Black Cat. That doesn't sound very nice at all. The Perry Boys won three of the four. Carl Kapp took the apple bobbing. Then came Cider and Donuts, and the paper made sure to thank R. E. Steele for the cider. The next October, there was no party at all. The school had been sent on what the paper called, quote, an enforced vacation, and the Halloween party was canceled. That was the fall of 1918, when towns across Washington closed their schools and churches to slow the flu. Underwood's notes only report, quote, the ban on public meetings lifted at the end of November. By 1923, the parties were back. The Underwood Christian Endeavor invited everyone to the old climax mill cookhouse on October 31st for apples, cider, and donuts. And if you weren't at a party, you might have been up to something. In Stevenson, Philip Dumitt remembered the Halloween a group of men hoisted a draisted a dray wagon onto the roof of the fire department building. Outhouses got tipped every year, quote, to the amusement of only the tricksters. Sounds pretty gross. His own store windows got smeared with candle wax and he spent hours scraping it off. Years later he wrote that trick-or-treating by, quote, the small fry was a welcome change from the past. And with all of those shenanigans over, it's on to this month's business. This one is all about one agency. The Washington State Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, or FSEC. It's the state board that decides where big energy projects go. And in the gorge, the big one everyone's talking about is the power line that would run along the bottom of the Columbia River. FSEC met once in September on the 16th. There was no August meeting, and most of the afternoon went to the power line. Let's start with the basics. This project is called Cascade Renewable Transmission. It would carry 1,100 megawatts of power about 100 miles from the Dallas to Portland. Most of it would be buried in the riverbed, about 40 miles around the Washington side along Scamania County, Click Tat, and Clark Counties. That includes about 7.5 miles buried under the roads near Stevenson and North Bonneville to get around the Bonneville Dam. Over the summer, FSEC asked the public to weigh in on the developer's updated land use information. 772 submissions came in, most were form emails. Staff read 43 of them one by one. And what questions stood out above the rest? Do the National Scenic Area rules reach into the river itself? The developer says no. The river isn't zoned under the Scenic Area plan, so the plan doesn't apply out there. Six submissions disagree, that includes the Yakima Nation, the Warm Springs, and Umatilla tribes, and the Friends of Columbia Gorge along with Columbia Riverkeeper. FSEC's own staff wrote that the two readings can't both be right, and the council will have to pick one on the record. Commenters also pointed out holes. The North Bonneville Treaty Fishing Site and the Bonneville in Loo Fishing Site don't show up in the developers' analysis. And not one city or county has filed a statement saying the line fits its rules. So what did the council say? The council's lawyer, Assistant Attorney General John Thompson, said the step is narrow. It only asked whether a power line is flatly banned somewhere along the route. If it's allowed with conditions, that counts as consistent. He also said the scenic area rules, including Scamania County's own scenic area code, are outside what FSEC can apply. Those carry out federal law. So in his view, they run through the county and the Gorge Commission. Councilmember Kate Dean asked why. Counties adopt federal maps into their own code all the time. Why is this different? That question is still open. Here's a piece of context from our Scamania County coverage. The county, the state attorney general's office, and the Gorge Commission have been working on an agreement that would let FSEC review the line under the county's own scenic area code. That's Title 22. In September, County Public Works said it was in the Attorney General's hands. Thompson floated the same idea at this meeting. Then a smaller moment that matters a lot locally. Councilmember Aaron Peterson asked about a commenter's claim that the Scamania County hearing back in November 2025 was never noticed in the county's legal paper. Ami Halfgemeier, F Sex Director of Sighting and Compliance, said, that's right, FSEC sent the notice. It didn't run before the meeting. So should there be another hearing? The council split. Asa Leckie, who represents Scamania County on this project, offered to move for one. He said residents deserve in-person hearing on land use. Councilmember Nate Pamplin said a hearing with the whole council seated would help. Blake Nelson from Ecology said the public has already had plenty of chances to comment. Kate Dean wants to see a map of which rules apply where before deciding. And Brian Ryberick wants the council to consider keeping any new hearing to what FSEC can actually decide. Chair Kurt Beckett asked staff to start drafting the decision documents now. He said that would presume no outcome. The hearing decision comes at the October meeting, and if there is one, Beckett said it would likely land the week before Thanksgiving. Okay. Now let's take a few minutes on something that comes up again and again in coverage of this line heat and magnetic fields. You may have heard that the cable runs at 158 degrees Fahrenheit. That figure shows up in letters from Columbia Riverkeeper and from the Columbia Intertribal Fish Commission. Neither letter says where that number comes from. It matches 70 degrees Celsius, a common rated maximum for the copper core of this kind of cable. That's the inside of the cable, not the mud around it or the water above it. And here's the thing about the river. The Columbia does have a real heat problem. Water at the Dalles Dam ran above the danger line for salmon on 81 days in 2025. We did the math and had it checked by a physicist. Even if every bit of the heat that the cable loses went straight into the water at full power, the river would warm by a few ten thousandths of a degree. It's a very large river, and the heat from that cable likely isn't enough to make a meaningful difference compared to the many other factors that are heating the Columbia. The river's heat is actually coming from slow, warm reservoirs and a warming climate. So the real question is the riverbed. Immediately around the cable, the sediment will warm up. People worry most about young Pacific lamprey, which live buried in riverhead sand for years. But they live near the top. In federal tests with Columbia River lamprey, most dug in less than three inches and none went deeper than six. Ten feet down, the cable is far below them. Where it could matter is where the bottom is rock and the cable sits under concrete mats instead. The developer's own application expects some local warming there. So far the heat modeling is the developer's own. Riverkeeper, Friends of the Gorge, and Tribal Fish Commission have all asked for independent study of those stretches, and that's certainly very reasonable. Now, magnetic fields. A cable like this makes a steady magnetic field like a small bump in the Earth's own field. Fish can notice. On a similar cable under San Francisco Bay, young Chinook salmon seem a little drawn to it and sturgeon timing shifted, but the number of fish that finished their migrations didn't change in a statistically meaningful way. An international science review in 2020 concluded animals near these cables are, quote, not likely to be harmed. What nobody has studied yet is a cable like this in a narrower river with adult salmon heading upstream to spawn and with lamp brand sturgeon. So here's a fair version. Fish can sense it, some change their behavior, harm to fish populations hasn't yet been shown, but no effect at all isn't what the studies say either. I think it's very important when we're looking at questions like this to know that there's established science out there and scientific method we can use to evaluate all of these very important questions. And how new is this technology? Not very. The first underwater direct current power cable opened in Sweden to the island of Gotland in 1954, and 1250 megawatt line running under Lake Champlain, and the Hudson River started commercial service in May of 2026. What's new here is the place. This means that these are all really important questions, and I'm glad we have a full slate of scientific tools to be able to answer all of them. And certainly all of those questions deserve to be answered as we approach a decision by FSEC. Next, FSEC writes the full environmental study, which is a great place for a lot of this research to go. A draft will go out for public comment. We'll look forward to reviewing it. A few quick ones before we go. At its October meeting, the council is set to see that map of which rules apply where and decide on another land use hearing. And down the road, a draft land use decision and a draft environmental study, both open for public comment. You can read the full written dispatch with every figure and every link to every study we mentioned today at Scamania Dispatch.com. You've been listening to a production of opengorge.org, home of the Schemania Dispatch and the Click of Tatler. We believe that informed communities are stronger communities. To support our work and stay up to date on everything happening in the gorge, head over to schemania dispatch.com to sign up for our newsletters. You can also find us on Facebook at facebook.comslash opengorge. Join the conversation and share your thoughts on today's episode. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll talk to you next time.