Portland, PGE reach deal on controversial transmission line project in Forest Park

PORTLAND, Ore. (KATU) — The city of Portland and Portland General Electric have reached a mediated agreement over PGE’s controversial Harborton Reliability Project in Forest Park.

The updated agreement between the city and PGE follows months of mediation after PGE appealed Portland City Council’s 2025 denial of the project. Both sides have been working to address community concerns and strengthen environmental protections.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: City Council finalizes vote to reject PGE project in Forest Park

“The City’s responsibility throughout this process has been to protect Portland’s interests while ensuring that any proposal receives a fair and thorough review,” said Portland City Administrator Raymond Lee. “Mediation provided an opportunity to secure meaningful changes to the proposal that better address community concerns while strengthening environmental protections. While no outcome will satisfy every party, the agreement reflects significant improvements compared to the proposal that entered mediation.”

PGE said the Harborton Reliability Project aims to construct a much-needed stronger power grid in Forest Park to ensure electricity remains reliable for customers, by upgrading an existing transmission line and adding a new quarter-mile line.

PAST COVERAGE: Proposal to remove trees in Forest Park draws concern

However, the project has received backlash due to the number of trees that will have to be removed to make way for the upgrades, and the associated environmental risks. According to PGE, the improvements proposed would require removing roughly five acres of trees from the park, which environmental advocates say adds up to nearly 400 trees.

“There are real local impacts,” said Micah Meskel, director of Urban Conservation, Bird Alliance of Oregon. “There’s 4.7 acres of forest that 150 -year-old trees will be removed, and it will take them literally 200 years to get to that same level once the mitigation plan has moved forward.”

PGE has now agreed to increase its environmental mitigation commitment to $5.5 million, an additional $3.1 million from the original proposal for habitat restoration and environmental impacts. However, environmental advocates are calling this a “bad deal,” claiming the revised agreement still falls short of the requirements of the Forest Park Natural Resources Management Plan.

Forest Park Conservancy, Bird Alliance of Oregon, and Forest Park Neighborhood Association also called the recent decision by the city to approve a new agreement a “backroom agreement,” after they were all a part of the initial mediation process.

In a joint statement, the organizations said, “After four months of mediation, City leadership entered into bilateral negotiations with PGE, cutting out the conservation partners from the negotiation.”

“We are frustrated that the City has caved to PGE’s pressure campaign, and is poised to approve their destructive project in Forest Park,” Meskel said. “While the deal includes more money for habitat mitigation, it falls well short of adequately addressing the harms the project will inflict to the public resources of the park. The deal lets the investor-owned utility off the hook for their poor planning and lack of serious consideration of alternative routes, it ignores the significant public opposition to the project, and it will permanently undermine the City’s own environmental laws set in place to protect Forest Park.”

According to Meskel, the groups involved in mediation were pushing for PGE to pay $8 million in environmental mitigation, or to explore other alternatives.

“There are routes that avoid significant natural resources, specifically along Northwest Marina Way, which is on, it’s parallel to Highway 30, so there could be an alignment of new power lines that parallel Highway 30 [that] do not impact Forest Park or significant tree stands and could serve the same purpose,” he said. “There are also ways that PGE can reduce their energy demand across their network.”

“This decision isn’t just about a single transmission project. This is just one example of PGE attempting to bypass local conservation and land-use policy, claiming the path through Forest Park as the least expensive and quickest option to deliver reliable energy,” said Carole Hardy, board vice chair for the Forest Park Conservancy. “PGE plans two more development projects in the same sensitive area of Forest Park over the next 10 years. Αs planned. These projects would harm more than 15 additional acres of the park. We have to consider the precedent we are setting by allowing a deal made outside of public view to stand.”

In response, PGE Policy and Resource Planning Vice President Kristen Sheeran told KATU, “PGE appreciates the City of Portland’s sincere engagement and pragmatic efforts to find win-win solutions to serve Portlanders reliable energy and improve Forest Park. Even though PGE and the City have reached key understandings, some organizations that intervened and participated in dozens of hours of discussion and dialogue with numerous subject-matter experts remain in opposition while other intervenors support the outcome.”

The agreement does not approve the project, but rather allows the utility company to submit a revised land use application for the project, which the city said it will support if it matches the terms of the mediated agreement.

PGE Strategic Project Communications Manager Andrea Platt confirmed the company is on a time crunch to upgrade the infrastructure.

“The project is urgently needed because people are using more electricity, especially in times of peak demand — usually during extreme heat and cold,” Platt said. “This additional transmission capacity is essential as the system is projected to reach capacity limits that threaten the reliability of power in Portland, and could cause outages that experts say could occur in 2028 without these improvements.”

In addition to $5.5 million in environmental mitigation, the city said PGE’s updated application must include stronger restoration and construction plans, more information about the project’s impacts and alternatives, as well as funding for an independent consultant to help guide future utility planning in Forest Park.

“Given the urgency of this project, PGE and the City have agreed that PGE will move forward with a new land use application that includes additional details and information about the project’s need to maintain reliable electric service to Portland customers, and commitments to additional environmental mitigation and restoration that broadly enhance the park,” Sheeran said.

Lee said the revised land use application will move through the city’s land use review process, “including public notice, opportunities for public participation, and a public hearing before any final decision is made.”