STANWOOD — The power outages kept coming last winter, and they lasted for days at a time.
A fierce storm would blow in, a tree would blow onto a power line and the electricity would wink out for thousands.
Stanwood, Warm Beach, Lake Goodwin and Camano Island were among the hardest hit, in part because there is only one transmission line that serves the 15,000 homes and businesses located in the northwest part of Snohomish County PUD’s service area.
That will change when the utility finishes work on a new $9.2 million high-voltage transmission line that will give the region a much needed backup, said Jim Whitehead, project leader for the PUD. Construction on the new 115-kilovolt line started in June and is scheduled to finish in March.
That means that the PUD will be able to more quickly restore power after outages.
That’s a relief, say area residents.
“That sounds wonderful, especially after what we’ve went through last winter,” said Jeannie Matthews, a Warm Beach resident. She lost her power several times, twice for multiple days.
Right now, there are two transmission lines that start near Marysville. One ends in Lake Goodwin and the other ends in Stanwood. The new 8-mile-long transmission line will connect those two creating a loop. That will allow the utility to reroute electricity around an outage, said Neil Neroutsos, a utility spokesman.
Fueled by growth, the new power line also is being built with larger gauge wires so that more electricity can be moved into the area.
“We have a lot of growth in this area,” Whitehead said. “We need to plan for the future.”
A 22-foot wide swath of trees is being cut to make room for the power line, but only along about half of the length of the project, Neroutsos said.
Thick stands of trees have been falling along Marine Drive and Frank Waters Road in recent weeks, catching the eyes of folks in Warm Beach, Matthews said.
“It seems like they’re cutting a tremendous amount of trees,” she said.
Matthews has wondered what the PUD is doing since work on the project started in June.
“Our electricity has been going on and off,” she said. “It seems like they could warn us that it could happen. I don’t think the PR has been too good.”
Neroutsos said the route was the cheapest and most environmentally friendly of nine options, adding that the options were explained to the public in 2005. He said the route was selected because it follows roads that already have large sections of cleared shoulders.
Whitehead said the power line crosses the road several times to avoid removing trees, including several where eagles nest.
The PUD has what they call an aggressive tree-trimming program that it uses to limit the power outages that can strike during winter storms, Neroutsos said. He said the program likely limited damage from storms that last winter cost the PUD and its customers $12 million and caused tens of thousands of residents to lose their power for days at a time.
The utility spends $5.6 million per year to trim trees along 500 miles of power lines each summer.
This year, the focus has been on Camano Island, which suffered some of the worst damage during last year’s storms.
“We’ve been working with residents there to pick out which trees would be the best to remove,” Neroutsos said.
The utility is spending $1.5 million to trim and cut trees along 94 miles of power line on the west side of the island. Those lines service about 5,000 homes and businesses.
Next year the focus will shift to other areas on the island, he said.
This year the utility has also been trimming trees in Lake Goodwin, Lake Stevens, Granite Falls and Edmonds, he said.
Reporter Lukas Velush: 425-339-3449 or lvelush@heraldnet.com.
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