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A New York investment group on Tuesday ended its quest to build a new electricity generating plant on the site of an old aluminum plant in Troutdale.
The investment group, Development Partners, pushed for the past four years to built a natural gas-fired electricity generating plant on a 38-acre parcel of land adjacent to the Troutdale Airport.
As WW reported last year, the proposed 701-megawatt plant, called the Troutdale Energy Center, drew opposition from Friends of the Gorge, an environmental group that feared the impact of emissions on the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, and the Oregon Pilots Association, which feared that plumes of hot air rising from the plant's boilers would endanger small planes.
But perhaps the biggest problem for Development Partners was that the prospect of a long-term contract with Portland General Electric failed to materialize.
When Development Partners initially filed an application with the state's energy facility siting group in 2011, it did so in part with the hope that PGE, which needed to acquire additional generating capacity, would sign a long-term contract for the plant's output. But in 2013, PGE decided it would build its own plant in Eastern Oregon.
Over the past couple of years, opponents challenged the proposed project in a contested case in front of the Oregon Department of Energy.
On Jan. 26, a representative of the group planning Troutdale Energy Center, Willard Ladd, wrote to the Department of Energy, telling the agency the group was withdrawing its application.
That decision pleased opponents.
"The abandonment of this proposal is proof that it lacked merit from the start," said Nathan Baker, staff attorney for Friends of the Columbia Gorge, in a statement. "In terms of resource impacts, this is one of the worst sites in the state of Oregon to build a large power plant. The site is literally at the gateway to the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, which already suffers from significant air pollution problems."
Willamette Week