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The Incorporation of Noxious Weed Practices into BPA’s Schultz-Wautoma Powerline Construction Project.

Bill Erickson, Regional Natural Resource Specialist, Bonneville Power Administration, 6 West Rose, Suite 400, Walla Walla, WA 99362, 509 527-5249 , wterickson@bpa.gov

      The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) provides up to 80% of the electrical power transmission in the Pacific Northwest.  On November 9, 2000, BPA announced the intention of building a 59-mile-long, 500 (kV) transmission line in central Washington State from the Schultz substation north of Ellensburg in Kittitas County, to a new planned Wautoma substation faculty southwest of the Vernita Bridge in Benton County.  Early in the scoping and planning process, the issue of noxious weed species and their impacts on the shrub-steppe plant communities along the project became a concern to many landowners and agency managers in the planned right-of-way.  Since the late 1980’s BPA has implemented a noxious weed policy on BPA right-of-ways that addresses noxious weed management before, during, and after the construction of powerline facilities.  In 2000, BPA issued a Record of Decision for the Transmission System Vegetation Management Program EIS which described the approved practices, methods, and strategies to manage tall growing vegetation and noxious weeds on transmission line right-of-ways.          To implement a noxious weed management program on this construction project, BPA had to coordinate with private, state, county, and federal ownerships that the proposed construction project would affect.  This coordination resulted in a mitigation and treatment plan that incorporated these issues into a pre-construction noxious weed program by treating existing noxious weeds, and incorporating noxious weed mitigations into the construction contract which was completed in the fall of 2005.