THE OCEANSIDER: What is PUD Doing about Those Power Outages? 

Oceanside has already experienced multiple power outages this season, and the winter is young. They have served as a pointed reminder that the Netarts-Oceanside area (Tillamook PUD Region 2) historically experiences such outages at a rate that is four times the countywide average and endures more than double the lost hours experienced by the next closest region (the Nestucca area). According to PUD, the main reason is that our area is served by a single power line running primarily along Highway 131. This means that just one fallen tree or “car hitting a pole” (the leading cause of outages) can cause the entire area to go dark. The need for a second, back-up power line to our area was cited in Tillamook PUD’s 1963 Long Range Plan over 60 years ago.

After decades of legal challenges and political setbacks, the PUD finally began construction of such a second power transmission line. It will start at the Wilson River substation east of Tillamook, bypass the city of Tillamook on farmland to the north and west and then ascend over Maxwell Mountain into Oceanside (and Netarts). Three years ago, The Oceansider offered a brief article discussing these events, which were also exhaustively detailed in this April 2022 Presentation to PUD Board prepared by the agency’s staff.

The recent outages prompted your friendly editor to plan a call to Tillamook PUD for a progress update, but then this month’s “Ruralite” magazine conveniently arrived with a projection from the PUD’s General Manager Todd Simmons on its back cover: Simmons stated:

“In the central area of our service territory, construction of the 115-kilovolt Tillamook-to-Oceanside substation and transmission line project continues. This year, we will set all of the poles along the 8.6-mile transmission line route, build the Oceanside Substation and construct a main feeder to Oceanside.”