This summer, after nearly 20 years of planning, permitting and lawsuits, construction finally launched on a new electrical transmission line set to run nearly 300 miles across five Oregon counties and into Idaho - one of Oregon's largest transmission projects in decades.
But Irene Gilbert, a retiree from La Grande who over the years has repeatedly challenged the Boardman-to-Hemingway project - B2H for short - wasn't ready to back down.
She found what she considered a concerning switcheroo - the line's co-owner, investor-owned utility PacifiCorp, no longer intends to sell the power to its 805,000 customers but to a private industrial user, most likely a data center.
To Gilbert, a longtime state employee with a fierce determination and a knack for interpreting inscrutable government policies, the utility's move was doubly concerning.
Not only would massive transmission towers, clearcuts and new roads damage fish and wildlife habitat and remove farmland from production, but the shift could also allow a private data center to benefit from the line over residential ratepayers.
This fall, in response to a petition Gilbert filed, the state utility commission will consider whether to revoke a certificate that allows Idaho Power, the project's developer and co-owner, to seize private land via eminent domain, an authority it received because the project was to serve the public interest.
While her discovery this summer is unlikely to block the line, Gilbert's vigilance cements her reputation as a force to be reckoned with in Oregon's race to develop new transmission, wind, solar and battery storage projects to meet aggressive climate mandates and skyrocketing energy demand from data centers, electric vehicles and home electrification.
"I believe things should be fair, people should be honest and rules should apply the same to everybody. And I have not seen that during this project," Gilbert said. "There was an incredible amount of accommodating the developer at the expense of the property owners and the quality of life of people in eastern Oregon."
Gilbert, a registered Republican and self-described environmentalist, has spent the past decade and half challenging what she sees as a flawed energy project approval process in Oregon, becoming a leading voice for landowners and protecting rural landscapes.
She has filed countless appeals with the Oregon council that oversees the development of large energy projects, in Circuit Court and at the Oregon Supreme Court, winning small victories and concessions along the way but never overturning a project.
Nonetheless, she has emerged as an advocate for transparency and due process at a time when legislators and developers seek to limit public input to speed up the projects.
"Talk about a bulldog. She is a go-getter and she doesn't stop," said Jim Kreider, a liberal environmental activist from La Grande who founded the Stop B2H Coalition, a nonprofit he now co-chairs with Gilbert.
That tenacity has also raised the ire of clean energy proponents across the state who see Gilbert's repeated appeals as impeding development, power reliability and climate progress at a time when Oregon faces a surge in energy demand and a dire shortage of transmission capacity.
"We should not let individuals or groups hold these projects hostage for years on end," said Nicole Hughes, executive director of Renewable Northwest, a nonprofit that advocates for more rapid clean energy development in the region.
The 76-year-old Gilbert has close ties to the land.
Born on a Wisconsin dairy farm, she soon moved with her family to Oregon and grew up in Kinzua, a logging company town in Wheeler County. She married a rancher and helped him raise cattle on 1,000 acres in Linn County on the west side of the state. Later, she co-owned and operated a gun store in La Grande and still owns a gun to hunt pheasant and elk.
Gilbert loves the outdoors. She likes to spend time hiking in the woods and tends to an acre-large garden surrounding her home. Every year, she heads for three weeks to live off the grid in a cabin in Wisconsin, on land where her father was born.
But she also spent her entire career as a state employee with several Salem-based agencies, including the Department of Justice, the Department of Human Services and the Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Division until her retirement in 2004, giving her expertise and insight into how government rulemaking works.
Once she retired and moved across the state to La Grande, her opposition to renewable energy projects began in 2010 when a Texas-based developer sought to build 182 wind turbines across 47,000 acres in Union County. A local group formed to oppose the $600 million project sought out Gilbert's help.
She became the group's legal research analyst, learning the ins and outs of the state's process for approving major energy projects. The state eventually gave the wind farm a green light but the developer decided not to build it. Gilbert, on the other hand, went on to fight other projects, mainly wind farms that were rapidly proliferating in her part of the state.
She stepped in, she said, largely because she saw local farmers and ranchers - whom she considers stewards of the land - overwhelmed by complex state rules and lacking the know-how to effectively oppose the projects they didn't want.
She also worried that the clean energy projects would dramatically reshape eastern Oregon's farmland and forests - a fact rarely acknowledged by communities in Portland and Salem that benefit from much of the power generated on the eastern side of the state but don't experience the projects' impacts.
Gilbert started regularly attending meetings of the governor-appointed Oregon Energy Facility Siting Council, which oversees where large energy projects go with recommendations from the state Energy Department.
Over the past 14 years, Gilbert has attended almost every council meeting - many of them in person, on her own dime and time - testifying and submitting copious written comments.
"It would be fair to say Ms. Gilbert is the most frequent and reliable member of the public that participates in the Energy Facility Siting Council process," said Jennifer Kalez, a spokesperson with the Energy Department.
Shortly after opposing the Union County wind project, Gilbert found out about Idaho Power's proposal to build a 500-kilovolt transmission line across eastern Oregon and southwestern Idaho, a project the utility had initiated in 2007.
Slated to run from Boardman in northeast Oregon to Idaho Power's existing Hemingway substation in the southwestern corner of Idaho in Owyhee County, it would consist of more than 1,200 transmission towers - ranging from 120 to 200 feet tall and requiring a 250- to 340-foot-wide clearcut buffer that would carve through fields, grasslands and forests.
To Gilbert, the project embodied everything she disliked about green energy development. And though the line wouldn't affect Gilbert's property, it was slated to cross the 6,000-acre Ladd Marsh on the outskirts of La Grande. It is the largest remaining wetland in northeast Oregon, home to deer, elk, coyotes, bears, swans, eagles, ducks and many other species - and Gilbert's favorite place to hike, hunt, fish and harvest huckleberries and mushrooms.
To fight the transmission project, she joined forces with the grassroots Stop B2H Coalition.
Their effort, she said, has highlighted how the approval process for energy projects tilts in favor of developers - making it difficult, even for someone well-versed in state standards and with a lot of time on her hands, to block or overturn an approved project.
Gilbert was one of dozens of coalition members who requested a "contested case" - part of the administrative process - against the proposed transmission line with the Energy Facility Siting Council and forced a rare appeal hearing before a third-party hearing officer.
They raised over 100 separate issues for consideration, ranging from the project's potential impacts to historic Oregon Trail properties to damage to fish and wildlife habitat. The hearing officer dismissed 32 of the issues outright after Idaho Power and the Oregon Department of Energy argued they had no realistic chance of winning in a legal proceeding - but Gilbert's issues moved forward.
"I've been at this long enough that I understand what's required to get through the hoops," Gilbert said earlier this year, reflecting on the case.
Ultimately, the hearing officer dismissed all of the issues due to insufficient evidence and the transmission project moved forward largely unchanged. In 2022, the siting council gave it the green light.
Altogether, the contested case process before the state council took nearly two years. To Gilbert, the experience proved it's nearly impossible for the public to challenge an energy project.
"In over 100 issues, the Oregon Department of Energy and the developer were right and the public was wrong - even though the public included people like attorneys, former attorneys, wildlife biologists and landowners," she said. "I don't believe that they were all wrong."
In fact, the siting council has never reversed their approval of a project as a result of a contested case proceeding, energy officials confirmed.
Still, the contested case process is designed to allow members of the public a dissenting voice and to influence the project's final shape, said Kalez, the Energy Department spokesperson.
"It may seem like projects aren't 'rejected,' but it's because projects that do end up with major issues that would prevent them from meeting Oregon's siting standards are often withdrawn and don't continue" in the council process, Kalez said.
Still, Gilbert remained undeterred. In 2023, she and the Stop B2H Coalition appealed the state's approval to the Oregon Supreme Court. The court affirmed the state's decision.
She filed two other court challenges when the state twice amended the project - but lost again.
To clean energy advocates, Gilbert's challenges to the Boardman-to-Hemingway line came to epitomize the delays that beleaguer transmission and other clean energy projects in the state.
"It's a system that allows repeated appeals without limits, even when those appeals aren't raising new information or identifying critical flaws in the project design," said Hughes with Renewable Northwest. "And the result is that, nine times out of 10, these projects end up getting built but through these multiple rounds of appeals they end up costing ratepayers more."
The delays come at a time when the state faces an alarming shortage of transmission capacity and a backlog of renewable projects waiting to connect to the grid. Investor-owned utilities - Portland General Electric and PacifiCorp - are racing to both fill a coming surge in electricity demand from data centers, home electrification and electric vehicles and to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2030, with a goal of reaching 100% clean electricity by 2040.
Despite this, the pace of progress on building new transmission has been glacial.
The Bonneville Power Administration, the region's largest transmission grid operator, has added only about 300 miles of transmission to its 15,000-mile network since 1990. In recent years, the agency has been swamped with requests from developers and utilities to connect new solar, wind and battery projects to its grid - requests that show no signs of easing and that, for the most part, BPA won't be able to meet anytime soon.
And although BPA has said it is launching transmission upgrades and two new projects - a 53-mile line from La Pine to Bonanza and a 265-mile line from the Columbia River to the Oregon-Nevada border - they are years from being built. No other substantial transmission construction projects are currently in the works in Oregon.
Oregon legislators have sought to speed up the transmission build time, pointing to the Boardman-to-Hemingway project as a model of what can go wrong.
To be clear: Many of the 20 years of getting B2H to the construction line were consumed by a seven-year federal environmental review process that examined potential impacts on wildlife, cultural resources and land use. The timeline also included a comprehensive five-year state review, as well as other state and federal permitting and public and tribal consultation.
The appeals filed by Gilbert and other opponents - both before the state siting council and in courtrooms - added about four years to the ledger.
State energy officials said public engagement is a "vital part" of the long approval process, which is designed to balance energy needs with public concerns.
Idaho Power, too, said public feedback improved the project, including changing the line's route.
"Consistent, thoughtful input for several years from many people who have opposed and supported B2H has made it a better project," said Idaho Power spokesperson Sven Berg.
Rep. Mark Gamba, a Democrat from Milwaukie, has tried to shorten the time it takes to build new lines by simplifying transmission permitting at the state level. But his House Bill 3681, signed into law in mid-June, did little to shorten the timeline. What it did do is limit public input and due process, including for Gilbert.
The bill requires the siting council to conclude contested case proceedings and issue a final order within 12 months. It also requires any appeals of the council's decisions go directly to the Oregon Supreme Court, rather than the Circuit Court as previously.
The problem, said Gilbert, is that cutting out the Circuit Court takes away the opportunity to establish a record because the Supreme Court doesn't take new evidence. That leaves little for the Supreme Court to evaluate and hence makes a case impossible to win, she said.
Two days after the governor signed Gamba's bill, Gilbert drove to Salem to attend a four-hour siting council meeting in a nondescript Energy Department building. When it was her turn to testify, her message was clear.
"When you go directly from a council denial to the Supreme Court, the public is more than a little bit disadvantaged," she told the council members.
Idaho Power launched construction on the B2H line this summer, cutting several access roads and laying foundations for 100 of the 1,200-plus transmission towers in Morrow and Malheur counties, with the plan to finish the line in 2027 still on track. But the utility remains locked in court battles with several landowners whose property it needs and who have refused to cooperate.
Idaho Power's ability to take private land is now in question thanks to the complaint Gilbert filed this summer with the Oregon Public Utility Commission.
She argued that the commission should revoke the project's certificate of public convenience and necessity - which allows Idaho Power to initiate land condemnation proceedings in court - because the line will no longer serve a public need.
The commission issued the certificate in 2023 because PacifiCorp, which owns 55% of the Boardman-to-Hemingway transmission line, had demonstrated the line would serve its 805,000 customers - including the 620,000 customers in Oregon, most of them on the west side of the state - and would allow PacifiCorp to boost transmission capacity between its eastern and western service regions.
The utility also showed the line would decrease customer costs by about $1.7 billion through 2042 because it would allow PacifiCorp to move more power and with greater efficiency. (Idaho Power serves only about 20,000 Oregon customers.)
This spring, commission members appeared surprised and frustrated to hear during a public meeting that PacifiCorp plans to sell the power from the line to a single industrial customer near Boardman and would seek to recover the utility's share of the line's costs from that customer.
The utility has declined to confirm that customer is a data center or to disclose the customer's name, but it's likely only a data center in that part of the state would need the amount of energy that can be moved via the future Boardman-to-Hemingway line.
In a response to Gilbert's petition, PacifiCorp argued the sudden shift after years of planning was out of its control and asked the commission not to revoke its certificate.
"PacifiCorp was unable to procure transmission rights that would ensure delivery of westbound electricity from B2H to the majority of PacifiCorp's Oregon retail customers located in the western part of the state," company officials wrote.
They added: "And even if PacifiCorp's share of the line is dedicated to exclusively serving a single large load customer, that remains a public use under Oregon law, as large commercial customers are Oregon retail customers."
Idaho Power officials said they are aware of the complaint but are "confident that its partnership with PacifiCorp on B2H will proceed as planned."
The commission will issue a staff report on Gilbert's petition by the end of this month and plans to hold a public meeting and issue a decision on Nov. 13.
"The battle isn't over," Gilbert said.
Still, her views on renewable energy have evolved.
Gilbert still dislikes utility-scale projects that rely on transmission lines to move the power across the state, preferring local solutions such as energy efficiency, rooftop solar and community battery systems - she even has a solar panel on her cabin in Wisconsin.
But she recently surprised clean energy proponents when she testified in support of Sunstone Solar, the state's largest approved solar project, set to be built on about 10,000 acres of farmland in Morrow County.
She backed that project, she said, because its developer agreed to put about $11 million into a new fund to compensate farm owners for the damages to the local economy.
"That's how the system should work," Gilbert said. "These developers need to mitigate the damages they're causing. That's really it."