Hillock

ENTERPRISE — The Wallowa County Board of Commissioners received the final draft of the Wallowa County Community Energy Strategic Plan from Joe Basile at Wallowa Resources when it met Wednesday, Oct. 4.

Basile, community energy program manager at Wallowa Resources, presented the draft of the plan for review at the commission’s meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 4, and said he hopes the commissioners can adopt it by their Oct. 18 meeting.

“It’s been almost two years in the works,” he said. “Hopefully you can adopt it by the next meeting.”

He said in September that he would like the board to adopt the energy plan as a standalone document residing with the county Planning Department. He called the plan a “living document” that should be reviewed regularly — once or twice a year.

He said the plan’s leadership team has identified more than 30 projects for the county.

“Of that, 34 energy projects were boiled down into programs based on a priority-ranking scale that’s outlined in here to about seven programs,” he said.

He listed those seven as:

• The Wallowa County Microgrid Resiliency Corridor Program, which is in the works and for which some funding has been obtained.

• An irrigation-modernization program, beginning with a campaign to ensure that farmers are familiar with irrigation modernization and the benefits it could offer.

• An electric fleet vehicle/mass transit program to support vehicle electrification and fuel-efficiency standards.

• A weatherization program that could include a truck and trailer so that necessary materials can be delivered right to households.

• A city-crosswalk and street-lighting program for Enterprise, Joseph and Wallowa to install solar-powered crosswalk signals and streetlights.

• A school clean-energy program intended to reduce energy usage and increase energy resilience of school facilities. A key goal here is to install rooftop solar arrays at each school.

• Residential solar, to increase rooftop solar development across Wallowa County.

Basile said the plan’s leadership team essentially is disbanded and being transformed into an advisory group to take the plan from the planning stage to the implementation stage.

“Wallowa Resources will continue to facilitate the process,” Basile said.

One of the primary goals of the plan is to establish microgrids throughout the county. A microgrid is a locally controlled electrical grid that can connect with the larger grid or operate independently. Microgrids can offer improved customer reliability and resilience in the event of grid disturbances.

Basile said the microgrids are expected to burn biomass in the Wallowa area, use solar power in the Enterprise area and hydropower in the Joseph area.

With that, he presented a hard copy to the commissioners and they thanked him and Wallowa Resources for their work.

“It’ll be valuable if we try to get Department of Energy grants to have this plan in place,” Commission Chairman John Hillock said.

“We’ve seen that already,” Basile said, adding that a bill passed by the Legislature encourages counties to develop similar plans. “It’s positioned us well for a couple of the grants that we’ve already received. It’s affirmation for the commissioners from the community that these projects are wanted and needed.”

In other business Wednesday, the commissioners:

• Finalized and adopted an amendment to the county’s Comprehensive Plan forwarded from the Planning Commission. Planning Director Franz Goebel said there was a parcel of land of about 4 acres along Airport Way that was rezoned in 2012 that the commissioners at the time hadn’t sent the final notice to state. The land was rezoned from industrial to R-2 that allows two housing units per parcel. Since then, the property has changed hands a few times and Goebel thought the commissioners should send that final notice to the state.

• Corrected an interfund transfer amount for the Public Works Department.

• Approved bylaws for the Eastern Oregon Early Learning Hub.

• Approved employee action notices to rehire Bill Moore on a part-time basis for facility mainenance and to hire Talena Emerson as a counselor for the Department of Youth Services.

To read the full draft report, see the online version of this story at wallowa.com.