Union County Seeks Public Input on Draft Energy Resilience Plan

Keeping Union County's ambulances running, water pumping, and fuel flowing through a major extended outage is the core mission behind a draft Energy Resilience Plan the county posted for public comment on March 27.

Union County Emergency Services and the board of county commissioners are shepherding the plan, which is funded in part by an Oregon Department of Energy grant. Residents can submit written comments by email to the county's emergency manager, with instructions posted on the county's emergency services and public notice pages.

The plan's scope reflects the specific energy vulnerabilities facing eastern Oregon. Union County's towns and outlying rural communities depend on long transmission and distribution lines with limited redundancy, meaning a single point of failure can leave critical facilities without power for an extended stretch. The draft addresses this by identifying which facilities need alternate generation or storage to keep operating: ambulance services, water and wastewater systems, fueling stations, fire stations, and communications infrastructure.

The county previously issued an RFP to hire a contractor for plan development, with a defined scope: inventory transmission and distribution lines, substations, and energy storage assets; map socially vulnerable communities; and identify candidate sites for community resilience centers. Those centers represent a tangible outcome for rural residents, offering designated locations with power and essential services during a prolonged outage.

The prioritized project list the plan produces also has direct implications for what the county can pursue in state and federal funding cycles. A formally adopted local resilience plan is frequently a prerequisite for infrastructure grant programs. If those grants materialize, Union County could see community-scale generation or battery storage at key sites, formally designated resilience centers, and coordinated energy response protocols across local agencies.

The county has encouraged local organizations and residents with energy access concerns, medical equipment dependencies, or questions about specific infrastructure to submit comments while the draft remains open.