Wagner Creek area has been subject to frequent outages, residents report

By Morgan Rothborne, Ashland.news 

Residents of Talent will gather outside Talent City Hall on Tuesday as part of an ongoing effort to voice concern and frustration at repeated power outages in the city throughout the summer. 

Affected residents will “meet and be heard” at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Aug. 27, according to a post in the Heart of Talent Facebook group. Those in the Wagner Creek area are encouraged to attend, the post said. 

Talent Mayor Darby Ayers-Flood posted in the Talent News and Events group Thursday in reply to an “excellent letter from Wagner Creek residents regarding power outages.”

Ayers-Flood said she, Talent City Manager Gary Milliman and Oregon state Sen. Jeff Golden met with Pacific Power President Ryan Flynn last Wednesday to share concerns and discuss the issue. She wrote that the city of Talent and the senator will work with the Public Utilities Commission and Pacific Power for better transparency and solutions to the problem. She encouraged residents to keep speaking out. 

“I think it is very important you are organizing to make your voices louder! This is causing a lot of attention to our issues,” the mayor wrote. 

Reached by phone Friday, Golden confirmed his involvement in the issue. Dozens of affected residents have contacted his office, he said, and he was additionally provided with a copy of a letter written by a resident to Pacific Power with 44 signatures of additional affected and frustrated Talent residents. 

“The number of outages is not acceptable. My position is that every possible step has to be taken,” he said. 

Simon Gutierrez, a spokesperson for Pacific Power, confirmed the meeting last week and described it as productive and part of an ongoing open dialogue surrounding the issue. Talent residents have experienced 40 power outages as of August 19, he said in an email. The number of residents affected was asked for but not provided. 

Gutierrez also shared an official statement from the company:

“In high wildfire risk areas like Talent, the company has implemented enhanced safety settings to significantly reduce the potential for ignitions and to ensure the safety of first responders. These settings de-energize power lines within fractions of a second when a fault is detected. Customers on enhanced safety settings may experience more frequent or longer duration outages. The safety of our employees, customers and communities remains our top priority.”

Perfection can’t be expected of the utility company in the face of wildfire seasons so extreme they are “uncharted waters” for all public and private entities involved, Golden said. But power outages have been “more intense” in Talent than elsewhere and Pacific Power hasn’t given a clear reason why. 

Golden also said he believes they are taking the issue seriously, but he hoped they would approach the problem with the same gravity as if it were their “parents and grandparents” experiencing the outages. 

“Power outages can be a pain, it can be expensive with loss of food. … We’re talking about a potentially life of death situation with weather like this,” he said. 

Air conditioning can be vital to medically fragile individuals and seniors during extreme heat, he said. 

Golden said he expects new information next week as representatives from Pacific Power and the state’s Public Utilities Commission will be meeting to discuss the issue and solutions. Golden also stated he has been told Pacific Power intends to install new technology that should lessen the number of households affected and the time duration of outages. 

“My response is, ‘That’s great, but what are we doing for the rest of this year?’” he said.

Ayers-Flood could not be immediately reached for comment. 

Email Ashland.news reporter Morgan Rothborne at morganr@ashland.news.