PGE taps social media for Boardman campaign

Portland General Electric launched a web and social media campaign late last week to drum up support for what it deems an affordable solution to closing the coal-fired Boardman power plant by 2020.

A website, 2020Boardman.com, went live last week and outlines the company's position on the controversial plant: That the utility wants to shut it down by 2020, but it wants a "reasonable" course of action to pull that off.

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality put three options for closing the Boardman plant by 2020 or earlier in front of PGE late last month after rejecting the company's initial proposal for a 2020 shutdown. The DEQ options were apparently too costly for PGE. The company maintains that its initial proposal was balanced between cost, risk and environmental protection.

The 2020Boardman website — the domain was registered in May by Portland public relations firm Gard & Gerber, which is working with PGE on this project — invites visitors to use a built-in form to send comments to the DEQ in advance of the July 18 cut-off for public commentary.

The site also makes it easy for visitors to tell others about 2020Boardman using e-mail, Twitter or Facebook.

"The site is part of our ongoing stakeholder outreach," said Steve Corson, spokesman for PGE. "We want regulators to understand there is a range of opinions out there."