By the fall Maple Valley will have a new Puget Sound Energy substation that should meet increased demand for electricity as well as improve reliability of service.
Work began in April on the substation just north of Southeast 278th Street on Maple Valley Highway, according to information provided by PSE.
Construction crews have cleared and graded the site and will build the substation then connect it to the transmission line. When the project is complete in October the landscape will be restored while crews will have installed about one mile of new underground electrical distribution feeder.
Christina VerHeul, spokeswoman for PSE, said in an e-mail “everything is moving along successfully and is on schedule.”
“The civil work, which includes the fencing and foundations, is nearly complete, and we will be starting to erect the substation beginning in the middle of July,” VerHeul said. “Customers driving or walking by will begin to see steel and equipment being constructed over the next couple months. In addition, they will see distribution line work along the side of the roadway.”
VerHeul added crews may do some work in the road “but will be done at night to avoid traffic impacts. Customers may see steel plates on the roadway where that construction is taking place.”
Last year when PSE initially went to Maple Valley to start working on permitting and discuss the project with staff and the City Council, there were some homeowners in the Maple Ridge and Maple Woods neighborhood just south of the substation site that were concerned about the impact of the project.
VerHeul explained that PSE has been trying to work with neighbors to assuage those concerns.
“As with all of our projects, community outreach and customer input is paramount to project success,” she said. “We held two community meetings for this project, one in November 2007 and another in April 2008, to inform customers of the proposed project and to gather input for how to best meet the need for a substation in the community.”
Additionally, VerHeul said, PSE has sent out construction notices to residences and businesses within a large radius of the site as well as sending information out to local media.
“All of these customer communications files can be found at the project Web page,” she said. “In addition, copies of the informational ad are available to pedestrians who walk by the substation site.”
According to the project site, the substation will have one 25 megawatt transformer as well as space for a second 25 MW tranformer, which would allow PSE to double the capacity there in the future without any changes to the site.
PSE has put a price tag of $6.8 million on the project.
For information on the project, visit the PSE site, www.pse.com/community/yourneighborhood then click on King County and check out the Current Projects list. It is labeled “Four Corners substation.”
