Amazon Winema Undersea Cable Hearings: December 8 and January 12
Winema Beach is a strand adjacent to Winema Lake, located just off Highway 101, 6.5 miles South of Pacific City and just north of Neskowin, OR Tillamook County planning commission will hold two hearings on the proposed Winema undersea cable. The hearings will be December 8 and January 12, both beginning at 6:30 pm, held at the Port of Tillamook Bay Conference Center, 4000 Blimp Boulevard.
These hearings will consider both a conditional use permit request and a floodplain development permit request for placement of the Amazon Winema submarine fiber optic cable. The cable would come ashore in the area of the Winema Road north of Neskowin, on property owned by the Winema Christian Camp. It is zoned Recreation Management, and is in the flood hazard overlay zone, and also the beaches and dunes overlay zone.
This project, like the Facebook cable completed (after an undersea drilling disaster and a frack-out) in 2021, will use horizontal directional drilling (HDD) to lay a 6-inch bore pipe under the beach and surf zone and out into the ocean. The company proposes to do construction work for 4-5 weeks, beginning perhaps in mid-2023. According to the application materials, the nearest home is more than 500 feet away — unlike the Facebook cable, in which the industrial site was cheek by jowl in a densely built residential area.