Hillsboro is at a structural breaking point. For years, our leadership has operated on a single promise: that if we keep expanding our borders and laying pipe, Advanced Manufacturing and semiconductor fabs will bail out the state’s coffers. But as of late April 2026, that dream is hitting a concrete wall. Senate Bill 1586, the failed 1,700-acre farm land grab in North Hillsboro, collapsed in the legislature last month. Intel is facing its own headwinds, still consolidating and belt-tightening despite an epic stock surge over the last two weeks. And most critically, the City is staring down a $600-plus million debt for the Willamette Water pipeline, launching this July, with no power left on the grid to plug in the industrial “whales” needed to pay for it. Interest on the water pipe debt is accruing, and much of the repayment of this monstrous debt is supposed to come from large SDCs (Systems Development Charges) levied on new users. Now that we have all this bonus water (millions of gallons per day), we need to sell it to make this pencil. The growth that brought the new water pipes and miles of systems now needs more growth to make it all pencil.
Hillsboro is officially “out of juice,” and the only way out of this is to find power, and find it soon.
THE NATIONAL SECURITY GATEWAY
Informants, including those with military backgrounds, tell the Herald that Hillsboro’s status as the “Digital Fortress” for the U.S., carrying 80% of trans-Pacific fiber traffic to China, has made securing “off-grid” power a national security priority. If the PGE grid is a “bottleneck” that threatens this gateway, the solution being negotiated is Sovereign Power. That is to say, power that is not tied to PGE or BPA. Stand-alone power generation here in Hillsboro that does not rely on the grid we have now.
THE TRIANGULATION LOGS – Who Is Flying In And Out Of Hillsboro And Why?
Our information indicates that Hillsboro is likely in a high-stakes situation and is mirroring developments in Spanish Fork, Utah, which recently saw a military C-17 deliver a nuclear reactor prototype.
THE PRIVATE JET (N719L):
This jet, which has been in and out of Hillsboro (Oregon), appears to be owned by Voltus LLC, which specializes in software that bypasses traditional utilities. The company’s website features the headline “A virtual power plant to deliver better energy and more cash to energy users.”
As a leading virtual power plant operator, Voltus connects distributed energy resources (DERs) to electricity markets delivering less expensive, more reliable, and more sustainable electricity to the grid and more cash to our commercial, industrial, residential, and transportation customers.
Voltus identifies every dollar from every type of distributed energy resource across every electricity market. We then monetize these DERs through demand response, price response, carbon reduction payments, demand charge avoidance, and energy management technology. https://www.voltus.co/about
Well, fair enough. We tracked this jet close to the doorstep of TAE Technologies’ fusion labs in California on April 24, and as of this morning, it remains on the ground in Spanish Fork, Utah. The Herald has been informed but has not been able to verify (super-secret stuff here) that TAE is looking at Hillsboro, among other Data Center markets, for its breakthrough energy technology. Is it possible that Hillsboro is now connected to the activity in Utah involving the new reactor? Between our city, TAE, Voltus LLC, and Utah, we see a plausible theory playing out. Yes, it is speculative and just one theory, but read on!
THE LOBBYING SHUTTLE FLIGHT (N660HC):
We tracked another flight that made a direct rotation from Hillsboro to Washington, D.C. at the start of April. Why fly from our industrial corridor straight to the D.C. beltway? It suggests a mission to secure federal status or “Sovereign” financing for a project that operates outside local control.
I am in no way an expert on nuclear power, other than that I have been to the Trojan Nuclear plant out past St. Helens (OR), both before it closed in about 1980 and after. That place was scary and dangerous, and it is mostly why Oregonians are a hard NO on nuclear power. So why would I even be talking about Nuclear Fusion being an option here in Oregon? Because ORS 469.595 (Oregon’s 1980 nuclear ban) targets “fission.” TAE’s fusion process produces no high-level waste, creating a legal loophole where a reactor could be permitted as “Advanced Manufacturing,” bypassing the statewide vote entirely. Read that, understand that, check it out.
Understand this- this is an energy company on the verge of something really big. So big that Trump Media took a massive stake in TAE, and our source says the company is now going all in on Nuclear Fusion.
When viewed in this context, this might explain why Representative Hai Pham of Hillsboro pushed a nuclear “roadmap” bill (HB 4046) during our short legislative session this year, and why Representative Nathan Sosa championed HB 4177—the “Secret Meeting Bill.” Until Governor Kotek’s unexpected veto on April 16, that bill was the “cloaking device” for a high-stakes deal like this. The Governor’s veto has restored the sunshine rules for meetings in which public officials participate. It would be nice to know what happened and who met on the HIO (Hillsboro Airport) tarmac when those jets were coming and going the past few weeks.
This activity is not normal, even in Hillsboro. This is not “nothing”. Listen… BILLIONS of dollars are at stake here. In addition to all of this, we have confirmation that Hillsboro Mayor Beach Pace took part in a recent meeting with the landowners in the farm country outside of Hillsboro; yes, the same landowners who own the 1,700 acres that Senator Janeen Sollman wanted to force into the City by a legislative vote. With her was lobbyist Andy Smith. The meeting, according to our source who was in the room, included discussions of how to not only get the 1,700 acres of farmland into the Hillsboro Urban Growth Boundary, but also get 3,000 to 5,000 acres in. These flights, the power shortage, the batteries, the TAE source we have tying Hillsboro to their potential interests, it all makes sense. Can we prove it? No. But we do not have to. It is enough to share with all of you what we hear, see, and what our research shows is happening.
If any of you have any specific information to share with us, on or completely off the record, please email us at hillsboroherald@gmail.com. We will get back to you!
Sources:
The Veto of HB 4177 (April 16, 2026): Governor Tina Kotek issued a rare veto of the “Secret Meeting Bill,” which would have allowed public officials to meet privately with developers for “fact-finding.” This ensures that the negotiations you’re tracking must remain public.
The Nuclear Study Bill (HB 4046): Sponsored by Hillsboro Representative Hai Pham, this bill directs the Oregon Department of Energy to study “Advanced Nuclear” terminolog; a key step in creating the legal “Fusion Loophole.”
The “Sovereign Power” Competitors
Operation Windlord (February 2026): Verifiable proof that the military is already delivering reactor prototypes to Utah.
Voltus “Bring Your Own Capacity” (April 22, 2026): Voltus officially launched a product designed to bypass the power grid for data centers, just as their jet was seen at the Hillsboro and TAE headquarters.
The “China Gateway” & Land Use Failures
The Hillsboro-China Fiber Ring (January 2026): New Cross Pacific (NCP) cable landing in Hillsboro, which accounts for the massive trans-Pacific data flow.
The Failure of Senate Bill 1586: Defeated a 1,700-acre industrial expansion that has left the City desperate for a new “growth” solution.
The Financial Engine
TMTG/TAE Fusion Merger (December 2025): The $6 billion merger aimed at siting the world’s first utility-scale fusion plant in 2026.
Dirk,
Are any of these bills going to be up for a public vote or are they going to just push them thru without the public having any say?
Thanks for what you are doing to help the area..
Bud
Hey Bud – Not really. But the Bill that passed to allow the meetings to happen in private passed, and then the media types like me sent in hundreds of messages and letters and the Governor vetoed it. This is why people have to study who they vote for.
Hi Dirk, I have been an investor in TAE since 2006. What makes TAE fundamentally different from every other credible fusion start-up is its use of Boron as fuel. TAE was founded in 1998 by now-deceased physicist Norman Rostoker. He chose Boron specifically because, unlike the tritium used by almost every other fusion start-up, Boron produces almost no radioactive waste, chatgpt can give a good explanation. Having TAE in your ‘hood might not be such a bad thing!