Inslee put politics ahead of science, undermining fair compromise on wind farm

Editorial in the Tri-City Herald from June 2, 2024

By putting wind turbines ahead of people, cultural heritage and natural habitat that will suffer next to a gargantuan wind farm on Horse Heaven Hills, Gov. Jay Inslee put politics ahead of science and undermined a fair compromise.

Scout Clean Energy, the Colorado-based company behind the Horse Heaven Hills Wind Farm, proposed building more than 200 turbines about 500 feet tall or 141 turbines about 670 feet tall on 24 miles of ridgeline south of the Tri-Cities.

The company spent years going through the approval process with the Washington state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC).

Washington certainly needs clean energy projects like this. Inslee estimates that this one will provide only 5% of the state’s electricity needs over the next decade. If the Biden administration, with Inslee’s vague consent, tears down hydroelectric dams, the hole will be even deeper.

But confronting climate change and transitioning away from dirty fuel sources must be done with intentionality. There are good sites and bad sites, and Horse Heaven Hills is the latter, at least at the scale Scout originally proposed.

The turbines would mar local vistas from the Tri-Cities, disrupt Native American cultural resources and harm natural habitat for many species, including the endangered ferruginous hawk.

EFSEC spent years studying the proposal and listening to all sides. It recommended to the governor that the project be scaled back to about half of the original number of turbines. That was a reasonable compromise. Washington would get clean energy, and the worst harms would be mitigated.

That wasn’t enough for Inslee. He sent the project back to EFSEC with clear directions that the council reverse course and approve nearly all of the turbines. He’s less interested in rational analysis and science than his green legacy as he prepares to leave office.

“Based on my review of the record and the potential impacts, mitigation measures that substantially reduce the generation capacity of the proposed project should not be required,” Inslee wrote.

Let that sink in. In the governor’s estimation, generating clean electricity trumps everything else. That sort of strident, inflexible view serves Washington poorly.

Inslee had been laying the groundwork for this sort of decision for years. In 2022, he vetoed parts of a bill that would have given Eastern Washington residents more input into where wind and solar projects go. He also vetoed provisions in the bill that would have required the state to reckon with the fact that rural communities suffer the imposition of large-scale projects not for their own benefit but to satisfy power-hungry urban areas west of the mountains.

Not coincidentally, those urban areas are home to the Democratic majority that controls state politics and often doesn’t think much of the rest of the state.

In his letter to the EFSEC, Inslee claims, “Wind turbines are a fairly common occurrence across the state.” That’s true on the eastern side of the state anyway. The Horse Heaven Hills project would be so expansive that it would cover all of Seattle from Shoreline to Kent, but Seattleites don’t see turbines.

Critics from Seattle and Olympia like to lob rhetorical grenades at the Tri-Cities, calling anyone who questions the appropriateness of the Horse Heaven Hills Wind Farm a NIMBY (not in my backyard).

It’s hard to take them seriously, though, when they aren’t also calling for turbines in Puget Sound or on the hills nearby. If they would engage with this region, knowledgeable local residents could help identify plenty of appropriate places for wind farms that wouldn’t harm view sheds, cultural resources and natural habitat.

EFSEC exists to remove some of the NIMBYism from the siting process, but if it conducts a thorough review, engages with the community and listens to the experts only to have the governor flat out reject its recommendations, what’s the point?

EFSEC has 90 days to send a revised recommendation back to the governor.

Rather than bow to his demands, it should send a strong message that says, in so many words, “No, we got it right the first time. Local communities, cultural heritage and wildlife still matter in Washington.”

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WA council rules in split vote on huge Tri-Cities wind farm. Will Gov. Inslee agree? 

BY ANNETTE CARY, Tri-City Herald, UPDATED APRIL 19, 2024 1:59 PM

A recommendation will be sent to Gov. Jay Inslee to approve construction of the Horse Heaven wind farm project just south of the Tri-Cities, but with possibly only half as many turbines as the developer envisioned. The Washington state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, or EFSEC, voted Wednesday to recommend the project stretching along 24 miles of the Horse Heaven Hills, but with restrictions to protect the view from the Tri-Cities, Native American cultural resources and the ferruginous hawk.

Scout Clean Energy proposed the Horse Heaven Clean Energy Center be built with up to 222 turbines about 500 feet tall or 141 turbines about 670 feet tall, plus solar arrays and battery storage.

The council settled on a plan at the end of January to limit where the turbines can be built, effectively reducing their numbers by about half. As originally proposed the turbines would have stretched from Finley to south of Benton City, dominating the southern views from the Tri-Cities.

EFSEC took public comment on a draft report prepared after that meeting to outline new restrictions and received 973 comments. Comments were split mostly among people who said the proposed restrictions were still insufficient and people who said the proposed restrictions went too far.

The state council vote was split 5-2, with representatives of Benton County and the Department of Natural Resources opposed. The Department of Natural Resources plans to submit a statement explaining its opposition. Areas where turbines would no longer be allowed would be some of the places most visible from the Tri-Cities, including upper slopes of the Horse Heaven Hills. The project is expected to need a substantial redesign by Scout Clean Energy to comply with restrictions on where turbines can be built, said EFSEC staff.

Inslee should receive the EFSEC recommendation before the end of the month. He will have 60 days to review and approve the council recommendation for the construction of the wind farm with restrictions, reject the application or direct EFSEC to reconsider aspects of the project. However, petitions for reconsideration may be filed with EFSEC within 20 days of when the governor receives the recommendation. 

OPPOSITION TO WIND TURBINE CUTS

“By partially approving the Horse Heaven wind and solar project, EFSEC is balancing the need for renewable, clean energy with potential impacts on tribal cultural resources, wildlife, and surrounding communities,” said EFSEC Chairperson Kathleen Drew in a statement after the council vote.

A coalition of Tri-Cities area Democrat groups and trade unions warned before the Wednesday meeting that the restrictions being proposed by EFSEC to protect ferruginous hawks could set precedent that would prevent new clean energy projects and transmission infrastructure projects in Central and Eastern Washington. “… if EFSEC persists with its current trajectory, it will send a clear signal to other investors and project developers that Washington state is by far not the location in which to reliably and affordably site the clean energy generation required under state law,” they said in comments to EFSEC. “The result will be more out-of-state projects, costlier transmission and higher utility rates for every person in Washington, in addition to the foregone benefits of new jobs, local economic impact and taxes generated,” they said. Ed Brost, representing Benton County, asked for information about who the power from the Horse Heaven project would be sold to, but was told that was not something that EFSEC considers. 

FERRUGINOUS HAWKS IN WASHINGTON

Scout Clean Energy submitted 60 pages of comments opposing restrictions, saying that two-mile buffers required around places where ferruginous hawks have nested historically “eliminates a majority of the clean energy benefit” even though nesting has rarely been documented there in the last decade. EFSEC earlier determined in an adjudicative order that loss of shrub-steppe habitat is already affecting ferruginous hawks in Washington state and that the clean energy project as proposed by Scout would pose a new and significant threat to the state endangered species.

Proposed restrictions on the project could increase the ability of the hawks to return to certain areas of historic usage, according to the EFSEC draft report for the governor. More than 60% of the nesting territories of the ferruginous hawk in Washington state is concentrated in Franklin and Benton counties, which is considered the core breeding range in the state, according to the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife’s 2021 status review of the ferruginous hawk. It said that an average of 55 breeding pairs per year nested in the state between 1992 and 1995. Gerald Lewis, chairman of the Yakama Nation Tribal Council, reminded EFSEC in a March letter that the recommendation for a two-mile buffer for ferruginous hawk nests was developed by Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife experts. The recommendation follows the best available science, he said. It was a compromise on the part of biologists because ferruginous hawks’ average core use areas are more than six miles, Lewis said in his letter to EFSEC.

Washington Audubon said in its comments to EFSEC that it supported approval of the project with restrictions to project ferruginous hawks, corridors used by wildlife and rabbitbrush shrubland. But it questioned whether enough had been done to reduce impacts to tribal cultural properties. The same care and consideration that was shown in the council’s discussion on ferruginous hawks also should be given to the protection of cultural resources, Lewis said. The Yakama Nation had asked that all turbines, solar arrays and infrastructure east of Straub Canyon, which is south of Richland, be prohibited to protect tribal cultural resources. The council considered that restriction in January, but failed to get a majority of council members in support. 

TRI-CITIES CARES: TOO MANY TURBINES 

Tri-Cities CARES, a grassroots group opposing the Horse Heaven wind farm, has argued that the wind farm, even with restrictions proposed in January, would have too many turbines.

Between the Horse Heaven wind farm and the nearby and smaller Nine Canyon wind farm, just over 100,000 residents of Benton County would live within six miles of a turbine as the project was originally proposed, according to Tri-Cities CARES. That’s five times more than the estimated 20,000 people who live within six miles of a wind farm across the rest of Washington state, the group said. Other Washington state counties with wind farms average about 2,000 people living within six miles, according to Tri-Cities CARES. 

The conclusion of EFSEC’s recommendation said restrictions on the project’s wind turbines would not fully mitigate impacts to landscape and other natural features in and around the project site that the Yakama Nation has identified as having special cultural significance. But reasonable measures have been proposed to minimize impacts and balance them with the benefits of encouraging development of clean energy, it said.

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How an endangered hawk could topple plans for Wash.’s largest wind farm

BY CONRAD SWANSON, THE SEATTLE TIMES,THE TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, reprinted in the Tri-City Herald on 2/25/2024

What began as the largest wind project ever proposed in Washington – the Horse Heaven Hills wind farm – will likely soon be cut to a fraction of the original vision. Why? Because more than 100 of the turbines, which could stand taller than the Space Needle, might pose a danger to a little-known and endangered species in the Tri-Cities area: the ferruginous hawk.

To protect the hawk, Washington’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, or EFSEC, will consider removing more than half of the project’s proposed turbines, marking a victory for ecologists who petitioned for the changes but a substantial defeat for the Colorado developer behind the project and a delay for this state’s renewable energy goals.

The council, which serves as a clearinghouse for regulatory and permitting hurdles these types of large projects face, asked its staff late last month to draft a recommendation that would remove any turbines too close to any hawk’s nests. It’s expected to vote whether to finalize that decision in the coming days or weeks.

The potential cuts underscore the difficulties developers face in finding the right location for the kinds of massive renewable energy projects Washington needs to wean its grid off fossil fuels and to meet the ever-increasing demand for the power.

“It’s just too risky to invest in Washington,” said Michael Rucker, founder and CEO of the project’s developer, Scout Clean Energy.

On the other hand, even if halved, the wind farm would still be Washington’s second-largest. The Windy Point project in Klickitat County would continue to hold the first-place spot. And environmental advocates say the anticipated decision shows the state can protect its natural habitat and build more clean energy at the same time.

The original proposal from 2021 would cost $1.7 billion and include up to 222 wind turbines across 24 miles of the Horse Heaven Hills near the Tri-Cities. In addition, three solar arrays would cover up to 5,447 acres in the area.

The wind farm marks the most ambitious step in recent years toward Washington’s renewable energy and emission-cutting goals. Even so, if fully built, the project would add less than 5% of the total clean-energy capacity the state needs by 2035. And now EFSEC appears ready to cut that capacity in half.

Opposition to the project arose almost immediately, similar to that seen by the Nine Canyon Wind Farm, which was built in the area decades earlier. This time the most vocal pushback comes from a small group of local retirees called Tri-Cities C.A.R.E.S., arguing the new turbines would sit too close to the community, scarring their scenic views and lowering property values.

The group also seized on the threat to endangered species. The ferruginous hawk. With a wingspan of up to 56 inches, the ferruginous hawk is North America’s largest buteo, a type of medium to large, wide-ranging raptor. Early historical records indicate the species was once “relatively abundant” in the state (mostly in Eastern Washington), according to a 2021 report from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. Over the past 50 years as farms and cities expanded, the hawk’s habitat shrank, and by the early to mid-’90s, an average of 55 breeding pairs nested in the state, the report found. Since then the numbers declined further and habitat conditions have only grown worse. More than 200 nests are known to exist throughout 12 Washington counties, with the majority sitting in Franklin and Benton counties, the report says. The hawks build their nests on rocky outcrops and the ground. If those nests are close to turbines they’re at an increased risk of being killed by the fast-spinning blades.

The hawk had been listed as “threatened” by the department since 1983, but after a routine review in 2021, which also generated the report, the species was pushed onto the “endangered” list, department spokesperson Jennifer Becar said. Despite the state listing in Washington, the hawks enjoy no such protections at the national level. Federal officials considered the matter in 1983 and 1991 but found that a national listing was not warranted.

Eastern Washington could be considered the edge of the hawk’s range, said Trina Bayard, interim executive director for the National Audubon Society’s Washington office. Even so, the hawks have been known to return to empty nests decades after they left.

Bayard and biologists with the Department of Fish and Wildlife recommended that any turbines in the area should not sit within 2 miles of any ferruginous hawk nests.

Halving the wind farm

Scout originally proposed building 244 turbines in the area, and later reduced the number to 222 in an effort to appease detractors. But EFSEC now might cut another 117 or more to provide enough buffer for the nests.

Dave Kobus, the developer’s senior project manager, said now their best-case scenario is to try for 105 turbines.

He chafed at EFSEC’s proposed reduction, arguing that many of those nests have sat empty for quite a few years and might already have other developments nearby.

“It doesn’t make any sense to eliminate that number of turbines for a twig on the ground,” Kobus said.

To be clear, wind turbines do kill birds, probably hundreds of thousands every year. Those deaths also pale in comparison to the number killed each year by house cats, large buildings, power lines or, for that matter, the fossil fuels the turbines are meant to replace, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s climate team.

Renewable energy opponents repeatedly cite turbine-related deaths to block or attack wind farm projects despite the broader understanding that climate change represents a much more significant threat.

Bayard and Adam Maxwell, senior policy manager for Audubon’s Washington office, acknowledge the dynamic but believe EFSEC found the right balance for the Horse Heaven Hills wind farm, a project they support.

“We’re really pleased,” said Bayard, who also holds a doctorate in ecology.

“We have to recognize that climate change is a massive threat, and it’s one of the biggest threats there is to birds and people,” Maxwell said. “But that doesn’t mean we can just sacrifice our most important resource in the process of trying to meet those [renewable energy] goals. And we don’t have to.”

Pam Minelli, of Tri-Cities C.A.R.E.S., agreed that the changes are welcome, particularly since most in the group worried that the council would rubber-stamp the project as proposed.

While the ferruginous hawk was indeed the common factor among the turbines removed, EFSEC spokesperson Karl Holappa noted that the council also considered opposition from other sources.

The Yakama Nation argued that the wind farm would damage the cultural and historical significance of the Horse Heaven Hills. And an attorney for Benton County said the project would inappropriately change the use of state-protected agricultural lands.

Korbus and Rucker say they’re still hoping to win back as many turbines as they can, though they acknowledge the challenge ahead. Even if they’re only allowed to build a fraction of the turbines, they said the effort might still be worth it.

Demand for electricity that the wind farm would produce is only growing.

Rucker noted, though, that EFSEC’s anticipated decision will set a precedent for similar projects in the future. Scaling back the size of future wind farms could make it impossible for the state to meet its renewable energy goals in the years ahead, he said.

The fate for the Horse Heaven Hills wind farm hasn’t yet been sealed. Holappa said EFSEC wouldn’t vote on the recommendation until today at the earliest, and the documents must also pass through a public comment period first, so the process is likely to take longer.

Wherever the council lands, its recommendation will then pass on to Gov. Jay Inslee, who could either uphold the recommendation or make tweaks of his own. A representative for the governor declined to comment on the project because it’s still under consideration.

Even after the final decision, the developer or other groups involved in the process could decide to file an appeal, which would move the case before the Washington Supreme Court.

Copyright 2024 Tribune Content Agency. All Rights Reserved.

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Update February 18, 2024 Greetings! We are all eager for EFSEC to continue deliberating their reductions in the HH Wind and Solar Project as part of their recommendation to Governor Inslee. This will happen at EFSEC’s next virtual meeting at 1:30 February 21st. To watch the meeting via computer or smart device, go to the EFSEC website here:  https://www.efsec.wa.gov/council-information/council-meetings. Then click on Microsoft Teams to watch a live feed of the Council meeting. A video recording may be available on the EFSEC website after the meeting. If you do not have acces. s to a computer or smart device the call in number for this meeting is: (564) 999-2000  ID: 699286814#  What EFSEC will be discussing: As you recall, on January 31 EFSEC voted to direct the EFSEC staff to develop the specific changes to the HH Wind and Solar Project they intend to include in their final recommendation to the Governor. Changes discussed include: – Removal of turbines within 2 miles of Ferruginous Hawk nests – Removal of turbines from wildlife corridors rated highly impacted – Modification of Eastern solar site to lessen impact on habitats – Removal of some turbines that impact visual and cultural resources. – Removal of additional turbines still needed to allow aerial firefighting. The map below shows the discussed changes; the red indicates turbines to be removed and the green indicates remaining turbines.

What to Watch For: Will EFSEC address aerial firefighting concerns essential to public safety and the protection of habitats and property? TCC has continued to communicate with DNR, EFSEC, other agencies and experts regarding additional turbine removal essential to safe aerial firefighting. Will remaining turbines that are visible from TC homes need to be identified and removed by EFSEC? What’s next? EFSEC has until April 30, 2024 to make their recommendation to Governor Inslee. There will be another opportunity for public comment before EFSEC’s recommendation is sent to the Governor. How can you help? Send comments to EFSEC expressing the need for arial firefighting. Include photos of recent fires near your property or in Benton County.comments.efsec.wa.gov (Unfortunately, the aerial firefighting bill sponsored by Rep, Barnard did not advance in the state legislature) Visit the TCC website for updates: https://www.tricitiescares.org/ Say No to the HH Project by signing this petition:https://www.gopetition.com/petitions/stop-the-horse-heaven-hills-wind-farm-project.html Your help is needed to pay expensive legal bills: TCC legal fees are paid solely by private donations. The reductions to the HH Project being discussed by EFSEC are proof the work we have all done together is producing positive results. Please help us keep it going. Your donations are greatly needed and appreciated. Donations can be made online at https://www.tricitiescares.orgor by sending a check (saves the 3% fee charged for online donations) toTRI-CITIES C.A.R.E.S.

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Washington council puts Horse Heaven turbines on the chopping block

By Don Jenkins, Capital Press. December 21,2023

More than 100 wind turbines may be eliminated from the proposed Horse Heaven wind and solar project in southeast Washington to lessen damage to hawks, scenic views and tribal cultural resources.

Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council chairwoman Kathleen Drew on Wednesday suggested deleting some turbines before recommending the massive renewable energy project to Gov. Jay Inslee.

The remaining turbines would be farther from hawk nests and less visible from the Tri-Cities, she said. Eliminating turbines also would reduce infringing on tribal interests and free up air space to attack fires, she said.

Middle ground’

EFSEC made no decision, but appeared to embrace Drew’s suggestion. Council member Lenny Young of the Department of Natural Resources said he didn’t favor approving the project as proposed by Scout Clean Energy.

“And I don’t think we’re at an absolute, ‘No, there’s no part of this that could ever be done,'” he said. “We’re in that middle ground.”

Scout, based in Boulder, Colo., and owned by Brookfield Renewable, a Canadian company, has proposed erecting up to 231 turbines. It’s also presented the option to put up 147 taller turbines with more generating capacity.

Although originally labeled a wind project by Scout, more than two-thirds of the development’s power capacity would be from solar panels, rather than windmills, according to Scout’s application.

The citizens group Tri-Cities CARES opposes the project because the turbines would dominate the rolling Horse Heaven Hills. The group’s attorney, Richard Aramburu, said fewer turbines would be a good step.

“We’re still digesting what happened” at the meeting, he said. “It certainly is substantial progress for us. We want to see in more detail where the (deleted) turbines are.

“Even with the turbines taken out, they have a nice, big project out there,” Aramburu said. “They don’t have a lot of room to complain.”

Scout did not respond to a request to comment.

Besides Tri-Cities CARES, Benton County and the Yakama Nation formally opposed the project at hearings in August. EFSEC is due to make a recommendation to Inslee by the end of January.

Project proposed in 2021

Scout proposed the project in 2021, saying it would help Washington achieve the state’s clean-energy mandates. Besides turbines, the project calls for occupying up to 5,447 acres with solar panels.

The turbines and solar panels could generate up to 1,150 megawatts, but the actual energy output would be limited by the weather and the Bonneville Power Administration’s ability to take the power.

The controversial four Lower Snake River dams have a total capacity of almost 3,500 megawatts and can be counted on to provide 2,300 carbon-free megawatts when needed, according to a BPA-commissioned study.

Under Scout’s 147-turbine option, blade tips could reach 657 feet into the air. The Space Needle in Seattle stands 605 feet. The turbines would prevent aircraft from attacking fires on the ridge near the Tri-Cities.

“The density and spacing of the towers would essentially create a no-fly zone over the entire project area,” according to a letter to EFSEC from the Department of Natural Resources.

The county argues such a large wind and solar project does not belong on land zoned for agriculture. A wheat farmer has said lease payments will help agriculture survive by diversifying and stabilizing farm incomes.

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TCC Update December 23, 2023

There’s hope.

EFSEC Council Creates a New HHH Alternative – The Council Mitigation Measures Option – Could Cut the HHH Project by 50 percent or more As a result of the December 20, 2023 EFSEC Monthly Meeting, in a special session focused on Mitigation Issues for the Horse Heaven Hills Wind and Solar Project, EFSEC appears to have paid attention to the concerns about the magnitude and severity of environmental impacts expressed by TC CARES, the Yakama Nation, Benton County to some extent, local residents, the local officials and other organizations and to all of you who. opposed the project. They voted on directing staff to develop an Option that the project be significantly reduc-ed — removing the most objectionable the wind turbines along the northern lease boundary.    Here’s a summary of what happened.  There was about a one-hour discussion by EFSEC on the project.  They reviewed proposed mitigation measures proposed by the Applicant and modified by staff.  They discussed aerial firefighting needs and Washington DNR provided input indicating that airspace restrictions needed to keep the aircraft safe (that TCC expert witnesses provided). More discussion will be provided in the January Monthly Meeting to describe exactly how much horizontal distance would be required from the turbines.  More input was requested of DNR.They also proposed to eliminate the east solar field.  The Council then discussion the Impacts Project Map for Option 1 in the Final Environmental Impact Statement (Figure 2-5 at page 38 of Chapter 2 of the FEIS).  This map graphic identified turbines that had a “Class 3 Impact” showing them in red.  Class 3 Impacts means severe unavoidable impacts for more than one issue (wildlife, cultural and visual) (as explained on page 2-37).  “High impact areas on the figures are identified and are associated with areas with more than one high-magnitude impact, as identified in Chapter 4 of each resource.  The figures are intended to provide EFSEC and its Council members with information that could be used in the identification of specific turbines that have multiple impacts and could require additional mitigation. including the removal or relocation within the Micrositing Corridor. (Emphasis Added). These figures lack identifying details for the public because impacts may be related to protected or confiden- tial resources. EFSEC was provided with detailed non-public versions of these figures to assist in the decision-making process for this Project.”The highest impact turbines are in red as Class 3 designation as meaning three significant issues: a) visual impacts b) two-mile distance from hawk nests, c) Traditional Cultural (Yakama Nation Concerns) impacts.  Aerial firefighting had not yet been included, but the staff was requested to add a 4th major impact.  The Council and staff did not yet clarify how many additional turbines will be affected by aerial firefighting restrictions.  The Council then officially voted to draft a recommendation to the Governor to approve the draft ASC (Application for Site Certification) with the restrictions and mitigation measures identifi-ed and agreed to by the Council. This is significant because the FEIS appeared to offer only two options: One to build based upon Scout’s latest application and revisions or reject the project.  This gave EFSEC another path that they approved.EFSEC staff was directed by the Council to prepare a recommendation to the Council for next month’s meeting that cuts the size of the project approximately in half due to wildlife, cultural, visual, and aerial firefighting. There will be an opportunity for the public to comment. The staff recommendation will be the topic of discussion at the January 2024 monthly meeting. It looks to us that up to 50% or more of the turbines may be removed.  As that will be a final decision meeting, public comment will be allowed. Tri-Cities CARES counted the number of red turbines – If the Governor approved the EFSEC recommendation, it looks like they cut the project in half. Out of the 231 proposed by the applicant, the EFSEC County will restrict them to 123 plus any removed for aerial firefighting.  There was also discussion about removing additional turbines in the central part of the project where there are wildlife corridors.They will review the additional staff work on the Council Mitigation Measures Recommendation at the January Meeting. If EFSEC votes to approve the Recommendation, it will be sent to the Governor who then has up to 60 days to review it and make a final decision. He can approve it, deny it, or send it back to EFSEC for revision and resubmittal.  Stay tuned. There’s more work to be done.

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Deadline approaches for decision on controversial wind farm project

From the Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business from December 14, 2023

December 14, 2023 byArielle Dreher

A state advisory council will decide in January whether to green light a Tri-Cities-based wind farm project to the governor’s office for approval.

Scout Clean Energy’s proposal could mean more than 200 turbines along the Horse Heaven ridges in Benton County directly south of Kennewick and to the south and west of the Columbia River.

The $1.7 billion wind farm would be about four miles from Kennewick at its closest point, and in addition to the turbines, it would have solar panels and up to two battery storage facilities.

Scout Clean Energy inked a deal last year with Tri-Cities labor unions to build the project, which is estimated to create nearly 1,000 jobs for skilled trades workers during construction, according to an economic impact assessment by Tetra Tech.

The Boulder, Colorado-based Scout Clean Energy worked with 36 local landowners and farmers in Benton County to secure a 72,428-acre site south of the Tri-Cities, along the ridges above Kennewick. The company has committed to building the turbines at least half a mile from residents who chose not to work with the company or lease their land.

Not everyone supports the wind farm plan touted as helping the state meet its clean energy goals, including the Tri-City Regional Chamber of Commerce, which conducted a survey showing 78% of the more than 2,000 respondents opposing the proposal.

A nonprofit called Tri-Cities Community Action for Responsible Environmental Stewardship, or Tri-Cities CARES, formed after the project was proposed nearly three years ago. It’s run by local retirees who also oppose the project, in part due to its location.

“We’re not opposed to renewable energy but we want (it) to end up on a site that’s responsible,” said David Sharp, vice president of the group. “This project is way different than any one (project) I’ve seen, particularly in the closeness to a metro area.”

Scout Clean Energy proposed the Horse Heaven Clean Energy Center as a sort of extension of the Nine Canyon wind project in southeast Kennewick, using the geographical features of the region to its advantage.

The turbines – proposed at just under 500 feet tall – would be built in an approximately 25-mile radius from west to east across the top of the Horse Heaven ridge to catch the wind which picks up before it crests over the ridge.

The wind farm would generate an estimated 1,150 megawatts of clean energy, said Dave Kobus, senior project manager for Scout Clean Energy, in an emailed statement. This would offset more than 2.2 million tons of regional greenhouse gas emissions per year.

The proposed wind farm has been a long time coming. The project application and proposal process began in 2021 with Scout Clean Energy’s official application followed by adjudications, law changes and drafted environmental impact statements.

Now, just three parties are able to intervene through the courts, if necessary: Benton County, Tri-Cities CARES and the Yakama Nation.

Rick Dunn, general manager of Benton PUD, publicly implored the governor to reject the project in his newsletter, writing last month that the project is “too close, too big and will make too little difference to justify the sacrifices.”

Tri-City CARES is trying to raise awareness about how the project will change the ridge views and aesthetic of the Tri-Cities region, potentially affecting property values of those within view of the turbines.

Additionally, the fire risk of having the project near developments is of concern to local community members. Turbines present a challenge for aircraft fighting fires, and as of Nov. 29, the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC) has not landed on a concrete solution or recommendation to address this concern.

Scout Clean Energy will negotiate a fire safety response plan with EFSEC, the company said in a statement.

EFSEC members are working through proposed changes to the environmental impact statement, which was released on Oct. 31. The document, which is more than 2,000 pages long, shows the project’s potential impact on the environment and species living in the area. Since then, EFSEC has held meetings to refine exactly what it wants Scout Clean Energy to do to mitigate the project’s impact on the environment.

At its most recent meeting on Nov. 29, EFSEC council members discussed the project’s potential threats to local wildlife and the environment, including the habitats and nesting areas of the burrowing owl and ferruginous hawk.

Scout Clean Energy likely will have to observe space buffers if it finds the species during construction, as well as keep track of any wildlife activity and mortality of some species. EFSEC is focusing on specific mitigation measures that the company would have to observe should the project proceed.

More information

Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council: efsec.wa.gov/energy-facilities 

Scout Clean Energy: horseheavencleanenergy.com 

Tri-Cities CARES: tricitiescares.org 

The proposed project needs to account for both wildlife mitigation and habitat destruction, which are projected to have the most impact according to the EIS, but the document also notes fire risk and community exposures as well.

The energy produced through the Horse Heaven wind farm likely will be interconnected to the local grid but will not directly provide power to local residents of Benton County because local PUDs already have negotiated power contracts for their communities.

Scout Clean Energy is instead looking at providing power to other regional utility companies and large industrial developers that might need it.

EFSEC must make a decision on the project by Jan. 31, 2024, and it must take action by then. Its next meeting is Dec. 20.

The council has a few options when it sends its recommendation to the governor’s office: recommend the project be approved as proposed, recommend it be approved with changes, or recommend it be rejected.

Then the governor’s office will have 60 days to review the council’s proposal and take action. It can approve or deny the recommendation or ask the council to reconsider aspects of the project. Either way, the process likely will bleed into next spring.

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Wind turbines would put Benton City in danger

BY LINDA LEHMAN, BENTON CITY MAYOR

Tri-City Herald from 7/16/2023

On behalf of the City of Benton City and the Benton City Council, I am expressing our sincere thanks for the diligence of fire fighters from several districts who participated in extinguishing fires on the south side of I-82 and on Red Mountain. 

Those fires were contained through the skills of fire fighters on the ground, and from the use of aircraft to spray fire retardant and water over the flames. The fire of June 13th , which burned over 7,000 acres, showed that it was a serious safety concern to the people in Benton City and to residents on the south side of the I-82 Freeway. Those types of fires occur regularly every few years.

The June 13th fire started near Yakitat Road and spread rapidly eastward along Horse Heaven Hills (HHH) to the intersection with SR 225 and McBee Grade in Benton City. The Red Mountain fire started the same day and burned over 100 acres. Several types of aircraft were deployed to fight those fires, including a DC-10 Jet aircraft, a Rockwell Aero Commander (a large turbo prop), smaller aircraft, and several helicopters.

A major concern was raised to Scout Energy, (the company requesting to construct 244 wind turbines along the ridgeline at HHH), by Benton City during the comment period for the HHH Draft Environmental Impact Statement. 

This concern was raised by Councilman David Sandretto, himself a former fire fighter, regarding the impact turbines would have on the ability of fire fighters to use fire suppression aircraft if turbines were located along the ridgelines. 

Benton City residents observed the large jet flying overhead in north and south routes. It became quite clear if there had been wind turbines on that route at an elevation between 500 feet to over 600 feet above the ridgeline, it may not have been possible to utilize aircraft in their preferred alignment or altitude without compromising safety of the pilots and safety of others who were in harm’s way from the fire.

By way of comparison, the FAA requires 500-foot obstructions to be more than 20,000 feet from the end of every runway nationwide. The planes that were utilized here flew 60 to 150 feet off the ground at 165 MPH plus and need the same protection to safely approach or leave an area. Big jets and Aero Commanders do not have the capability to maneuver as nimbly as helicopters and smaller planes. 

We insist that Scout Energy and the state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC) abide by safety clearances established by the FAA.

Potential loss of life and property damage must be taken seriously. These are things that must be of grave concern to all of us, including EFSEC and the Governor. 

Siting massive turbines on the ridgeline of Horse Heaven Hills directly threatens the safety of the citizens living in Benton City, Kiona and Badger Canyon, and those who may find themselves fighting fires in the vicinity.

The proposed turbines must be moved back away from the ridgeline so that firefighting aircraft can safely operate their equipment to protect residents. 

I hereby invite Gov. Jay Inslee, EFSEC regulators, and Scout Energy to take a tour of the multiple burned areas to see for themselves the dangers for the citizens of Benton City and Badger Canyon that will be created by locating turbines on the ridgelines.

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Letter signed by our eight local State representatives to EFSEC

Eastern WA lawmaker proposes law to limit ‘eyesore’ of blinking red wind turbine lights

BY ANNETTE CARY, Tri-City Herald, UPDATED JANUARY 17, 2023 11:22 AM

Wind turbines would no longer be allowed have continuously blinking red lights at night under a bill proposed by new Washington state Rep. April Connors, R-Kennewick. Several states already require Aircraft Detection Lighting Systems for wind turbines that only turn lights on to alert low-flying airplanes as they draw near and then shut off when they have passed. The legislation, if approved, would apply to the Horse Heaven wind farm proposed for just south of the Tri-Cities along the Horse Heaven ridge line, which is the immediate concern of some of those who support the bill. But existing wind farms in the state also would be required to install aircraft detection systems meeting Federal Aviation Administration standards by 2026. Pilots flying at low altitudes at night rely on the blinking lights on wind turbines for safety, “but for many, many others they are a disturbing eyesore and an invasive nuisance,” said Paul Krupin, a Kennewick scientist and attorney, at a hearing on House Bill 1173 on Monday before the Washington state House Environment and Energy Committee. The lights do not need to be on all the time, he said. FAA APPROVES LIGHT DETECTION The Federal Aviation Administration has approved systems that detect aircraft radar to turn on only when planes are flying low in the vicinity.

James Conca, a Richland scientist, said at the hearing that the lights are needed only 2% to 3% of the time.

The blinking red lights of the Horse Heaven Clean Energy project would be visible at night up to 20 to 30 miles away, Krupin said. Plans call for 244 turbines about 500 feet tall or 150 turbines with blades extending about 670 feet high, which is taller than the Seattle Space Needle. More than 100,000 people would live within six miles of the turbines, the majority of them in city limits, by one analysis done by Krupin and Tri-Cities Community Action for Responsible Environmental Stewardship. Most wind farms are not built in areas close to so may homes, Conca said. Elsewhere in the state only 20,000 people live within six miles of a wind turbine, according to Krupin. Connors said the first time she saw the blinking lights of existing wind turbines in the dark sky along Highway 12 between the Tri-Cities and Walla Walla, she was startled enough to reach over to her husband.

One Tri-Cities residents told her that the blinking lights are hypnotic and distracting to drivers, she said. “In Eastern Washington, while we do not have a lot of say … where things are basically sited in our region, it is important to us to protect and maintain the beauty of our landscape,” Connors said.

The Washington state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council is evaluating the proposal for the Horse Heaven project, with Gov. Jay Inslee making the final decision on it. WIND TURBINES TOO COSTLY? The Association of Washington Business is concerned that costs for adding aircraft detection lighting systems, particularly on existing wind turbines, would be passed on as higher rates to electricity users, said Peter Godlewski, the group’s director of government affairs for energy, environment and water. Krupin said the cost of the intermittent lighting systems is not prohibitive and would reduce public opposition to nearby wind turbines. It also could diminish the perceived risks of harm to property values and tourism, he said.

Tri-Cities business leaders have been concerned that the colorful sunsets enjoyed by tourists at wineries from the Tri-Cities to Benton City would be marred by wind turbines along the Horse Heaven ridge line. Conca estimated that the lighting systems would cost 0.1% of the total cost of the Horse Heaven Clean Energy Center. “These folks are making tons of money on these projects, most of which goes out of state,” Conca said. “So they can certainly do something for the people of this state who are bearing the burden and getting almost none of the benefit.” The fiscal analysis for the bill estimated a Washington state government cost of $846,000 as rules are developed for aircraft detection lighting systems by the Department of Ecology, in cooperation with the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council and the state Department of Transportation.

Germany began requiring aircraft detection lighting systems for every turbine in the country this year, Connors said. States that already require the systems include North and South Dakota, Vermont and New Hampshire, with Colorado, Minnesota and Kansas considering the requirement, according to supporters of the bill. HOW TO COMMENT To comment on House Bill 1173, go to app.leg.wa.gov/PBC/Bill/1173. To provide a comment on the draft environmental impact statement for the Horse Heaven Clean Energy Center go to comments.efsec.wa.gov and select “Horse Heaven Draft EIS comments.” The draft environmental impact statement considers options to mitigate the impacts, including visual, of the project. Comments also may be mailed to Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, 621 Woodland Square Loop SE, Lacey, WA 98504-3172. They must be received no later than Feb. 1, according to a recent clarification from the agency.

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Live in Tri-Cities? Here’s how many wind turbines you might soon see from your house

By Annette CaryJanuary 16, 2023 11:36 AM

“Too many turbines, too close to people” say three Kennewick area residents who crunched the numbers for the proposed Horse Heaven Clean Energy Center.

Scout Clean Energy proposes two scenarios along the Horse Heaven Hills just south of Kennewick from Finley to Benton City:

• Up to 244 turbines up to 500 feet tall
• Up to 150 turbines up to 670 feet high

“Benton County people are impacted disproportionately to every other county in the state, in the Northwest and even several states beyond,” by wind turbine projects, said Paul Krupin of Kennewick a scientist and attorney who worked on environmental issues for the federal government for three decades.

He and Tri-Cities CARES members Dave Sharp of Kennewick, a retired manager of Wyoming wind farms, and Pam Minelli, a Tri-Cities area homeowner, have been poring over the Horse Heaven project’s draft environmental impact statement to better understand the proposed project and submit public comments on it by the end of the month.

The state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council will decide whether to recommend the project to Gov. Jay Inslee, who will make the final decision.

The nonprofit Tri-Cities CARES, or Community Action for Responsible Environmental Stewardship, was formed to help protect the Horse Heaven Hills habitat and the natural landscape of the Tri-Cities area.

The three found the draft study lacking, including a failure to analyze the proposed wind project’s impact on the people who would live near it, they said. They say an analysis shows that the turbines will be visible, including their blinking red lights at night, from many areas of Kennewick, Richland and Pasco. For instance, more than 100 turbines will be visible from downtown Richland, they say.

The view for residents of the Tripple Vista neighborhood between Badger and Clodfelter roads would include 137 to 199 wind turbines during the day and the blinking lights of 148 to 107 turbines at night, according to data the group pulled from the environmental impact statements’ visual impact assessment. The blinking lights are set at the top of the turbine hub, with the blades stretching higher into the sky to be seen during the day. In Franklin County, along the Columbia riverfront the turbines will be visible from the Interstate 82 bridge downriver almost as far as the blue bridge, according to the group’s analysis. Even more would be seen at higher elevations in Pasco, although they would be distant.

At the top of Webber Canyon, the turbines “will stretch from one horizon to the other,” Krupin said. The main I-82 entrance to Kennewick would be flanked by towering turbines, he said.

TRI-CITIES TURBINES VS. WASHINGTON

“You cannot imagine how big this project is until you get down on the ground and see it,” Krupin said. “It is huge.” The project will cover 110 square miles, with 105 miles of roads crossing arroyos and other non-agriculture land, Sharp said. Between the Horse Heaven wind farm and the nearby and smaller Nine Canyon wind farm, just over 100,000 residents of Benton County will live within six miles of a turbine, according to the group’s computer analysis that relies on U.S. Census tract data. That’s five times more than the estimated 20,000 people who live within six miles of a wind farm across the rest of Washington state, the said. Other Washington state counties with wind farms average about 2,000 people living within six miles, according to the group. “You just don’t develop them in a metropolitan area. They are out in a rural area,” Sharp said. And the number of people living near the turbines, should the project go forward as proposed, would increase in time, they said.

The Nine Canyon project started with about 17,500 residents within six miles in 2000, but due to project expansions and population growth now has about 59,000 people within six miles, they said. The group picked six miles to analyze as the distance before wind turbines are far enough away to blend into the landscape. Minelli says her home between I-82 and East Badger Road now has a 180-degree view of countryside, with hawks soaring outside her deck. “We live there because we like the tranquility of the rural views, the rural sounds,” she said. But now she and thousands of others face the industrialization of their rural views, she said. “These projects need to be put in a rural area that doesn’t change the lifestyle and the ability of us to enjoy our homes,” she said.

FEWER WIND TURBINES POSSIBLE?

Krupin, Sharp and Minelli are calling for Scout Clean Energy to reduce the number of turbines it expects to be most visible to people living in Benton County, which include those in the Horse Heaven Hills wildlife corridor. Washington state Fish and Wildlife Department has recommended that wind infrastructure be no closer than a half mile from a wildlife corridor, according to the group. Although the group found the draft environmental impact statement short on specifics, they think that the number of proposed turbines could be reduced and Scout could still meet its generation goals. They have been sharing their analysis with local government and other community leaders, but Scout Clean Energy has not seen it. Dave Kobus, senior project manager for the Horse Heaven project, said the process of determining project viability is complicated and requires access to proprietary data, complicated financial modeling and confidential manufacturer data not publicly available.

He said that the Washington state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, or EFSEC, has “run a rigorous, independent analysis spanning nearly two years and is suggesting mitigation measure that go well beyond established precedent in several areas.” Among mitigation measures suggested in the draft environmental impact statement are requiring turbines to be more than a half mile from residents whose land is not part of the project and steps to prevent or minimize the flickering shadows that could be cast on homes by rotating blades. Measures also are suggested to help protect wildlife. “We are fully committed to working through the adjudication process and closely reviewing the draft EFSEC document as well as any public comments provided to EFSEC to assure mitigation is appropriate,” Kobus said. “The commercial aspects of the technology selection and placement will continue to be reviewed as we progress through the EFSEC process deliberation,” he said. The proposed project includes solar panels and battery storage in addition to wind turbines.

COMMENT ON HORSE HEAVEN PROJECT

Public comments on the draft environmental impact statement, or EIS, should be received by EFSEC before Feb. 1. Comments may be submitted online at comments.efsec.wa.gov. There also is a link there to submit comments for Horse Heaven adjudication, which is a legal proceeding. Comments on the draft Horse Heaven EIS also may be mailed to Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, 621 Woodland Square Loop SE, Lacey, WA 98504-3172.

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Press Release

Contact information:
Tri-Cities C.A.R.E.S. (Community Action for Responsible Environmental Stewardship)

Jessica Percifield Henry | (509) 492-2087 | info@tricitiescares.org Release Date: Aug 15, 2022

Nonprofit Defends Conservation Efforts in the Horse Heaven Hills

When Renewable Energy Runs Afoul of Conservation

Tri-Cities C.A.R.E.S. is a recently formed Washington Nonprofit whose mission ist to support local conservation of wildlife, their ecosystems, and local decision-making to preserve the picturesque natural landscapes that make our communities unique, healthy and beautiful. Tri-Cities CARES is the result of a grassroots effort to challenge the poor siting of the State’s largest wind project spanning 24 miles of the Horse Heaven Hills. That project has had numerous changes in scope, and at this point, there is no clear understanding of what will eventually be built if the project is constructed.

First and foremost, Tri-Cities CARES understands the importance of renewable energy as part of a modernized energy portfolio and consistency with State policy. However, we believe that siting decisions should consider the cost and benefits of each project including impact to wildlife and their habitats, recreational opportunities, and interface with local population. The intent of State law and the National Environmental Policy Act is to strike an appropriate balance. We believe that local authorities and stakeholders are in a better position to weigh the costs and benefits associated with local conservation rather than a remote State agency, i.e., the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC), with final approval by the Governor.

Fast tracking projects to bypass local efforts to conserve and preserve wildlife connectivity results in up-ending due process. It favors Goliath multinational developers that are motivated by massive subsidies, which further puts communities at a disadvantage when defending conservation. Renewable energy projects must be checked by conservation as much as big oil or other big money interests, or big money wins and conservation loses, and the point of renewables is lost.

The Horse Heaven Hills Wind project (and now potentially Wind, Solar and Battery Storage [HWSB]), according to our review, has not been properly sited. It causes major impacts to the already diminished shrub-steppe environment and affected wildlife. There are several State Endangered avian species that live and forage within the 120-square-mile project. The Horse Heaven Hills (HHH) is a key part of the Arid Lands Initiative, a collaborative effort to track and preserve key habitat that provides connectivity for state wildlife species. The project is sited near a major metropolitan area and abuts a good portion of the Benton County Urban Growth area.

Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife (WDFW) during the public comment period has pointed out the obvious:

“…The immense size of the HWSB along the Horse Heaven Hills ridgeline and the subsequent landscape-scale impact to an important habitat and ecological connectivity will be difficult if not impossible to mitigate. It is important to note that the lineal Horse Heaven Hills represent some of the last remaining functional and uninterrupted shrub-steppe and natural grasslands in Benton County… Development within this ridge will result in further fragmentation and isolation of shrub-steppe and grassland habitat as well as loss of function and value to wildlife”.

The public comments by the WFDW also recommends scaling back the project to solar only and moving the project further to the southwest away from the ridgelines. We support this more fair-sited alternative.

Our area is ecologically unique with the convergence of three rivers, associated wetlands, and vanishing and endangered shrub-steppe that the recently endangered Ferruginous Hawk calls home along with many more at risk and endangered species, such as the Burrowing Owl, and Townsend’s Ground Squirrel. The HHH are prime foraging habitat for large raptors and migratory birds and part of the Pacific Flyway. This project would bisect habitat connectivity on the ground and migratory pathways in the air. We invite you to learn more by visiting our website at www.tricitiescares.org.

The Tri-Cities has a long legacy of clean energy production and use, including embracing the only operating nuclear plant in the Northwest, collaborating with other public utilities to build an early wind project, and public support for small nuclear technology at the Hanford site. This is far from a “not in my back yard” position regarding the project.

We support environmentally friendly energy projects. The HHH Wind Farm too must be balanced with the environment. The Revised Code of Washington (RCW) – Energy Facility-Site Location states an intent to seek that balance. At this point in the process, we have not seen proof that the HHH Wind Farm meets this requirement.

To learn how you can help, or to join our coalition visit us at www.tricitiescares.org. Click the TAKE ACTION button to donate or volunteer! As this project moves further through the site certification process, it is anticipated that legal assistance will be required. Thank you!

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Letter from Congressman Dan Newhouse to WA Governor Jay Inslee opposing the HH wind farm project:

Dear Governor Inslee:

I write today on behalf of the people of the 4th Congressional District to express significant concerns with the Application for Site Certification (ASC) for the Horse Heaven Wind Farm (Project) in Benton County.

It has been brought to my attention that the applicant, Horse Heaven Wind Farm, LLC, a fully- owned subsidiary of Scout Clean Energy LLC, submitted their ASC directly to the Washington Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council. In doing so, they have effectively bypassed the local government and limited the amount of direct involvement my constituents have regarding the consideration of a project that is being planned in their backyard.

Residents in the Tri-Cities have raised substantive concerns with the proposed Project, including the fact that local utilities have already expressed no need or desire to take on new wind generation in their portfolios. Central Washington is proud of our clean energy leadership. From our clean, renewable hydroelectric generation and hosting the Pacific Northwest’s only nuclear generation station – a carbon-free source of baseload power – to being home to the state’s largest solar farm, we are at the forefront of an all-of-the-above clean energy deployment strategy. This includes existing wind and biomass sources of energy production.

Meanwhile, the scientists in our community researching grid storage capabilities at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are leading the nation – and the world – in next-generation energy storage technology research and development. All of these efforts demonstrate a comprehensive and concerted effort to continue building upon our region’s energy leadership and dominance – not for show or for symbolism or because it feels good for others outside our region, but because they are the right solutions for a secure energy future.

Additionally, the scale of this proposed Project would place a colossal impact on our natural landscape. We are blessed with a profoundly unique geologic history, shaped and contoured by

the great Ice Age Floods. Our region’s defining characteristics include our rolling hills, steep slopes, and majestic skyline views including Mounts Adams, Rainier, and Hood. Many are rightly concerned about the impacts of placing hundreds of structures the size of the Space Needle across our skylines. Their concerns must not be ignored.

These facets of our environment not only contribute to our rural and natural character, but they also greatly drive Central Washington’s economic development and tourism sector – particularly in light of our world-class wine industry. According to Visit Tri-Cities, in 2019, tourism generated more than $560 million and created more than 6,300 jobs in Benton and Franklin counties. Before the pandemic, the Tri-Cities’ regional economy was the fastest growing in the state due, in part, to our thriving local business sector and the good-paying jobs that attract families and workers from across the country. As our local businesses and economies recover from the impacts of the pandemic, we should continue to encourage long-term investments and lasting job creation in our communities.

In our nation’s capital, I work to ensure the federal government listens to the voices of local communities in its decision-making. The same effort must apply here to our state government. Upon hearing the concerns of residents in the Tri-Cities region, I respectfully request that you give due consideration to all parties involved in this Project and ensure the voices of the local communities who would be most impacted are listened to by our state officials.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this important matter.

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You may have noticed lately ads popping up on your social media feeds from Scout Energy of Colorado, they’re the ones pushing for the 240 wind turbines stretching for miles on the Horse Heaven Hills.

Scout refers to opponents of windfarm as a “small yet vocal” number of people. Scout energy thinks you’re a small but vocal group (Facebook). The ad, which invites readers to “click here” to learn more about the project, refers to the thousands who oppose the massive windfarm as a small but vocal group.For about the last two years, growing numbers of people have joined to fight against this massive project that would spread wind turbines down the spine of the Horse Heaven Hills from Finley for 24 miles.

The particular ad we noticed had at least 212 comments, and most of them were scathing about the idea. We have withheld the names of those commenting for privacy, but some of these are doozies:

“No wind mills! They are an eyesore, hazard to birds and wildlife, inefficient, huge carbon footprint to manufacture, and the rationale and justification for this form of “ green” energy” is completely false!”

“Unadulterated BS! Ruining the beautiful Horse Heavens for useless- inefficient- environmental disaster. How can we stop this insanity??? The Kennewick skyline is already destroyed. Create real jobs building nuclear power plants at Hanford.”

“This advertising is bull. Windmills are NOT green energy. They are a scar to our environment as well as an eyesore. Limited jobs/revenue to this area and the limited energy produced isn’t even intended for this area.”

“Proven 30% loss in property values, all the the blade noise, 100 miles of dirt roads for construction to blow all the residual herbicides from wheat fields all over the tri cities, 500 ft windmills will be a terrible sight up there. 240 stacked 6 deep for 24 miles. And their connex’s stacked on each other full of so called battery backup is good for 4 hours. The whole thing is a scam on tri cities”

“What happens when there is no wind…no sun…and no coal or natural gas plants to back them up? And idiots want to tear down the dams too….where will the power come from to charge all those evs”

And finally, one of our favorite comments:

“Built it in Governor Inslee’s backyard. Not ours.”

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The temps have been miserable, thank goodness for air conditioning (for most!)

  Wind power is virtually non-existent during our heat wave

The Mid-Columbia group Save Our Ridges on Facebook is a large contingent of Tri-City residents opposed to the Scout Energy Horse Heaven Hills wind farm, which would tattoo up to 240 massive turbines along a 24-mile stretch of the Horse Heaven Hills, beginning near Finley.

They shared some eye-opening information that came from Todd Meyers of the Washington Policy Center. Meyers is their Environmental Director.

Read More: Where’s Wind Power During NW Heat Wave? Nonexistent |

“The last three days have been the hottest of the year and wind power across the NW has fallen to nearly zero.The chart below shows energy sources and demand (in red). Note the green line at the bottom, which is basically wind. For the last three days, it has been near zero, except last night when it kicked up a bit, exactly when demand was low and we didn’t need the electricity.During peak demand hours in the evening, however, it falls to almost nothing – precisely when we need it. Wind can be part of our energy supply, but it cannot replace reliable sources of energy like hydro.“  His post was accompanied by this graph from the Bonneville Power Administration, showing energy demand, and which resources supplying it. As he noted the green line in the graph represents wind power.

This data is not just confined to the Mid-Columbia, this is a Pacific NW view of our general heatwave, and includes multiple regions served by the BPA. Research shows there is evidence that heat domes can cause high pressure, which keeps wind from blowing and air circulating. That would explain why we’ve seen virtually no wind the last few days.  Wonder if the Scout Energy folks have seen thisR

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A final development has taken place over the weekend concerning the Arbor Hill Wind Farm. Simply put, MidAmerican Energy has decided not to build it. The Arbor Hill Project ends According to a Madison County resident, MidAmerican sent out letters to landowners letting them know that in the coming months, the company will terminate their easement agreements.

A letter from MidAmerican dated July 21, shared by its recipient, states in part, “Thank you for your support of the Arbor Hill Wind Farm. As you know, MidAmerican has been evaluating this site since 2017 but has been unable to proceed with construction due to a number of challenges that the project has faced in Madison County. MidAmerican originally received the necessary permits to construct the project from Madison County in July 2018. Most recently, in February 2022, the Madison County Board of Supervisors voted to allow MidAmerican to construct the project with a smaller footprint than originally approved. Since that action, MidAmerican has been assessing the viability of proceeding. Unfortunately, after a thorough review, due to a number of outstanding issues — including some committed landowners wishing to be released from their easement agreements — MidAmerican has determined that we are unable to continue the construction of Arbor Hill. While we understand this may not be your desired outcome, we do want to thank you for your willingness to participate in the project and advocate for renewable energy and its benefits for your community and the state. …”

The decision comes after a lawsuit filed by the company against the Madison County Supervisors on Jan. 20, 2021, following the supervisor’s adoption of a zoning ordinance the year before which stood against further construction of turbines in the county. According to MidAmerican, the company “determined it was necessary to file a lawsuit to protect its legal rights for projects the county had already approved and in which the company had already invested under the rules that were in place at the time.” In a two-to-one vote on Feb. 8, the supervisors decided to settle rather than to fight the issue with MidAmerican in court. Supervisors Phil Clifton and Diane Fitch voted in favor of the settlement, while Supervisor Heather Stancil voted against. In part, the agreement reduced the proposed number of turbines from 52 to 30. “While the legal process and settlement discussions were going on, some landowners who previously committed to easement agreements indicated a desire to be released from their contracts,” MidAmerican said in a statement on Tuesday.

At the time, it seemed that despite the efforts of a group of Madison County residents who are opposed to more turbines being built in the county, the new project was going to come to pass. “We tried everything — lawsuits, changing supervisors, passing ordinances, lobbying for/against legislation. All failed. … All our heavy hearts had left was prayer, so that’s what we did,” Stancil said. Many residents spoke out against the proposed wind farm at a public hearing on Feb. 1. While there were some who spoke in favor of wind energy, of the approximately 80 citizens in attendance, at least 75 percent displayed a stark opposition, with some citing negative health effects, the possible loss of property values and the many residents who would have to endure the turbines who had not given their consent.

‘Love your neighbor’ Earlham resident Mary Jobst said that while at first, she had entered into an agreement with MidAmerican for an easement, her heart was later burdened when she learned of the impact it would have on her neighbors. Jobst said there were many other landowners who were also trying to get out of their contracts. “I know those landowners, and quite a few of them were like Roy and I and were willing to contact Mid- American and request out on behalf of the many, many neighbors who have not consented to be exposed to these effects of living near these turbines,” she said. In June, Jobst said she and her neighbors did an analysis, creating a map to show how many landowners there were in the area who did not consent but would live near the Arbor Hill Wind Farm, as well as those who had easements but changed their mind. She said she sent the data to MidAmerican. For those wanting out of their contracts, Jobst said it came down to them not wanting to profit off of something on their property that infringes on their neighbors’ rights. “That’s what’s different about our neighborhood. We are a community of neighbors who care about our neighbors. And that is more important to most people than getting some monetary gain off of an industrial wind turbine, knowing that they are going to have to live with the neighbor who is exposed to it against their will, against their consent, and may be exposed to harm,” she said.

MidAmerican stated that there were several things that factored into their decision, including the ordinance passed by the supervisors to restrict project development, the lawsuit, the settlement lowering the number of turbines, and the landowners wanting out of their easements. “These reasons factored into our determination to not move forward with constructing additional wind turbines in Madison County. We’re disappointed and we understand that so, too, are the many landowners in Madison County who supported this project. We appreciated their support throughout this process,” MidAmerican stated.

Jobst said that she is aware that there are some landowners who were still willing to receive the turbines, but through communication within their neighborhood, she said they were able to determine that more than 75 percent of her neighbors either no longer wished to participate or did not consent to living near wind turbines in the first place. Jobst said in the end, it was more important to “love your neighbor as yourself.” “We want to live together in harmony, not animosity. There are things in this life that are a lot more important than money,” she said. “I think that’s why we won.” As for the letter declaring the end of the project, Jobst said she received hers on Saturday, July 23. “It was a great moment. It’s a day I won’t forget for the rest of my life,” she said.

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From Barry Bush:

Save Our Ridges Community Members: We need your help!  

We need donations (see link at the bottom ).  Please share this email with friends, home owner associations, Facebook, nextdoor, Twitter, and any other local group pages!  We need to get the word out!  Obtaining funds for a lawyer is our only attempt to stop the wind and solar farm in the hills south of the greater Tri-City area.  

Our proposed lawyer suggested that our group becomes nonprofit organization.  Unfortunately, a state rewrite of the nonprofit bill was passed, effective January 1, 2022, and the state is backlogged with applications.  Because of the timing of the permitting process, we will need funding before we have approvals of our nonprofit.  GoFundMe will be used until we have approvals.

With the work of a few dedicated volunteers, and some generous contributions, attention was focused on educating the public to the true nature of this project, gaining support of local community leaders, and challenging the project developer during the comment period. A group of community leaders sent a letter to our governor opposing the project, and our local state representatives attempted to get a bill passed that would put a pause on the project. That bill made it to the governor’s desk, but was vetoed.  The donations to present were used for this work.  There is very little money left from the original donations. 

The next chapter of this story is about to begin. A draft Environmental Impact Statement will be published in June, and a recommendation by EFSEC to the governor for a yes/no decision for the project will occur by the end of the year. The only way to attempt an end to this project is through the legal process. A lawyer has been identified who has a lot of experience fighting such farms.  

We estimate we will need to raise between $50,000 to $100,000 for the legal support alone. That sounds insurmountable, but not if we work together. If each of you can contact and solicit contributions from five of your contacts, assuming there are 150 of us, a $50 donation each would generate $45,000. We have many people in the greater Tri-City area with a lot to lose.

Donations will not be tax deductible at this time.  Please click on the link to donate to save our ridges and natural resources!

https://www.gofundme.com/f/save-our-horse-heaven-hills

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State council: Horse Heaven Wind Farm is approved land use

BY ANNETTE CARY, Tri-City Herald from 5/20/2022

A Washington state council has found that the 24-mile ridge line of Horse Heaven Hills south of the Tri-Cities is an appropriate place for a wind farm.

The Washington state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council voted Tuesday to approve an order finding that Scout Clean Energy’s application to build the Horse Heaven Wind Farm was consistent with Benton County land use plans and zoning regulations in place at the time it was first proposed.The ruling is one step toward a final Washington state determination on whether the wind farm will be permitted.

Benton County had argued that the site is not consistent with its comprehensive plan’s agricultural zone because it would not preserve and protect prime agricultural land. The county stressed that eliminating more than 1% of its prime agricultural land from actual or potential agricultural production is significant, according to the order finding the proposed site consistent with land use regulations. That is directly at odds with the Growth Management Act and the county’s land use plan and ordinances that implement the act, said Ryan Brown, Benton County deputy prosecutor at a EFSEC hearing in March 2021. The county conceded that the project might be allowed as a conditional use, but only after evidence is provided at a hearing. The county allows major solar power facilities and wind turbine farms, but they must be permitted as a conditional use in the county’s Growth Management Act Agriculture District. “For the people of Benton County this is not some minor project ….,” Brown said. “The applicant proposes to put over 200 Space Needle magnitude structures on our horizon that will produce light flicker, noise and that will kill wildlife in addition to taking thousands of acres of land designated as prime ag land out of potential service.”

Scout Clean Energy, which plans the wind farm, said that after construction and during operation of the facility will continue on more than 90% of the acreage within the project’s boundary.

The project would have up to 244 wind turbines plus solar arrays on nearly 6,900 acres of leased agricultural land, or about 1.1% of the county’s land. But the total footprint of leased land would cover about 72,400 acres.  Much of the land is privately owned and used for dryland wheat farming and livestock grazing. Some of the land is managed by the Washington state Department of Natural Resources.

WA COUNCIL’S DECISION

The siting council concluded that the project is an allowed use because neither the county’s comprehensive plan or its zoning ordinance “clearly, convincingly and unequivocally” prohibit it.The council also pointed out that Benton County previously permitted 25 turbines in the Nine Canyon wind Project. However, conditions could still be set for the construction, operation and maintenance of the project.The project is still under environmental review, with a draft Environmental Impact Statement yet to be issued. At that time, there will be opportunity for more public comment before the final Environmental Impact Statement is issued. At the same time an adjudicative process continues, which also will have an opportunity for interested parties to bring issues to EFSEC before the council makes a recommendation to the governor on whether to approve the project.

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Horse Heaven Hills Wind Project Update

A meeting was held on 4/13/22 at Ranch & Home to discuss the next steps to fight the proposed HHH wind farm project; thanks to Christina, Judy and Gayle for the summary!

Speaker-Rep Mark Klicker – Legislative Update

• Article will soon be appearing in WSJ regarding project
• Environmental Impact Study (EIS) – released soon (May)
• Public comment period will start after EIS released
• EIS-is required by federal law (to complete the proposed windmill/solar farm)
• We have an uphill battle because the Governor has a veto power
• Recommends a petition letter from the people

SPEAKER-STEPHANIE BARNARD-Legal

• Attorney needed immediately-$29K needed for a retainer (action item)
  • Apply as an intervener on the NEPA process for the Draft EIS (DEIS) Public Comment Period (action item)
  • Use GoFundMe to raise money (action item)
  • Lawyers will charge $250 per hour, set up a 1-2 consult with a lawyer once DEIS published
  • Lawyer recommendations forthcoming (action item)
• Umatilla and Yakama tribes are against the project due to culturally sensitive reasons/sacred lands/negative plant impacts
  • Reach out and align with tribes (action item) 
• Reach out and align with the Sierra Club (action item)
• Sensitive items include:  shrubsteppe, greater sage grouse, ferruginous hawk, burrowing owl, sagebrush sparrow, pygmy rabbit
• Our approach needs to be environmental
• Turbines only usable 3 months out of a year

SPEAKER-DAVE SHARP/Barry Bush- Project/EFSEC Update 

• Energy Social and Governance (ESG) goal: carbon neutral tax incentives 
• Approximately 15 MW of Benton County power will be needed to supply this proposed windmill/solar farm
• Benton County power is 96% non-carbon based right now
• Supplemental power when coldest/hottest, which is NOT when windmills turn
• Proposed windmill/solar power will not stay in our area; will be sold to west side of state (maybe) and definitely out of state
• Wind turbine energy is given the priority to the grid.  Wind energy is highest in the spring when the wind blows.  Interestingly, this priority makes dams not put the power to the grid, when they have the highest levels of water due to spring snow melt; therefore, it devalues the dams.  
• Typically, it takes 15 years of evaluation for new transmission lines
• Emails can be submitted with comments/questions to the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC) to reinforce our interest and concerns. EFSEC is the one stop siting agency for energy sites for Washington state.  The head of the EFSEC commission is Katherine Grew. Please share your opinions and ask others to share them as well with EFSEC.  
  • Contact EFSEC by:
    • Phone: (360) 664-1345
    • Email: efsec@utc.wa.gov 
    • Mail:  621 Woodland Square Loop SE
      PO Box 43172
      Olympia, WA 98504-3172

SPEAKER-CHRISTINA CAPRIO – Environment

• 29+ high risk animals potentially negative impacted by the proposed project (emailed list after meeting to Judy Guse’s email list)
• According to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) 80% of shrub-steppe has been destroyed.  This is a very important and diverse ecosystem.  It provides home to species found nowhere else in the state.  
• Endangered species are within the proposed siting area.  Endangered species according to the Federal Register means that the species is in danger of becoming extinct throughout all or a portion of its range.  
• Ferruginous Hawk is endangered
  • Ferruginous Hawk has active nests in the proposed windmill/solar farm area
  • WDFW maps show Ferruginous Hawks all up and down the area in Kennewick to Benton City (all along the proposed windmill/solar farm)
• Sand Hill Cranes endangered 
  • According to the WDFW, there are 100 adults and subadults in Washington State for both endangered species, and there are 40 breeding pairs
  • Videos document anywhere from 50-100 birds flying over the proposed windmill/solar farm on a regular basis, especially in the spring
• Columbian sharp-tailed grouse and Greater sage-grouse are endangered
  • Both live in the proposed windmill/solar farm area
• Bats and bees also negatively impacted
  • Both are pollinators, pollinators produce food, proposed windmills within farms; therefore, impacts farms/food chain
  • Townsend’s big-eared bat and Western bumble bee are species of concern. According US Fish & Wildlife, the western bumble bee is facing an extremely high risk of extinction.
  • Interestingly, the windmill farms create an increased wind flow above the windmills that insects use for migration paths; therefore, increasing death potentials from the turbines.  The turbines have to be cleaned because of the amount of death debris because they can reduce efficacy by 50%.    
• Pronghorn antelope were eliminated in Washington state. The Yakama Indian Nation and the WDFW have a recovery program in place with Benton/Yakima counties to re-establish the native population in Washington.  These pronghorn antelope live within the proposed windfarm/solar farm area.  According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), turbines may negatively impact animal survival and reproduction rates.
• There are many high-risk plant species that are in the proposed windmill/solar farm area within the shrubsteppe that are endangered or threatened. 
• There is a Bald Eagle that periodically can be seen in the proposed windmill/solar farm area which are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.  Bald Eagles are extremely sensitive to human activity for their nesting and is most often found in areas with minimum human disturbance.  
• Coyotes linger by windmills to seize victims of turbine blades

SPEAKER-BILL MCKAY, Mayor of Kennewick

• Proposed site will take up 72K acres (4/5 size of Seattle)
• This proposed site is taken out of productive farming soil
• Scout Clean Energy (proposed project company) needs a huge amount of water for project
• City of Kennewick denied water use to this project
• The cities of Richland, West Richland, Kennewick and Benton City have sent a letter opposing this project
  • Note:  Pasco is not in the county for the project, so is not applicable to them other than sight impacts, etc.
• All three Irrigation Districts have sent letters opposing this project
• Ask Richland residents to ask the Richland mayor to decline water usage to the project for dust mitigation (action item)
• Farmers have limited water rights for their wells/water usage, so they most likely are not a water source for the proposed project

COMMITTEE VOLUNTEERS

• Fundraising: Barry Bush – atomicbt@charter.net
• Environmental:  Christina Caprio – caprio_lv@pocketinet.com
• Legal:  Ross Marturano – rosspmar@gmail.com
• Messaging/Communication:  Sharla Marshall (action item:  verify)  
• External Group Communications Coordinator:  Judy Guse – goosie1515@aol.com

Additional Notes:

You may want to google EIS: Is a 1969 policy act. A tool in decision making. NEPA involves a public process and is 12 steps. NEPA has a tiering process for large projects. Overall, it is science study with political influence on the decision makers. 

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Inslee vetoes parts of bill on impacts from wind farms

BY ANNETTE CARY, Tri-City Herald from 3/28/2022

Gov. Jay Inslee vetoed sections of an energy bill that would have given Eastern Washington residents more input and a broader, long-term look at where wind and solar projects are sited.

Late Friday afternoon the governor signed House Bill 1812, which makes changes to the state council that evaluates and makes recommendations on allowing new energy projects in the state.

He had requested the legislation but was unhappy with sections that Reps. Mary Dye, R-Pomeroy, and Mark Klicker, R-Walla Walla, had succeeded in adding to the bill after negotiations with Democrats.

Among issues was no funding provided by the Legislature for work required by vetoed sections of the bill and redundancy with work already being done, Inslee said in a letter explaining his veto.

Dye said she and Klicker wanted to ensure ”that rural communities would have the opportunity to see what’s at stake for the total build-out on the rural aesthetic, not just the visual impact of individual solar and wind farms that are sited here and there,” Dye said.

The vetoed sections of the bill called for a study of the costs and benefits of energy projects expected to be sited in rural communities over the next 30 years and a legislative task force to consider the study.

The vetoed sections also would have called for the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Energy Supply and Energy Conservation to review economic development assistance and payments for impacted views that counties not home to their fair share of alternative energy resources would have to pay to counties that have more than their share based on their population.

““The governor’s strategy amounts to a hasty build-out of clean energy to serve the Puget Sound without any burden of siting massive wind farms in the Puget Sound viewshed,” Dye said.

“Instead, these facilities will all be sited in our rural counties that have no need for the energy and are already served by clean, affordable hydroelectricity,” she said.

The vetoed concept of a study was similar to a bill proposed by Klicker.

House Bill 1871 would have established a legislative task force to look at the state’s process for approving wind and solar projects, including investigating possible solutions to the mismatch in where electricity is produced versus where it is used.

In the meantime any Washington state decisions to allow new wind and solar projects would have been delayed until Dec. 1, 2023.

The delay would have come as Scout Clean Energy of Colorado is proposing a wind farm close to the Tri-Cities with wind turbines that would stretch along 24 miles of the Horse Heaven Hills from south of Finley to south of Benton City.

EASTERN WASHINGTON IMPACTS

When that bill failed to be voted out of the House Committee on Environment and Energy, Klicker and Dye successfully negotiated with Democrats to get language into the bill that makes the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council an independent agency separate from the Utilities and Transportation Commission.

The council will make a recommendation on whether to allow the Horse Heaven Wind Farm to Inslee, who will make a final determination.

The governor’s veto of sections of the bill that did pass will have devastating consequences to the future landscape of Eastern Washington communities and farmlands, Dye and Klicker said.

“It opens the flood gates for big out-of-state energy corporations to swoop into these small, rural, economically disadvantaged communities and offer leases at a fraction of the value of the agricultural land to struggling farmers and landowners,” Dye said.

The benefits of clean energy projects, such as jobs and tax-base impacts, “have been more salesmanship than substance,” Klicker said after the governor’s veto Friday.

“We asked for a study to show the true costs and benefits, and the governor’s vetoes show we were right to be skeptical,” he said.

Wind and solar projects provide well-paid construction jobs as they are being developed, but not many long-term jobs, according to comments at public meetings.

GOV. JAY INSLEE RESPONDS

Inslee said during a bill-signing ceremony Friday that House Bill 1812 “makes our process for siting and permitting energy facilities more efficient, effective and transparent” to help build the clean energy future of Washington state.

In a Friday letter to the Washington House of Representatives, the governor said that the Legislature failed to provide funding for the requirement that the Washington state Department of Commerce conduct a study and talk with affected communities and groups.

But the Washington State University Energy Program already has launched a study and discussion process on how to site solar energy generation with the least conflicts, Inslee said.

There also is other work directed by the Legislature on how to effectively and responsibly site clean energy projects that includes discussions with those affected, he said. Those recommendations are due at the end of the year.

“There are significant economic development and job opportunities in clean energy in rural Washington and throughout the state,” Inslee said in the letter.

“On our shared path to clean energy and a safe climate, I am committed to learning from and having dialogue with rural communities across the state about clean energy, including project siting, and about how we can support vibrant rural communities as we transition to a clean energy economy,” he said.

But Dye said Inslee missed “a historic opportunity” to build consensus across the state on his clean energy strategy.

Inslee supports wind farms ahead of Horse Heaven decision

BY ANNETTE CARY, Tri-City Herald from 2/24/2022

Wind turbines make sense from a quality of life perspective, said Washington Gov. Jay Inslee during a news conference Tuesday in Richland.

He visited the Tri-Cities in part to learn more about clean energy research at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Washington State University Tri-Cities.

But he wrapped up his nearly daylong visit discussing the split in community opinion on the proposed Horse Heaven Wind Farm. Inslee is expected to have the final say on whether the wind farm is approved.

Wind farms have his support, he said.

Scout Clean Energy of Colorado is proposing a wind farm on a 112-square-mile clean energy production site, with wind turbines that would stretch along 24 miles of the Horse Heaven Hills from south of Finley to south of Benton City. The project also would include solar energy production and battery storage. The developed area of the project would cover about 10 square miles.

The most likely option being considered would include 244 turbines standing almost 500 feet tall, with a second proposed option including 150 turbines standing up to 670 feet. That’s more than 60 feet taller than the Seattle Space Needle.

The project would bring jobs — most of them in construction — and provide electricity from clean energy, although the electricity would most likely be used in Western Washington or possibly California.

But some Tri-Cities residents are reluctant to have more of the desert vista of the Tri-Cities covered with turbines. About 80% of comments at a Benton County town hall in Kennewick in March 2021 opposed the Horse Heaven Wind Farm.

Every energy source has some sort of impact and for wind, it is visual, Inslee said on Tuesday. And in Washington state, the Tri-Cities area is among those places with the “incredible resource” of windy weather for clean energy, he said. The visual impact is offset by not having children choking with asthma in the summer, he said. “For those who don’t want to breathe the smoke that we breathed the last few summers, wind energy is the way to reduce the threats of forest fires because it reduces carbon pollution, which can fight climate change, which is causing these forest fires,” he said.

In the past year 250,000 salmon died in the Columbia River because the water was too hot, he said. “So if you like to fish and you like to breathe and you like to have a few trees, wind turbines make sense,” he said.

They also create jobs. “People have good family wage jobs in this industry,” he said.

When he spots wind turbines, he sees a promise that Washington children will see forests that have not burned, rivers that don’t flood and salmon that have not been decimated by warm water or ocean acidification, he said.

An expanded environmental study of the Horse Heaven Wind Farm is expected to be released for public comment this spring. Then the Washington state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council is expected to make a recommendation on whether the project should be approved for a final decision, which will be made by the governor.

CLEAN ENERGY RESEARCH

Inslee discussed his support for wind turbines at Washington State University Tri-Cities in Richland after naming Birgitte Ahring, a professor at The Bioproducts, Sciences and Engineering Laboratory at WSU Tri-Cities, the Washingtonian of the Day for her leadership in clean energy biofuels research. Earlier in the afternoon he had visited the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for an update on its clean energy research.

“I had a supremely inspiring day listening to (information on) the clean energy economy growing in the Tri-Cities here at the WSU campus and at the lab,” he said.

The Tri-Cities is leading the world with PNNL’s research to develop batteries that will provide longer range for electric cars, Inslee said. At WSU Tri-Cities some of the most cutting edge biofuels research is being done, he said. The research at both institutions holds promise for the the development of new industries, he said. “There is some real gold here in these hills and it is in clean energy technology,” he said.

Benton County backs halt to wind, solar farm approval

BY ANNETTE CARY, Tri-City Herald from 1/28/2022

A Washington state bill that would temporarily stop state approval of wind and solar energy projects got the backing of Benton, Yakima and Klickitat county officials at a public hearing of a legislative committee this week. The hearing comes as an application for a huge wind farm along the top of the Horse Heaven Hills south of Kennewick is being considered by the state agency and several companies are interested in developing solar projects in Benton County, according to officials there.

One of the companies, Innergex Renewable Energy, has made public some limited information on its proposal for the new 400-megawatt project. It is in talks with landowners to develop a solar energy project in the Wautoma Valley west of the Hanford nuclear reservation in the northwest area of Benton County near Highway 241.

House Bill 1871 would delay any Washington state decisions to allow new wind and solar projects until Dec. 1, 2023.

Applications now may be made to the Washington state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC) or county governments for approval of significant solar and wind projects. But the Benton County Commission voted in December to protect farmland by restricting new wind and solar projects to industrial zones. Previously, they were allowed in agriculture and small rural acreage zones. The Washington state governor has the final say on approving wind and solar farms.

The proposed state legislation also would establish a legislative task force to look at the state’s process for approving wind and solar projects, including investigating possible solutions to the mismatch in where electricity is produced versus where it is used. Republican Rep. Mark Klicker, Walla Walla, who introduced the bill in the state Legislature, said state decisions are made to allow wind and solar projects in rural counties. But the demand for the clean electricity produced in those areas is in urban areas, like the Puget Sound, that produce almost no clean energy. The state review also needs to include a look at the local tax structure for commercial wind and solar projects, said officials testifying in support of the bill this week at a hearing of the Washington Legislature’s House Environment and Energy Committee.

TAX BENEFITS DISCUSSED

Clean energy projects are important for meeting the state’s climate change goals, said Josh Weiss, a lobbyist testifying on behalf of Benton County. But they “really are very controversial in their local communities and they really are a significant scale for what we are used to seeing and have a significant visual impact,” he said. It’s time to take a pause on the EFSEC process created half a century ago and evaluate how well it works to balance the needs of local residents and the state’s energy needs, he said.

A Tri-Cities Regional Chamber of Commerce survey in 2021 regarding the Horse Heaven Wind Farm received more than 2,000 responses in three days, said Stephanie Barnard, with the chamber. Scout Clean Energy of Colorado is proposing a wind farm on a 112-square-mile clean energy production site, with wind turbines that would stretch along 24 miles of the Horse Heaven Hills from south of Finley to south of Benton City. The project also would include solar energy production and battery storage. The developed area of the project would cover about 10 square miles. The most likely option it is considering would include 244 turbines standing almost 500 feet tall, with a second proposed option including 150 turbines standing up to 670 feet. That’s more than 60 feet taller than the Seattle Space Needle. Some 79% of those responding wanted greater local involvement in approval of such projects and 78% thought the Horse Heaven Wind Farm was not worth the personal, environmental and economic impacts it would have on the Tri-Cities. “Tri-Citians are becoming more frustrated and discouraged,” Barnard said. “They feel they have sacrificed so much already of our scenic hillsides, canyons and desert vistas.”

‘ENVIRONMENTAL BURDEN’

The views and sunsets are “a beautiful thing” the Tri-Cities can offer to wine tourists, she said. “There does need to be a look at the broader impact of communities carrying this environmental burden of multiple alternative energy projects,” she said.

Klickitat County, already home to large wind and solar projects, has found that clean energy projects are taxed on a heavy depreciation schedule that quickly decreases the tax benefits touted for local government, said Klickitat Commissioner Dan Christopher. “The tax base is incredibly unstable,” said Dave Barta, of the Yakima Klickitat Farm Bureau. “As Commissioner Christopher said, it taxes personal property at a declining rate and ensures schools and fire agencies will over time put more burden back on rural landowners to support levies as solar panels are depreciating.”

Yakima County Commissioner Amanda McKinney also spoke in favor of the bill, saying an assessment is needed of the impacts the current approval process is having on agricultural land. “Now is a perfect time to ask ourselves as citizens, land owners and legislators how to treat the land that feeds us,” Barta said.

HORSE HEAVEN WIND FARM

EFSEC has worked hard to develop a thorough and efficient process for siting energy projects, said Kathleen Drew chairman of the council. Most wind and solar projects are approved by local governments, but as controversies increase EFSEC may be asked to conduct more reviews, she said. EFSEC could release an expanded environmental study of the proposed Horse Heaven Wind Farm for public comment this spring, although no decision could be made until late 2023 under the proposed bill.

Bill could temporarily halt huge Tri-cities wind farm

BY ANNETTE CARY, Tri-City Herald from January 24, 2022

Washington state needs to look at the imbalance in where wind farms are based in the state and where the electricity is used, says a Walla Walla lawmaker.Republican Rep. Mark Klicker has introduced a bill in the Washington state Legislature that could delay state decisions on new or expanded alternative energy projects, including the proposed Horse Heaven Wind Farm by the Tri-Cities, while solutions to the perceived inequity are investigated. “Too many rural counties are being forced to house alternative energy facilities, but are seeing nothing in return,” Klicker said.

House Bill 1871 would delay any state decisions to allow new wind farms and other clean energy projects until Dec. 1, 2023. It also would establish a legislative task force to investigate possible solutions to the mismatch in production location versus electricity use. Now the state approval process considers each project in isolation rather than looking at cumulative impacts that can occur over decades, according to information from Klicker. “It’s time to revisit the process to determine where these sites are located and who is benefiting from them,” he said.

A public hearing with remote testimony before a legislative committee is set for Tuesday, Jan. 25, after it was postponed when a Friday hearing ran long. At the initial committee hearing on the bill Friday, Klicker noted that 80% of comments at a Benton County town hall in Kennewick in March 2021 opposed the Horse Heaven Wind Farm.

Scout Clean Energy of Colorado is proposing a wind farm on a 112-square-mile clean energy production site, with wind turbines that would stretch along 24 miles of the Horse Heaven Hills from south of Finley to south of Benton City.

The developed area of the project would cover about 10 square miles. The most likely option it is considering would include 244 turbines standing almost 500 feet tall, with a second proposed option including 150 turbines standing up to 670 feet. That’s more than 60 feet taller than the Seattle Space Needle. “Picture all of those in Elliott Bay in Seattle,” Klicker said at the Friday hearing.

Now an expanded environmental study of the Horse Heaven project is expected to be released for public comment this spring. Then the Washington state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council would make a recommendation on whether the project should be approved for a final decision that will be made by Gov. Jay Inslee.

WIND VS. NATURAL GAS IMPACTS

Now virtually no alternative clean energy projects, such as wind and solar, are located in the Puget Sound, Klicker said. But more than half of the state’s population lives there and has a huge appetite for clean energy, he said. “It’s about fairness,” he said. The inequity will get much worse as the state pursues an aggressive strategy of using clean energy, the bill said. Wind and solar projects impact communities differently than coal and natural gas plants, he said.

Thermal projects are built on 20 to 40 acres in industrial zones, while wind and solar may be built on farm land, impacting the views in scenic and natural areas that are important to residents there, he said.The Horse Heaven Wind Farm would use 1,500 times the land of a typical coal or natural gas plant, he said. “The viewshed, wildlife and land use patters in specific counties of the state are being permanently impacted to deliver carbon-free energy benefits to the most populous counties of the state,” says the proposed bill.

Scout Clean Energy had no comment on the proposed bill. But its website says that the first phase of construction of Horse Heaven Hills would have an estimated $70.6 million in economic output, including 458 jobs. In the first year of full operation of both phases, $11.4 million in school-related property taxes would be generated.

House Bill 1871 would require a comprehensive performance report on the effects of the 2006 Energy Independence Act. The act requires increased use of certain renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar. The study would look at the number of construction and long term jobs created in each county by the act, costs to electric utilities and impacts on tax revenue collections and the property tax base by county.

COMMENT ON THE BILL

Klicker is urging Tri-Cities area residents to provide written or remote comments at the hearing of the House Environment and Energy Committee on the bill at 8 a.m. Tuesday. Go to app.leg.wa.gov/csi/House for instructions on commenting at the meeting. Select “Environment and Energy Committee” with the meeting schedule of Jan. 25 8 a.m., and then select “HB 1871 Alt. energy facility siting.” Or go to app.leg.wa.gov/pbc/bill/1871 to provide a written comment directly to representatives in your legislative district. The hearing will be aired live at tvw.org.

Here’s The List Of 317 Wind Energy Rejections The Sierra Club Doesn’t Want You To See

By Robert Bryce, Fortune Magazine, September 26, 2021

A few weeks ago, I ran into a prominent employee of the Sierra Club who declared something to the effect of “we have to quit using coal, oil, and natural gas.” That, of course, is the official dogma of America’s “largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization.” The group says it is “committed to eliminating the use of fossil fuels, including coal, natural gas, and oil, as soon as possible. We must replace all fossil fuels with clean renewable energy, efficiency, and conservation.” 

This same Sierra Clubber also expressed dismay about the difficulty of siting big renewable-energy projects and how they are being hindered by “NIMBYism.” Upon hearing this, I quickly interjected that I loathe that term, which, of course, is short for “not in my backyard.” I explained that everyone, everywhere, cares about what happens in their neighborhood, even out there in “flyover country” – that is, the places that are far away from the comfy confines of places like San Francisco, Princeton, Stanford, and other locales where fantasies about an all-renewable economy seem to proliferate.

I went on to introduce myself and explained that I have been tracking the issue of land use and renewables for many years. I explained that rural residents are objecting to wind projects because they don’t want to see the red-blinking lights atop those 50- or 60-story-high wind turbines, all night, every night, for the rest of their lives. They are also concerned — and rightly so — about the deleterious health effects of noise from the turbines, sleep disturbance, and potential decrease in their property values. I followed up by emailing this person — at their Sierra Club email address — a link to my April report for the Center of the American Experiment, “Not In Our Backyard,” which documents the widespread opposition to Big Wind and Big Solar in rural America. I included a link to the Renewable Energy Rejection Database. That database, which I have been maintaining myself, now lists 317 local communities or government entities from Maine to Hawaii, that have rejected or restricted wind projects in the US since 2015. 

I didn’t get a reply. So I resent the email. Again, no reply. 

The Sierra Clubber’s silence speaks volumes. The San Francisco-based group doesn’t want you to know about the surging opposition to Big Wind — or the growing hostility to Big Solar — in places like Iowa, Virginia, Nevada, Montana, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. Why not? Because those myriad rejections and restrictions are proof that land-use conflicts are the binding constraint on the expansion of renewable energy development in the U.S. 

The Sierra Club is so eager to downplay the land-use issue that last week, it published an article in its flagship magazine, Sierra, with the headline “The NIMBY Threat to Renewable Energy.” The article focuses on Vermont, where Big Wind has been getting a hostile reception for years. In fact, last year, the state’s only pending wind project, which had just one wind turbine, was withdrawn after facing fierce opposition. The article doesn’t provide much historical context on Vermont. It ignores the 2015 vote in the town of Irasburg, where locals rejected, by a tally of 274-9, a proposed five-megawatt wind project that was to be built near their town. That same year, as I reported in the Wall Street Journal in an article published in 2016, residents in the town of Swanton rejected a seven-turbine wind project proposed to be built atop nearby Rocky Ridge. The tally: 731 votes against, 160 in favor.

None of that was in the Sierra article. Instead, the nut of the article said that while “some opposition to renewable energy projects is based on legitimate concerns…you can’t underestimate the power of people not wanting to look at something and having the means to make the problem go away.” Yes, that pesky problem of people not wanting to look at giant industrial energy facilities in their neighborhoods. How dare them. 

The Sierra Club doesn’t want you to know about the surging opposition to renewables because it decimates their claim that we can live without hydrocarbons and nuclear energy and instead run our economy solely on unicorn farts and fairy dust, oops, I mean solely on solar and wind energy. 

The graphic above shows the number of restrictions and rejections since 2015. Among this year’s rejections of Big Wind was the unanimous vote in June by the Shasta County Planning Commission to reject the proposed 216-megawatt Fountain Wind project, which aimed to put up to 71 turbines standing 679 feet high near the town of Burney.

Rather than report on the rejection in Shasta County, which sits about 250 miles north of San Francisco, Sierra magazine sent their writer all the way to Vermont. Call it NIMBY journalism. After all, why cover land-use conflicts in California when you can write about  Vermont’s “rolling hills, organic farms, roadside maple syrup stands, and white clapboard churches on quaint town squares”?

The Sierra Club doesn’t want you to know about the rejection of the Fountain Wind project in Shasta County because that project provides another example of one of Big Wind’s favorite tactics: put the turbines where rich people ain’t.

Wind projects are never going to be built in places like Marin, Malibu, or Montauk. Folks in those places can afford to hire powerful lawyers and lobbyists. Instead, Big Wind always aims their projects at low-income counties where the opponents don’t have as much money to fight back. That’s true of Shasta County. Of the 58 counties in California, Shasta County ranks 46th in median household income. According to the Census Bureau, the median household income in Shasta County is about $54,700. That’s far less than the California average of about $75,200. 

The Sierra Club doesn’t want you to know about the surge in land-use conflicts because those conflicts are occurring at the same time the Biden administration is pushing a multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure package that includes tens of billions of dollars in new subsidies for wind and solar energy as well as the construction of thousands of miles of high-voltage transmission lines to accommodate more renewables. 

The Sierra Club doesn’t want you to know about the surging opposition to renewables because if they acknowledge that land-use conflicts are already hindering or stopping the expansion of renewable projects, particularly in California, what do they have left to sell? The same Sierra Clubber told me the group is a “campaigning organization.” Thus, if America’s biggest environmental group were to acknowledge that their campaigns – against coal, nuclear, natural gas, and oil – were all based on an obese prevarication, it wouldn’t have anything to campaign about. 

The Sierra Club doesn’t want you to know that in New York, Big Wind is so unpopular — and so many towns and counties have defeated proposed wind projects — that under former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the state pushed through a regulation known as Section 94-c that gives Albany bureaucrats the authority to override the objections of local communities and issue permits for large renewable projects. In June, a group of local communities and environmental groups sued the state saying that the new regulation violates the home rule authority of towns and that the state was, in effect, colluding with Big Wind and Big Solar developers to ram through new renewable projects.

John Riggi, a town councilman in Yates, New York, one of the municipalities suing the state, told me a few months ago that Yates and others “are fighting to keep our lands free from environmentally destructive, culture killing and unwanted industrial renewable energy projects.”

The Sierra Club doesn’t want you to know that rural Americans and towns are fighting back because wind turbines create noise pollution. That pollution, which includes infrasound and low-frequency noise, can cause sleep disturbance in humans. For instance, in March the select board in Scituate, Massachusetts, ordered a wind turbine in the coastal town to be shut down at night from mid-May to mid-October. The problem, according to the Boston Globe: complaints from neighbors who say “they can’t sleep at night because of noise” the wind turbine makes.

In April, the planning board in Foster, Rhode Island, voted 5-1 to ban wind turbines in the town. The board took action after hearing from residents of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, who had turbines built near their homes. The Valley Breeze newspaper reported that Portsmouth residents warned the board “about their experiences, complaining about constant noise disturbances, vibrations, and loss in home values from turbines in their neighborhood.”

The Sierra Club doesn’t want you to know that the negative health effects related to noise pollution from wind turbines have been known for more than a decade and that back in 2009, the Minnesota Department of Health found that sleeplessness and headaches are the most common complaints about wind farms from nearby residents. The Sierra Club doesn’t want you to know about people like Julie Kuntz, a clinical pharmacist who farms in Worth County, Iowa, and has been fighting big renewable projects in her area for years. In April, in response to citizens’ concerns, the Worth County Board of Supervisors passed a temporary moratorium on new wind projects that expires in July 2022.

I met Kuntz last month in the town of Albert Lea, Minnesota, during an event sponsored by the Center of the American Experiment to discuss my “Not In Our Backyard” report. I talked to her again by phone this morning. “I’m a fifth-generation Iowa farm girl,” Kuntz told me. “My parents raised me on a century farm that’s three miles from where I live now. These are my people. This is my area. I’m going to fight to preserve it.”

The Sierra Club doesn’t want you to know that in the last three months alone, large solar projects in Pennsylvania, Montana, and Nevada have been rejected or withdrawn due to local opposition. In June, Mount Joy Township supervisors rejected a plan for a 1,000-acre solar project proposed by Florida-based NextEra Energy Resources NEE -1.1% that would have been Pennsylvania’s largest solar project. According to a local news report, it “faced a strong backlash from 168 property owners that border the project.” 

In July, a permit for a 1,600-acre solar project was denied by the Butte-Silver Bow Zoning Board by a vote of 5-0. According to the Montana Standard, the board members “cited the pure size of the array, saying it would undeniably change the landscape” of the local region and that “the public’s strong opposition carried weight.” Also in July, a proposed 850-megawatt project that aimed to cover 14 square miles of the desert north of Las Vegas with solar panels was pulled after drawing “opposition from naturalists and environmentalists, recreation enthusiasts, tribal groups, and local residents for its potential impact on the area.”

In Wisconsin, local residents in Dane County are fighting the proposed 300-megawatt Koshkonong Solar Center, which is being promoted by Chicago-based Invenergy, one of the world’s largest renewable-energy developers. In Virginia, a group called Citizens for Responsible Solar is fighting three large projects that aim to pave thousands of acres near the town of Culpeper with solar panels. 

I could list many more of the fights that are raging around the country to underscore the point that land-use conflicts are the limiting factor in the growth of renewables. I could also talk about the problem of solid waste disposal and the fact that some 720,000 tons of wind turbine blades are expected to end up in U.S. landfills over the next 20 years. 

But I’ll end with one more example of the scale problem with renewables, this one from California. In March, the California Energy Commission issued a report on “how the state’s electricity system can become carbon free by 2045.” Achieving that goal, according to the report, will require adding new renewable capacity “at a record-breaking rate for the next 25 years. On average, the state may need to build up to 6 gigawatts of new renewable and storage resources annually. By comparison over the last decade, the state has built on average 1 GW of utility solar and 300 megawatts of wind per year.”

Given the rejection of the wind project in Shasta County in June and the fact that California has about the same amount of wind-energy capacity today (about 6,000 megawatts) as it did in 2013, the commission’s scenarios about six-fold increases in annual deployment of renewable capacity are nothing more than wishful thinking.

But then, the Sierra Club doesn’t want you to know about that, either.

Oregon Farmers Allege Violations at Wind Turbine

By Matheusz Perkowski, Capital Press

September 9, 2021

Several farmers have complained to Oregon energy regulators that wind turbine construction in Sherman County has caused severe erosion and other problems.

A letter from 11 farmers to the state’s Energy Facility Siting Council alleges that developer Avangrid Renewables has failed to comply with requirements for building the Golden Hills Wind Project, which will include up to 51 turbines on 29,500 acres. “We’ve lost more soil in the last two months than we have in 30 years,” said David Pinkerton, a wheat farmer who leases property to the developer. “They’re not doing what they said they were going to do.”

The wind project was initially approved by EFSC in 2009 but construction only began this year after repeated amendments to the development plan.

According to the letter from farmers, the project is damaging more farmland than envisioned, with soil disturbances around each tower site ranging from about 10 to 15 acres, rather than 3 acres. “It’s killing so much more farmland than I thought they would,” Pinkerton said. The farmers also claimed that construction proceeded at “full speed regardless of weather conditions,” which has caused soil loss when wind gusts topped 40 mph.

“To this point, no topsoil has been protected with either tarps or mulch, leaving it exposed to wind erosion,” the letter said.

Due to the design and layout of the facility, some land will no longer be fit for cultivation because the parcels will be too small to accommodate machinery or to farm efficiently, the letter said. Roads between the tower sites have been awkwardly laid out so that narrow strips of land are left at the property edge, Pinkerton said. “You can’t farm what’s left in between,” he said. “It’s absolutely brutal.” Soil compaction from cranes weighing more than 2 million pounds will also adversely affect farm productivity, the letter said.

“In conclusion, we believe that the Golden Hills Project is out of compliance on many levels and has made no attempts to minimize and mitigate the damages to surrounding farmland acreage,” the letter said. Pinkerton said he regrets signing a lease to construct turbines on his property more than two decades ago, though he remains hopeful the developer will find a way to rectify the situation.

“The income from windmills is peanuts compared to farming” with the strong current wheat prices, he said.

The state’s Department of Energy has conducted a site visit and is reviewing submitted documents to determine if the developer violated any conditions of approval, the agency said.

Capital Press was unable to contact the project’s manager or a representative of Avangrid Renewables for comment.

In a response to the complaint sent to EFSC, the developer said it takes complaints seriously and wants to “set high standards during construction.” The company has reorganized construction activities to limit new ground disturbances, stabilized piles of soil, increased the amount of water used for dust control, and reduced dust by applying gravel to new roads, the response letter said.

Straw mulch and plastic sheeting aren’t effective for soil stabilization at the site because they’re blown away by the wind, while chemical agents can’t be used on farmland, the company said. For that reason, it’s relying on watering and maintaining low slope angles.

The developer said it’s designed the facility to “minimize impacts on dryland wheat farming” and will be implementing mitigation measures such as restoring drainage contours, the response letter said. All the turbine locations, access corridors and the “limits of disturbance associated with construction activity” were “vetted and approved” according to EFSC’s rules, the company said.

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Washington State’s Approaching Energy Crisis – Good Intentions Gone Wrong?

By Jim Conca, Forbes Magazine

Washington State has trouble on the horizon – trouble with its electrical grid. Trouble as in not being reliable. Trouble as in risk of rolling blackouts.

The trouble stems from attempts to decarbonize our society. Getting rid of coal, oiland gas in generating electricity is the low-hanging fruit, but just getting rid of them without a realistic plan to replace them can do more harm than good.

Seeing this trouble in Washington State, however, is scary. Besides usually having the lowest cost of electricity in the country, we have never had a big problem with reliability. Washington is one of the most decarbonized states in the union with utilities getting more than two-thirds of their electricity from hydro 8% about 5% from nuclear, 4% from wind, 11% gas and 10% coal, with the latter from a single in-state coal plant as well as imports from neighboring states.

The Washington State Legislature passed the Clean Energy Transformation Act (CETA) in 2019 which requires that all utilities eliminate coal by 2025 and provide carbon neutral electricity by 2030. Many stakeholders, utility officials and industry leaders warned that losing baseload sources like coal would increase the probability of brownouts and blackouts if demand increased, a likely occurrence in the next ten years.

“In our kind of zeal to remove CO2 emissions and aim for this 100% clean energy, we’re creating a reliability crisis, potentially,” Benton County PUD General Manager Rick Dunn told the Lens News. “We need to get more serious about securing our future supply of electricity.”

Dunn warns that Washington faces a large gap between grid demand on the coldest and hottest days and the availability of dependable electrical generation over the next decade. After nearly two decades of relatively flat growth, both annual and peak electricity loads are forecasted to increase in the region by 5 or 6%, even after accounting for increased energy efficiency.

A similar warning came from the Northwest Power Pool. They conducted a studywhich showed that the situation could bring an end to a period of stability dating back to the end of the ENRON-precipitated Western energy crisis of 2000. 

The Northwest Power Pool considers an outage risk of <5% to be safe, but the study warns that the state faces a 26% probability of an outage from insufficient generation to meet an increased load. That increased load-to-generation ratio will come from the loss of remaining coal plants, an increase in electric vehicle use and a slow increase in population.

On top of this, there is a serious push to decommission four hydroelectric dams on the lower Snake River, which would put further strain on the grid by removing over 8 billion kWh/year of reliable green energy, requiring over seven thousand MW of new wind turbines, as many as presently exist in the entire State, or two new gas plants, or one new pack of small modular nuclear reactors.

CETA requires utilities to gradually shift toward clean energy sources such as wind. However, these lack both the reliability and predictability of fossil-fuel resources such as coal and natural gas and require back-up sources for when they fail to generate. Gas and hydro presently provide that backup in the Pacific Northwest, while gas provides it almost everywhere else in America. It’s not that CETA prohibits the use of natural gas, but it does discourage it.  

On an annual basis, wind power plants generally generate energy equivalent to about 25 to 30% of what they would if the wind blew constantly and the generators were producing at their maximum nameplate rating. 

By comparison, our nuclear plant generates well over 90% of its maximum nameplate rating year after year.

But it’s even worse. According to the most recent E3 Northwest Resource Adequacy study, the effective capacity contribution of Washington’s 7,100 MW of wind power that was in place in 2018 in the Pacific Northwest was determined to be only 7% of its nameplate capacity, that is, only 500 MW of wind power, out of 7,100 MW, can be expected to show up on the coldest days in the region. 

This incredibly low contribution of wind was confirmed in a winter power market price excursion that happened in February/March 2019. Compared to the 100% for nuclear, gas and coal, wind cannot be relied upon in the cold of winter or the heat of summer.

According to E3, retiring 3,000 MW of coal will require 8,000 MW of new firm capacity by 2030 to maintain reliability. Building more wind turbines just won’t do it.

As Dunn quips, praying for mild weather and abundant snow and rain for hydro isn’t an adequate plan when it comes to keeping the lights on.

We use to plan pretty well in the past for future energy crises when all we had to do was be sure we had enough energy at a reasonable price. We weren’t hamstrung by the push to decarbonize. It is not enough to just put up wind and solar without planning for the infrastructure needed to efficiently employ them, or without the hydro and small modular nuclear plants that should be backing them up instead of gas or the dream of sufficient batteries that is decades away.

Dunn sees natural gas and small modular reactors as important energy sources as the state transitions away from coal, but the state Department of Commerce’s Energy Strategy envisions a ramp-up in wind. In one scenario, electricity demand grows 90% from 2020 to 2050. 

While today the state exports electricity, that scenario also anticipates Washington will become a net importer by 2050, in which 43% of its electricity will come from multiple states such as Montana and Wyoming. But all of the strategy’s decarbonization scenarios expect wind to eventually become the dominant energy source in the Western United States, an absurd endpoint that just invites rolling blackouts and grid failure. 

If the wind isn’t blowing in much of the west, then where would the energy come from?

Dunn is skeptical of such a wind-future. As is anyone familiar with wind at high penetration values, i.e., a high percentage of electricity coming from a particular source. The problem is wind power can displace some of the energy produced by fossil fuels but it cannot provide the dependable capacity needed to keep the grid reliable over a wide range of conditions. 

And when you consider the abundant but highly variable clean hydro in the Pacific Northwest and how drought conditions are the predominant driver of blackout risk, it makes little sense to shut down reliable fossil-fuel while deepening the dependence on another highly variable resource like wind power.

This is evident in Benton County where a proposed wind farm project of 244 super-large wind turbines on the ridgeline of Horse Heaven Hills would do little to help the state keep the grid reliable. It has also drawn protests from the local community where hydro and nuclear power dominate its over 90% clean power supply portfolio.

At the same time, the use of out-of-state wind energy would require new transmission lines built across Washington and through mountainous terrain and vast natural landscapes, something that continues to be shot down by the public every time it’s proposed.

The other issue is that clean energy debates are so politicized. “When we bring up the issue of reliability…sometimes (people) interpret that as we’re against environmental issues,” said Dunn. “That is just so not the case, but sometimes they interpret it like that. What we try to do is connect the dots between decarbonization, environmental compliance, renewable energy, and grid reliability so we can have affordable, reliable, and environmentally sustainable generation. Sometimes that gets lost in the message.”

If this kind of problem can happen in Washington State with one of the lowest carbon footprints of any state and one of the most aggressive decarbonization plans in the world, then other states had better beware.

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Historic Heat Wave

The Northwest and the Tri-Cities had a historic heat wave during the last week of June 2021 with temperatures reaching 118 F in Richland on June 29. There was a danger of rolling power outages due to limited electrical supply. This graph from the Bonneville Power administration is a reminder who keeps the power “on” in the summer and winter when there is maximum demand:

It shows that wind farms (green line) produced close to zero electricity at noon during that week when the demand was highest; it was hydro and nuclear energy that kept the air conditioners going. This confirms the E3 study quoted by Dr. Jim Conca, that the effective power produced by all the wind farms in our region is about 7 % during maximum demand in the summer and winter months! Read the E3 study at :

https://www.ethree.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/E3_Resource_Adequacy_in_the_Pacific-Northwest_March_2019.pdf

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