Residents speak up at city council meeting, opposing wind turbines

Citizens in the Milton-Freewater area took another opportunity to voice their opposition to wind turbines in the Blue Mountains at a city council meeting Monday night.

What started as an informational meeting by Horizon Wind Farms representative Valerie Schafer-Franklin turned into a discussion between citizens both on and off Weston Mountain about what they want to see happen, or not happen, in the Blues.

'We're just testing the wind'

To begin with, Schafer-Franklin took a first step on the part of wind companies to try to discuss the sensitive topic with residents. Schafer-Franklin said her company was still in the first stages of wind farm production.

"We're just testing the wind," she said.

The company hasn't drawn up any plans on where it will place towers. It hasn't conducted any wildlife or archeological studies. It hasn't moved for any sort of permitting process with the county or state. It has set up two 50-foot-tall meteorological towers on Lincton and Weston mountains.

"We've got a long way to go before we know if it's windy," she said.

Schafer-Franklin said the company is considering a facility in the region on Weston, Lincton and Basket Mountains. She said the company was considering a project with a maximum capacity of 300 megawatts - which may mean about 150 turbines on the three ridges. At one point she said the turbines would not go above the tree line, but another time she said they would sit on top of the ridges.

Schafer-Franklin's attempt to answer some questions she'd seen arise at past meetings, including viewshed and taxes.

In looking at viewshed, Schafer-Franklin said Horizon tries to create uniformity in the turbines to make them more pleasing to the eye. They also try to have the turbines follow the existing landscape and paint them white for an architectural appeal. Painting them white also reduces lighting requirements from the FAA, she said.

Schafer-Franklin also referenced studies from real estate companies saying real estate values in some places with windmills hadn't gone down. On the subject of taxes, she said the wind farm may absorb a chunk of county taxes, lowering the general rate for everyone else.

She also said regulations prevented power companies from raising the rate more than 4 percent.

The view is more important

"I think we have a big problem," said resident Arla Ruthven. "We've only had a couple weeks, just a couple weeks - some of you have known longer, because they've come to you, but we haven't."

She suggested having the city or the citizens put up money to look into wind and educate people on what's out there and what the costs may be. She wanted to be able to take a year to really look at the problem and try to find a solution.

"We need to talk this over as a committee because thousands of people are gonna lose on this," she said. "It's going to be a few that benefits, but thousands of others are going to lose."

Susan Turbyne Davis showed the people a photo of the view from her home, a view of long fields with the blue mountains in the background, complete with a rainbow sitting in the sky.

"This is my view," she said, "this is my view from my front porch and it is beautiful. ... This one of the reasons why my parents bought this property. This is where I watch the sun come up - occasionally - this is where I watch the moon come up, this is where I watch the storms, the lightning storms. And I don't want little white towers up here," she said pointing to the mountains on the photo. "If they start here, how far are they going to go?"

'This is gonna split this valley'

"To me this sounds more like these people have got something to hide and I don't like that," said Jim Burns, who lives on Weston Mountain but said he wasn't one who is dealing with wind farms. "There's a greater value in where we live and how we live."

He said he could see how this may fracture the community, putting people for or against wind farms.

"This is gonna split this valley," he said. "And when it's split, it's never gonna be the same again. Friends and family are gonna be split and it's gonna be a whole different thing. We've lived in harmony in this valley - I've been in this valley for 20 years and I love this place. I love them mountains. I live up in those mountains. I really don't want to see those towers."

He said he hoped enough people want to continue to live in harmony in the area and will therefore not put up the towers.

Generation gap

One land owner who has signed with the Horizon, JoLynn Buel, took the lectern to defend the wind company. She asked those in the room to look to younger generations for advice on what to do.

"I love the mountains. We moved there to have the solitude and this is a very peaceful thing to me. It's a good way toward clean energy," Buel said. "We're all of an older generation. The younger generation that's coming up, they have been educated to green power, to wind energy and getting away from fossil fuels and all of those things. They do not see these the way we necessarily see them. I urge you to think about the future generations in terms of what they want to see."

The city's role

Council members Ed Chesnut and Keith Woods emphasized this was an informational meeting, but that any action or rule-making would fall on the county, not the city.

"What we're talking about are energy facilities on land outside the city limits and outside the urban growth boundary," Chesnut said. "We, in fact, have no jurisdiction."