Wind turbines are the latest popular "answer" to our country's energy problems with talk of three-bladed monsters covering vast areas from Texas northward. T. Boone Pickens is spending millions to promote his vision of generating 20 percent of our energy from wind power (although he refuses to install any of the turbines on his own 120,000 acre ranch). ...The variability of wind power makes it very difficult for power companies to integrate wind power into their grid and still maintain the stable power supply required to avoid user-operating problems. This is a particularly severe problem if wind power is a large portion of the total power output.

EnXco, one of two unscrupulous commercial wind power developers who are attempting to despoil the west end of the Kittitas Valley, is back in the county. They recently placed a full-page ad in the 4th of July Daily Record supplement implying they were a member of the community and positioning themselves as "one of America's premier wind energy companies." ...To set the record straight, a member of the community does not circumvent local land-use authority for the permitting of wind energy projects by asking unelected state EFSEC bureaucrats to pre-empt our elected commissioners' decision to reject their project as originally designed. A member of the community does not knowingly impact his neighbors under the guise of "helping" the larger community when in fact the real purpose is to further their own profits.

A company called Evergreen Wind Power Partners LLC expects to negotiate a lease of 5,400 acres in the hills of east central Clark County from the Washington Department of Natural Resources. As reported in The Columbian Thursday by Erik Robinson, Evergreen would build as many as 39 wind towers in the Yacolt Burn State Forest east of Hockinson and just west of the Larch Corrections Center. At full output, they could supply about 10 percent of the county's electricity needs. The company, which is a subsidiary of enXco energy company of Escondido, Calif., is hard to track down. Robinson had no luck Wednesday reaching anyone from Evergreen or enXco who would talk about the proposed project. ...we won't get too excited until more is known about the company and its record, the environmental and visual impact of this envisioned wind farm, and plans for getting the power out of the hills.

The citizens of Washington recently passed I-937 which requires the use of narrowly defined renewable energy sources by utilities serving over 25,000 customers. PSE is required to build generating resources to meet this requirement. Never mind that the legislation effectively creates a government-mandated market for basically only one renewable energy source (commercial wind power); we should all be happy that Washington is a "leader in becoming energy independent" and we are also solving the world-wide problem of climate change. To accomplish this goal requires large amounts of capital - in fact, PSE needs to spend $5.7 billion on infrastructure in the next five years - more than the company was worth last October! But wait a minute, haven't we been told wind power is the cheapest, most cost competitive energy source available today?

So, now we have this local mess with the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEG), and the surfacing of internal correspondence, which apparently demonstrates a blatant disregard for the sanctity of the public process in the ongoing issue of wind farm siting in Kittitas County. The process appears to have been nothing better than a staged play that has had a good run over the past three years. A script where the final scene was determined well before opening night... well before all the hundreds of hours of time spent by numerous local citizens researching and expressing their opinions on the issue of wind farms.

Prior to each public hearing on the wind farm siting issue, Horizon called the faithful to meeting with the promise of a catered dinner and presented their latest case and position. The congregants were then force fed a bit of courage and urged to give verbal testimony in support of the Horizon efforts to gain approval for their Kittitas Valley Wind Power Project along Highway 97. Bringing to mind the ceremonial sake and scarf presented to kamikaze pilots before flight, all participants were fitted with windmill stickers and spooled up to advocate for the project. ...It is beginning to appear that someone at Horizon may be guilty of over serving the Kool Aid. A petition was just filed demanding the recall of all three county commissioners in part stating that they are guilty of malice, malfeasance, and violation of their oaths of office. This is entertainment at its best. Blind advocacy can quickly degenerate into narcissistic buffoonery ...

GOV. Christine Gregoire just allowed an unelected commission known as the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC) to preempt a local land-use decision by the Kittitas County Board of Commissioners. The issue of siting huge wind-turbine installations has been a bit under the radar screen in Western Washington, but the governor's action should raise alarms all over the state. ...No matter which side of the wind-farm issue people may be on, the precedent-setting actions of EFSEC and Gregoire should be anathema. The issue is as much about state authority (or the lack thereof) over county governments as it is about siting some misbegotten wind turbines.

The EFSEC hearings were a rubber stamp process because to my knowledge none of the EFSEC members other than the presiding officer asked any questions in the hearings. ...I feel a more important issue was that the EFSEC process violated the Washington State Growth Management Act which has local government settling growth issues. The state should stay out of it.

We suspect that wind power projects in more sparsely populated Eastern Washington will generally have decidedly more chance of approval by politicians because there are fewer voters affected. And that folks in the Seattle area, for example, will always prefer benefiting from wind turbines that are located in the hinterlands so their aesthetic sensibilities aren't offended.

No one expects big infrastructure projects to drop in smoothly. From runways to sewer plants, these things often have negative spillover effects - traffic, noise or appearance. No one wants them. And while the nuisances may not be trivial, neither should they be determinative. While the downside impacts tend to be extremely local, the benefits generally extend well beyond the region. Politically, that creates a difficult dynamic. Local politicians have little to gain by supporting projects opposed by their constituents. And the diffuse benefit rarely translates to the kind of political pressure generated by those who are affected adversely.

This whole EFSEC process has only shown how totally corrupted the siting of energy facilities has become in Washington state. If Gov. Gregoire wants to really show that "local sentiment about this project is just as important to her as it was for the Wild Horse Project," then a good first step would be to deny the KVWPP as designed and then appoint a new EFSEC chairperson that will not accept the role of mouthpiece for any special interest business group that may want to make an obscene amount of money on the backs of non-participating land owners. If this project is the precedent for siting renewable energy projects in the future, no one will win. Litigation will become the norm and commercial wind power will become even more economically unviable - if that is even possible.

Economic viability is not a criterion for determining setbacks in siting an energy facility. Setbacks should address only identified public health, safety and individual property rights impacts. The setbacks are inadequate as currently designed. The project is being proposed in the wrong location.

The guest column is her attempt to gain support from Seattle voters to support a project that has been rejected by the Kittitas County Planning Commission, the Kittitas County Board of County Commissioners and now by the governor. For Patton to co-write the column with Helen Wise, a local resident and homeowner who has no dog in this hunt, is just another attempt for her "coalition" to force its agenda on the landowners who will have to live with it in Eastern Washington. It is a cheap shot for those who do not know the real issue.It is not about wind power, but where it is to be located. Imagine a string of 410-foot turbines along Rattlesnake Ridge to Issaquah.

Environmental lobbyists are more powerful than they've ever been, financed now not only with tax-deductible contributions from the public, and "reconveyance fees" assessed on every home sale (a growing phenomenon - watch out), but also today with "carbon offset" funds. Returning to the Kittitas Valley in Washington state, these wealthy environmentalists, backed by wind energy corporations who are thrilled to milk the anti-CO2 hysteria for all it's worth, are cramming this massive wind installation down the throats of the local residents.

Setback requirements are a protection of the public health, safety and individual property rights - not a yardstick of a project's economic success. The people who have the most experience with commercial wind power today are the Europeans. They are saying that a minimum of one mile from residences and any turbine should be imposed to protect the public. But the bigger issue here is that our locally elected officials denied the project as designed and the governor believes she should override local land use authority based on how much more money Horizon can make.

Northwest ratepayers got a boost recently when Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., convinced the House Natural Resources Committee to agree that hydropower is a renewable energy resource. It was an important vote for ratepayers in general and for the many interests dependent upon the four Lower Snake River dams in particular. Some environmental groups are passionately in favor of breaching those dams. It will be more difficult when they - and perhaps the federal courts - have to factor in that dams are even "greener" than windmills and solar panels. "Hydropower is a clean, reliable and affordable renewable energy source that serves as a key component in our national environmental and energy policy objectives," McMorris Rodgers said. "It's about time Congress recognized that hydropower is renewable and emissions-free."

I encourage the governor to just say "no" to this steamrolling of our duly elected county officials and let all who would have business in this state and county abide by the democratic process. If those that want winds farms in this area don't like the ruling of the county commissions, throw them out of office through the democratic process. Don't be a party to perpetrating this dangerous precedent upon the citizens of this state by nullifying our most sacred treasure: our right to vote and to have our vote count.

So you take a technology (commercial wind power generation) that generates electricity intermittently/inefficiently, and cannot be stored for use when needed. Next you force consumers to buy it (with the assistance of their tax dollars). Because there is still not enough money there to make it economically viable, due to added grid integration costs, you raise consumer power rates. AND then, after creating this mandated over-priced market for your product, you inform everyone of the need to spend billions of dollars more to transport the product to the consumers. Yeah, I would buy some lobbyists too. The final insult... ...is that the product being force-fed to everyone will not reduce green house gas emissions or reduce dependence on foreign oil. In fact, in some places this has been tried, it has increased it.

Dying is easy, they say in show business. Comedy is hard. Try reconfiguring an electricity generation and transmission system based largely on hydropower so as to accommodate wind power. Now that's hard.

If voters approve Initiative 937 in November, your utility bills will go up. That's enough reason to vote "no" on I-937, but the mandates in the initiative also are unnecessary for Washingtonians to enjoy clean, renewable energy. Here's why.