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?

Although AWB strongly supports all forms of renewable energy, we opposed the initiative because of its mandatory nature and because it will increase energy costs. The initiative does not count hydropower as renewable energy, despite the fact that hydropower is Washington's biggest source of renewable energy and produces no greenhouse gases. As a result, in order to meet the 15-percent threshold mandated by I-937, utilities in our state will be forced to sell our cheaper hydropower energy to California in exchange for more costly wind, solar and biomass energy.

As for a suggested inconsistency by our locally elected permitting authority, Mr. Killian might care to read the public record on the Vantage Wind Project and see that any resident who may have had a concern about setbacks was satisfied with the project as designed. Our commissioners have been very consistent throughout the last six years of wind project permitting process. If concerns and/or objections were raised by the public, mitigations were explored - publicly. To date, the commissioners' only "hard" setback requirement was what is considered the "safety setback" that is determined by the turbine manufacturer. In the Kittitas Valley Wind Power project and the Desert Claim Wind Power Project, the overwhelming response by residents that would be affected was that they wanted greater setbacks due to impacts documented in the record. And in fact, most residents wanted 1 mile setbacks like most of Europe specifies; but the commissioners only suggested 2,500 feet. And even then, the commissioners stated that exceptions would be entertained.

It would be a lot easier to choose up sides in the Columbia Gorge wind farm disputes if the capitalists wanted to dig open pit mines or put up oil derricks and extract resources from the land and then truck or pipe them away for decades to come, risking erosion, spills or explosions. If that were the case, it would be easier to spew venom and spread fear about money-grubbing, land-raping operations planned along the border of the nation's first national scenic area. ...[T]he scenic area was created almost 22 years ago, and by now its protection ought to be a sacred duty and universal desire. We should be beyond the point of nibbling around the edges of the law and violating its spirit. Erecting giant towers, seven of which would be partly visible from parts of the gorge floor, seems a violation of that spirit.

A good place to start is with the passage of I-937. ...So, Mr. Pratt, don't bother asking PSE why your rates are so high, but instead ask your state legislators and Gov. Gregoire why they are so high. Answers you will not receive are that there is a lack of competition for commercial electrical power generation and that government has created and micro-manages artificial, mandated energy markets.

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.

As the economy expands and the population grows, so does the demand for power. Even a cursory review of available options shows how few real choices we all have. For example, all our major hydropower sites are built, coal power is environmentally unacceptable (by Energy Northwest and many others), new nuclear in the region is still 20 years away, wind power is intermittent and expensive, solar power lacks output, tidal and wave power are undeveloped and environmentally suspect, and natural gas supplies are dangerously close to shortages. Any claims that the region can meet its future power needs with wind power and conservation alone are woefully misguided and overstated. As wind power developers we have first-hand knowledge of wind powers benefits and limitations. Shunning promising technologies like Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle without understanding them is the first step toward blackouts, sky high prices, and power-shortage panic like we saw in 2000-2001.

Eight years ago, when my wife and I bought a 28-acre farm on the serene and beautiful Tucannon River near Dayton, we had no idea we were in the crosshairs of wind tower developers. Later, despite being told we would not see the towers, we now look out our dining room window at 43 wind turbines. About 14 miles northeast of Dayton, where Highway 12 crosses the Tucannon River, you start to see the desecration that the wind projects have wrought.

Asked this week about this summer's decision to preempt Kittitas County's rejection of the controversial Kittitas Valley Wind Power Project Washington Public Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland said it was an easy call. ...In recommending preemption of the Kittitas County decision in August, the siting council opined that proponents of the KV wind project had met most local land use requirements before county commissioners rejected it. Sutherland said the message constituents were sending to commissioners at the time was "if they wanted to continue in office politically, you're not going to allow these instruments. From the county's position, it was a political decision."

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.

When Kittitas County approved the Wildhorse wind farm, Gregoire said the project would be the model for future projects because they have local government and citizen approval. She apparently changed models and lied to her constituents. Her decision places all counties' ability to make land-use decisions at risk. It reeks of totalitarianism, doesn't 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.

Wild Horse was built in an appropriate location; an action which proves good faith and careful decision making on the part of our elected officials. Two unanimous decisions have been made by our commissioners to prevent wind installations in populated and economically viable regions of the western valley. The governor's action is unacceptable to those of us who own property, pay taxes, and participate in the local economy and county government. ...EFSEC will become the go-to bunch for every greedy energy company in the world. The citizen conduit to county authority will have been rendered useless by the emasculation of local leaders.

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.