Gov. Inslee approves massive WA wind farm after years of contention

After years of negotiations, controversy, legal posturing and planning, a massive wind farm proposed for South Central Washington can finally move ahead.

Gov. Jay Inslee approved the latest — and final — proposal for the Horse Heaven Hills wind farm, state officials announced Friday. 

Now, Inslee said, time is of the essence and state officials must work quickly to increase the state’s renewable energy portfolio.

Colorado developer Scout Clean Energy first proposed the $1.7 billion project near the Tri-Cities in 2021 and immediately the project encountered pushback from local governments, the Yakama Nation, wealthy retirees and environmental advocates. The project first envisioned up to 222 wind turbines across 24 miles of hillsides near the area, plus three solar arrays covering up to 5,447 acres.

In the years since, the project has been in the hands of Washington’s seven-person Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, a permitting clearinghouse for large projects like this. The group considered whether to grant the wind farm a favorable recommendation to Inslee while the developer argued with opponents of the work.

In April, the council recommended slashing the project in half as a way of protecting the little-known and endangered ferruginous hawk, which has been known to nest in the area. The group required a 2-mile buffer around each nest. Most, or all, of those sites were empty, though the hawks have been known to return to their nests years after the fact. 

Fewer turbines would mean less progress toward the state’s renewable energy goals, Inslee argued. And already Washington is scrambling to find new sources of electricity. He rejected the council’s recommendation in May, asking it to find a way to allow more turbines in the area.

While the council held on to that 2-mile buffer, its compromise was to create an option that would rely on a different group — the Pre-Operational Technical Advisory Group — to examine nests on a case-by-case basis and recommend back to the council whether to reduce the setback to 1 kilometer.

This option, which Inslee formally approved on Oct. 18, would theoretically allow Scout to build all but perhaps 30 of the turbines it originally proposed, should the developer move forward.

Inslee urged the council and the technical advisory group to work quickly to allow as many turbines as possible, and quickly. If their work greenlighting turbines with reduced setbacks takes years, Washington will not meet its “urgent clean energy needs,” Inslee said. 

“Timely and efficient action by the Council is essential to our mission to mitigate the impacts of climate change and provide adequate green energy alternatives,” Inslee said in his letter to the group.