CEC staff recommends denial of Fountain Wind as locals voice objections

A wind energy project proposed for northern California faces stiff local opposition, but the project developer and wind energy advocates haven’t given up despite a recommendation from staff at the California Energy Commission to deny its approval.

Areas that CEC staff cited in its recommendation against approving the application for the Fountain Wind Project include wildfire threat, land-use and forest-management issues, and “significant and unavoidable impacts” to biological, visual and tribal cultural resources, according to the staff assessment [23-OPT-01].

Fountain Wind is being developed by Repsol Renewables and would be built on 2,855 acres in an unincorporated area of Shasta County. It would have a total nameplate generating capacity of up to 205 MW, with 48 wind turbine generators that each would be about 610 feet tall. Associated infrastructure would include a 34.5-kV overhead and underground electrical collector system, an on-site substation, overhead and underground fiber-optic communication lines and/or a microwave relay system, up to three permanent meteorological evaluation towers, and an on-site switching station to connect the project to Pacific Gas & Electric’s existing operational grid.

A temporary 10-acre equipment laydown area would be needed during construction, as well as up to nine temporary 2-acre laydown areas for materials storage, two storage sheds, and other temporary installations.

The project’s proposed location in northeastern Shasta County would also necessitate clearing of more than 500 acres of permanent forest and conversion of forested working lands.

At a CEC public meeting on May 20, Henry Woltag, director of Western development for Repsol Renewables, said Fountain Wind is an “effectively shovel-ready project and has been so for the last four years.”

To meet greenhouse gas emissions-reduction goals, Woltag said the state would need 60 wind projects of the same size, “and there are practically zero waiting in the pipeline in California.”

“A conclusion that this project does not meet the public convenience and necessity [requirements] is not only prima facia false, but such a conclusion will all but ensure no future wind projects materialize to meet this urgent need,” he said (see related story).

In addition to providing clean energy, Woltag said the project has other benefits including more than $50 million in property taxes “to Shasta County over the life of the project,” $2 million in “binding community benefits agreements,” and $175,000 for construction-trade education and “200 well-paying local union jobs during peak construction.”

Annie Mudge, a land-use lawyer with Cox, Castle & Nicholson, said every project has “some form of environmental footprint, and “this project has fewer” impacts than most, “but you wouldn’t know that from the staff assessment.”

She said she found the staff report to be “exaggerated, speculative and not based on good data,” and that it ignores the success of the nearby Hatchet Ridge Wind Farm and “hundreds” of other wind projects built in forested landscapes in the United States and Canada.

“With respect, we strongly disagree that the environmental impacts of this project cannot be mitigated,” Mudge said.

The project received more than 700 comments prior to the meeting, where about 40 people spoke, Kaycee Chang, supervisor of California Environmental Quality Act project management for the CEC, said. Most of the speakers at the meeting opposed the project.

The staff assessment says the turbines will cause mortality of birds, bats and Monarch butterflies as well as loss of habitat and biodiversity.

Brett Fooks, manager of the CEC’s safety and reliability branch, said the project’s proposed location is within a very high fire hazard zone, and the height of the turbines and the surrounding timber would prevent aerial assets from dropping retardant on a wildfire.

Shane Lauderdale, a former firefighter and the founder and CEO of Pyroanalysis, a fire and emergency-management consulting business, said he disagreed with the assessment’s findings.

The report was based on the use of only one type of aircraft, Lauderdale said, and that type is not used by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

“The right aerial aircraft can work in and around those turbines, and there is all kinds of evidence to support that,” he said.

Yatch Bamford, chairman of the Pit River Tribe, said the project lies within “a landscape with deep cultural, spiritual and ecological importance to our people” and could cause “irreversible harm.”

Several speakers, some of whom identified themselves as tribal members, said the turbines would ruin the viewshed and disturb ancestral land that includes burial grounds.

“The project area includes sacred sites, ceremonial areas, ancestral trade routes, and ecological features that the Tribe considers inseparable from the natural setting of the proposed project site,” Bamford said in a written comment docketed with the CEC. “These separate features do not constitute isolated or static ‘resources’ that can be cordoned off, excavated, or catalogued for mitigation purposes. Rather, they constitute a living cultural and spiritual geography—one that continues to hold significant meaning, power, and function for the Pit River people today.”

Written comments are due May 27.