Wind setbacks
Local governments grapple with where to put wind farms
For a while, it seemed that a controversial wind farm proposal in Washington's Kittitas County had gotten, well, a second wind. To satisfy county concerns, the developer reduced the size of the project by half and limited it to one contiguous property. For their part, county commissioners worked closely with the developer and created an ordinance to facilitate wind development. But when commissioners asked that the turbines be placed at least 2,500 feet from residences, the developer flatly refused, saying it made the project economically unviable. Wind company officials walked out of a May 2006 meeting, and commissioners subsequently denied the proposal.
"No one on the planning commission or the board of commissioners has a problem with the concept of wind energy," says Commissioner Mark McClain. "The question was, did this location (a relatively populous area north of Ellensburg) fit appropriate planning parameters? I believe it did not."
Although Washington allows local jurisdictions to create their own wind farm regulations, the state's Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council can override them.
The developer, Horizon Wind Energy, appealed to the council, initiating a Byzantine legal process in which Gov. Christine Gregoire sided with the wind farm. In November, the state's Supreme Court unanimously agreed that Horizon could proceed, overruling the county once and for all.
As more commercial wind farms are proposed for the West, tension mounts over where they should be located, and who should decide. There are no federal regulations about how to site wind farms. Not all states have siting councils, and so far there are no state commissions with ultimate regulatory authority over wind energy. Unless the proposal is on public land, where federal officials can decide, authority is relegated to local jurisdictions -- usually sparsely populated rural counties that often rely on the advice of wind developers to create ordinances. And there's a certain reluctance to over-regulate a renewable energy source.
The wind industry is seeing record growth because of technology improvements, federal subsidies totaling about $800 million per year and widespread state tax incentives. Last year, the U.S. added about 8,300 megawatts of wind energy. (The current total is about 25,000 megawatts, enough to power 7 million homes.) California, Washington, Oregon and Colorado are among the top wind energy-producing states in the nation. Eight Western states (including those four) now have standards requiring that utilities generate between 15 and 33 percent of their power from renewable sources within the next 15 years. This fall, Congress renewed vital wind tax credits, and the economic stimulus proposal making its way through Congress includes tens of billions of dollars in green energy tax breaks and loan guarantees.
