A3
THE ASTORIAN • TuESdAy, July 23, 2019
Wind energy projects pose conflicts
Rural areas
weigh impacts
By SIERRA DAWN
McCLAIN
Capital Press
MORO — In Sherman
County, every family gets a
gift at Christmastime.
In this sparsely populated
stretch of Oregon where unre-
lenting winds swirl across
wheat fields, wind power has
stamped its insignia.
Hundreds of wind turbines
tower over the land, whirring
as they generate electricity
— and money. Wshh. Wshh.
Wshh. Each December,
households receive checks
for $590 in exchange for use
of their county as a wind site.
Developers pay the bulk of
the money to farmers whose
land they lease. A land-
owner typically gets $8,000
per megawatt per year, and
the average turbine’s capac-
ity is 2.5 to 3 megawatts. The
county also invests its share of
the revenue in infrastructure.
Court records show Sher-
man County — once the sec-
ond-poorest county in Oregon
— has raked in tens of mil-
lions of dollars since the first
turbines were erected in 2002.
“Wind turbines. What
can I say?” said Sherman
County Judge Joe Dabul-
skis, the top elected official.
“Whether you’re for them or
against them, they have made
a difference.”
Some rural communi-
ties love wind power. Some
hate it. Like it or not, the pro-
duction of wind energy is
expanding in the rural West
with new, more efficient tech-
nology. At the same time,
developers pushing to build
turbines at new sites across
the region are stirring a brew
of new and age-old conflicts:
bird and bat mortalities, push-
back from rural communities
that resist change and obsta-
cles created by the limited
power grid infrastructure.
a migration path stretching
from Arctic tundra to tropical
rainforest.
However, said Garry
George, the National Audu-
bon Society’s renewable
energy director, tracking birds
in the western U.S. is difficult
because migration pathways
change based on rainfall and
plants.
Face-recognition
tech-
nology isn’t just for smart-
phones and Facebook. Sci-
entists use similar artificial
intelligence-based technolo-
gies, such as IdentiFlight, to
train machines to recognize
and track bird species.
Kevin Martin, direc-
tor of environmental per-
mitting at Terra-Gen Power,
devised a GPS tracking sys-
tem for protecting endan-
gered California condors
from death-by-turbine.
Energy companies pay for
and operate these technol-
ogies because it’s expected
and, sometimes, required.
But developers have more
to worry about than wild-
life. They must also please
landowners.
For years, wind was dis-
missed as a fickle power
source that could never meet
a significant portion of the
nation’s energy needs. New
technologies and falling
costs, however, are changing
the industry.
According to the Ameri-
can Wind Energy Association,
since 2009, the cost of wind
energy has plunged 69%,
making it the most affordable
power source in much of the
U.S. According to the U.S.
Department of Energy, the
installation cost for a com-
mercial-scale wind turbine
today is $3 million to $4 mil-
lion. The industry, which for
decades relied on tax incen-
tives, is being weaned off
subsidies, said Janine Ben-
ner, director of the Oregon
Department of Energy.
Most U.S. wind turbines
are manufactured in the U.S.
Benner said Oregon has
eight manufacturers. Vestas,
the world’s largest wind tur-
bine manufacturer, is based in
Portland.
New turbines, Benner said,
are more efficient. Blades are
longer. Rotors are better. And
they are taller. One of the
newest models stands at 650
feet — taller than Seattle’s
Space Needle.
But bigger turbines mean
more controversy.
Farming wind turbines
Sierra Dawn McClain/Capital Press
The birds and the bats
Birds and bats have a
fraught history with wind
turbines, but new technolo-
gies are making it easier for
winged creatures and wind
power to coexist.
The wind-bird controversy
dates to the 1990s, when con-
servationists found thousands
of bats and birds annually
— including protected spe-
cies such as golden eagles
— dying or being mutilated
at California’s Altamont Pass
wind farm.
Bat mortalities are often
harder to quantify, said Todd
Katzner, a research wildlife
biologist with the U.S. Geo-
Construction site manager Colton Wilson at a wind turbine.
logical Survey. Because bats
are tiny, their remains often
vanish.
Industry advocates say
mortalities from turbines are
scant compared to millions of
annual bird deaths caused by
cats, power lines, vehicles or
crashes into windows.
Katzner calls this an unfair
comparison.
“It matters what spe-
cies you kill,” said Katzner.
“Songbirds probably crash
into every house in North
America. You never hear of a
golden eagle killing itself by
crashing into a window, but
eagles do die from turbine
blades. If you killed a million
chipping sparrows, it would
affect only 1% of the popu-
lation. If you killed 100,000
golden eagles, you’d wipe out
the entire U.S. golden eagle
population twice.”
Researchers are pushing
for laws and practices that
kill fewer birds. One solu-
tion is choosing sites for wind
farms away from migra-
tory flyways. But siting is
challenging.
In the West each year,
more than a billion birds fol-
low the Pacific Flyway —
Threemile Canyon Farms
— which encompasses
93,000 acres near Board-
man — is near the Columbia
Gorge.
The hills along the gorge
buckle together like a great
patchwork quilt of gold,
brown and green draped over
the earth. Trees grow bent
from the gusts that tear across
the plateau. A wind develop-
er’s dream.
In 2007, Marty Myers,
general manager of Threemile
Canyon Farms, accepted an
offer from then-developer
John Deere Renewables to
erect six wind turbines on the
farm’s land.
For Myers, the turbines
are a low-maintenance source
of added income. The devel-
oper is responsible for main-
tenance and bird monitoring.
Myers grows organic crops
on that portion of the farm,
leaving uncultivated a 1-acre
patch under each turbine.
“It’s good business for a
farmer,” he said. “No matter
what happens in the ag mar-
ket, it’s a source of stability.”
Myers said he wanted
more turbines but was pre-
vented because the farm lies
too close to the Boardman
Bombing Range, where tur-
bines could interfere with
low-flying planes.
“These turbines are fasci-
nating things,” said Myers.
“When night comes and
the red lights of the turbines
flash across the fields, it’s like
somethin’ from outer space.”
He gestured west, toward
the violet hills and Shepherd
Flats, the neighboring wind
farm.
“I wish those ones were
mine, too,” he said.
Not everyone in Board-
man, however, is happy with
the energy industry.
More wind power means
more transmission lines,
which concerns rural people.
Todd Cornett is secre-
tary for the state Energy
Facility Siting Council, a
governor-appointed
coun-
cil responsible for ensur-
ing that energy sites are cho-
sen responsibly. According to
him, even if turbines generate
enough power, it’s useless if it
can’t be moved to where it’s
needed and when it’s needed.
An expanded grid is essential
— more high-tension power
lines.
There’s the roadblock.
The U.S. uses 21st-cen-
tury technology to produce
energy, but still uses 20th-cen-
tury infrastructure that can’t
efficiently move energy from
windy rural locations to urban
markets. America’s power
grid is like the nation’s roads
before President Dwight
Eisenhower’s interstate high-
way system. Cornett said that
however much wind develop-
ers want to expand, they will
be limited by access to trans-
mission lines and substations.
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