REGION
MyEagleNews.com
Wednesday, July 24, 2019
A7
Wind energy in the western U.S. is growing — and so are conflicts
Tale of two counties
By SIERRA DAWN McCLAIN
EO Media Group
MORO — In Sherman County,
every family gets a gift at Christ-
mas time.
In this sparsely populated stretch
of Oregon where unrelenting winds
swirl across wheat fields, wind
power has stamped its insignia.
Hundreds of wind turbines tower
over the land, whirring as they gen-
erate electricity — and money.
Wshh. Wshh. Wshh. Each Decem-
ber, 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 landowner typically gets
$8,000 per megawatt per year,
and the average turbine’s capacity
is 2.5 to 3 megawatts. The county
also invests its share of the reve-
nue in infrastructure. Court records
show Sherman County — once the
second-poorest county in Oregon
— has raked in tens of millions of
dollars since the first turbines were
erected in 2002.
“Wind turbines. What can I
say?” said Sherman County Judge
Joe Dabulskis, the top elected offi-
cial. “Whether you’re for them or
against them, they have made a
difference.”
Some rural communities love
wind power. Some hate it. Like
it or not, the production of wind
energy is expanding in the rural
West with new, more efficient tech-
nology. At the same time, develop-
ers pushing to build turbines at new
sites across the region are stirring a
brew of new and age-old conflicts:
bird and bat mortalities, pushback
from rural communities that resist
change and obstacles created by the
limited power grid infrastructure.
Gone with the wind
For years, wind was dismissed
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 American
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 instal-
lation cost for a commercial-scale
wind turbine today is $3 million to
$4 million. The industry, which for
decades relied on tax incentives, is
being weaned off subsidies, said
Janine Benner, director of the Ore-
gon Department of Energy.
Most U.S. wind turbines are
manufactured in the U.S. Benner
said Oregon has eight manufactur-
ers. Vestas, the world’s largest wind
turbine manufacturer, is based in
Portland.
New turbines, Benner said, are
more efficient. Blades are lon-
ger. Rotors are better. And they
are taller. One of the newest mod-
els stands at 650 feet — taller than
Seattle’s Space Needle.
But bigger turbines mean more
controversy.
The birds and the bats
Birds and bats have a fraught
history with wind turbines, but new
technologies are making it eas-
ier for winged creatures and wind
power to co-exist.
The wind-bird controversy dates
to the 1990s, when conservationists
found thousands of bats and birds
annually — including protected
species such as golden eagles —
dying or being mutilated at Califor-
nia’s Altamont Pass wind farm.
Bat deaths are often harder to
quantify, said Todd Katzner, a
research wildlife biologist with the
U.S. Geological Survey. Because
bats are tiny, their remains often
vanish.
Industry advocates say mortal-
ities from turbines are scant com-
pared 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 species you
kill,” said Katzner. “Songbirds
Colton Wilson /Capital Press
A wind turbine under construction.
U.S. power capacity by source, 2018
The U.S. Department of Energy estimates the potential market share
of wind energy could be as high as 20% by 2030 and 35% by 2050.
(In billions of kilowatt hours)
Wind: 275 or 6.6%
Hydropower:
292 or 7%
Natural gas:
1,468 or 35.1%
Biomass: 63 or 1.5%
Coal:
1,146 or 27.4%
Nuclear:
807 or 19.3%
Solar: 67 or 1.6%
Other: 61 or 1.5%
Total (all sources):
4,178 billion kWh
NOTE: Totals may not equal 100 due to rounding.
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2018
Sierra Dawn McClain and Alan Kenaga/Capital Press
probably crash into every house in
North America. You never hear of a
golden eagle killing itself by crash-
ing into a window, but eagles do die
from turbine blades. If you killed a
million chipping sparrows, it would
affect only 1% of the population. 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 solution is choosing sites for
wind farms away from migratory
flyways. But siting is challenging.
In the West each year, more than
a billion birds follow the Pacific
Flyway — a migration path stretch-
ing from Arctic tundra to tropical
rainforest.
However, said Garry George,
the National Audubon Society’s
renewable energy director, track-
ing birds in the western U.S. is dif-
ficult because migration pathways
change based on rainfall and plants.
Face-recognition
technology
isn’t just for smart phones and
Facebook. Scientists use similar
artificial intelligence-based tech-
nologies, such as IdentiFlight, to
train machines to recognize and
track bird species.
Kevin Martin, director of envi-
ronmental permitting at Terra-Gen
Power, devised a GPS track-
ing system for protecting endan-
gered California condors from
death-by-turbine.
Energy companies pay for and
operate these technologies because
it’s expected and, sometimes,
required. But developers have
more to worry about than wildlife.
They must also please landowners.
Farming wind turbines
Threemile Canyon Farms —
which encompasses 93,000 acres
near Boardman — 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 developer’s
dream.
In 2007, Marty Myers, gen-
eral manager of Threemile Can-
yon Farms, accepted an offer from
then-developer John Deere Renew-
ables to erect six wind turbines on
the farm’s land.
For Myers, the turbines are a
low-maintenance source of added
income. The developer is responsi-
ble for maintenance and bird mon-
itoring. 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 market, it’s a source of
stability.”
Myers said he wanted more tur-
bines but was prevented because
the farm lies too close to the Board-
man Bombing Range, where tur-
bines could interfere with low-fly-
ing planes.
“These turbines are fascinating
things,” said Myers. “When night
comes and the red lights of the tur-
bines 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.
An interstate for electricity
Not everyone in Boardman,
however, is happy with the energy
industry.
More wind power means more
transmission lines, which con-
cerns rural people.
Todd Cornett is secretary for
the state Energy Facility Siting
Council, a governor-appointed
council responsible for ensur-
ing that energy sites are chosen
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-ten-
sion power lines.
There’s the roadblock.
The U.S. uses 21st-century
technology to produce energy, but
still uses 20th-century infrastruc-
ture that can’t efficiently move
energy from windy rural loca-
tions to urban markets. Ameri-
ca’s power grid is like the nation’s
roads before President Dwight
Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway
System. Cornett said that how-
ever much wind developers want
to expand, they will be limited by
access to transmission lines and
substations.
One common criticism of
renewable energy is that it’s inter-
mittent — the wind doesn’t always
blow. But on a big enough grid,
that’s not a problem.
Many farmers, however, don’t
want a bigger grid.
Battle over B2H
Boardman to Hemingway, or
“B2H,” is a proposed 500-kilovolt
transmission line that would string
together 180-foot tall steel towers,
74% of which would be on private
land. The power line would snake
across 290 miles from Boardman
in eastern Oregon to Hemingway
in southwestern Idaho.
Many rural people aren’t happy
about it.
In June, the Energy Facility Sit-
ing Council held a series of pub-
lic hearings about the transmis-
sion line. On June 27, according to
hearing transcripts, more than 200
people attended a 4 1/2-hour hear-
ing in La Grande to express their
concerns.
Residents said the power line
will degrade natural areas with a
250-foot-wide clear cut, increase
the likelihood of wildfires linked
to transmission lines, cause health
issues from electromagnetic fields,
blot the land with an eyesore and
damage the wagon tracks of the
Oregon Trail.
“I would no longer be able to
reside or fulfill my lifelong dreams
and goal of living here,” said resi-
dent Greg Larkin.
Cornett of the EFSC said build-
ing another transmission line is
like adding another straw to your
drink. You can only suck a cer-
tain amount of liquid through one
straw, but add another straw and
you can pull up more. Add B2H,
he said, and you can move more
power quicker.
It remains to be seen whether
rural communities will add another
straw to their drink.
Not everyone is upset. Two
Oregon counties, Gilliam and
Sherman, have thrived because of
wind power.
Welcome to Condon — a rural
town in Gilliam County. Wheat
and cattle, a couple dozen streets,
population 675.
K’Lynn Lane, executive direc-
tor of the Condon Chamber of
Commerce, grew up here. Over
the years, she watched agricul-
ture flounder, families sell off
land, survivors hang on. The
wind industry, Lane said, is what
turned the town around.
Lane’s husband got a job work-
ing in management at the Mon-
tague Wind Power Facility, one of
the largest wind sites under con-
struction in the West.
“Condon was dying,” said
Lane. “Wind power brought sta-
ble jobs with good benefits and
gave people hope. Now look
around — doesn’t this street look
like something out of a Norman
Rockwell painting?”
Sherman County. We end
where we began.
When the turbines went up 17
years ago, said former County
Judge Gary Thompson, things got
crazy.
“It was like a gold rush,” he
said. “All the big developers were
knocking on doors. Everybody
wanted a piece of the action.”
Jealousies cut deep, said
Thompson. People whose land
wasn’t good for turbines felt
jilted. To curb resentments,
Thompson struck a deal with
developers.
While farmers negotiated with
developers, the Sherman County
government, led by Thompson,
also negotiated on behalf of the
community. The deal they struck
was for developers to pay the
county, which in turn would pay
residents whose view of Mount
Adams now included a pan-
orama of turbines. They modeled
the plan after Alaska, where resi-
dents receive a dividend generated
by revenue from the state-owned
Prudhoe Bay oil field.
Thompson kept checks under
$600 so county clerks wouldn’t
have to file hundreds of tax forms.
Since then, every Sherman County
head of household who has owned
property for more than a year has
received an annual Christmas
check. The county has invested the
rest in infrastructure.
Thompson said the haves and
the have-nots may be at the heart
of the debate over wind turbines
in rural communities. Those who
benefit like them. Those who don’t
benefit don’t like them.
“Some folks still have hard
feelings that their neighbors got
lease money and they didn’t,” said
Thompson, “but it’s mellowed out
over the years.”
Where the wind blows
Moro, July 2019. The hills are
dusty, golden, pockmarked with
sagebrush. Townsfolk are working
outside. It’s the sort of place where
people wave when you drive by.
It’s still rustic — sagging Vic-
torian houses, “Old Opera House
Antiques,” a Presbyterian church.
But on Main Street, fresh marks
of the wind industry stand beside
crumbling remains of what the
town once was.
“We built a library,” said
Dabulskis, the county judge. “And
a courthouse. We have a new
school and an Oregon State Uni-
versity Extension Service. We’re
working on a covered arena at the
fairgrounds. Indirectly, all of these
were possible because of wind
turbines.”
Sunbeams dance on spinning
blades. The wind turbines swish
their soft music — that sound
some people hate and others love.
Wshh.
“When the turbines first went
up, I thought, ‘They’re ruining the
view,’” said Dabulskis. “I don’t
mind anymore. You really look at
what we had before the turbines
and where our county is now, and
it’s come a long ways.”
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