TSR Summary II: Conditional Use Considerations

As we have seen in earlier posts, large renewable energy projects are conditional uses in agriculture-20, forest and range, commercial agriculture, and commercial forest zones. The TSR project claims to be the largest in the country, maybe the world, and would cover about 1.5 sections (1.5 square miles) in the eastern foothills of the Cascade Mountains of Washington with solar panels.

Once a project has been properly proposed, it's up to the Board of Adjustment (BoA) to consider and decide whether to allow the project to go forward. The relevant sections of the the County Code include 17.60A (Conditional Uses), especially 17.60A.010 and 17.60A.020, which are short enough to quote below (with a little editing for length; my paraphrasing is in [square brackets]). Chapter 17.96 describes the activities of the BoA itself.

Chapter 17.60A.010 Review Criteria.

The [BoA]...may permit and authorize a conditional use when the following requirements have been met:

1. The [BoA] shall determine that the proposed use is essential or desirable to the public convenience and not [dangerous, annoying or inconsistent with] the character of the surrounding neighborhood.
2. The [BoA] shall determine that the proposed use [will not cost the taxpayers too much, that there is enough infrastructure supporting the project, or that the proposer will supply needed infrastructure, or that it will generate enough economic return to taxpayers to offset costs.]

17.60A.020 Conditions.

1. In permitting such uses the [BoA] may impose in addition to the regulations specified herein, such conditions as it deems necessary to protect the best interests of the surrounding property or neighborhood or the county as a whole.

[2 and 3 aren't very relevant here]

I'm guessing "desirable to the public convenience" is a term of art that means that a project should be beneficial to the county and/or its residents in some way. Likewise, in the Conditions section, conditions can be imposed to make a project more beneficial to the project area or the county as a whole.

So a conditional use project is supposed to be good for the county in some way, good enough to balance anything unpleasant about the project. Since change is painful, practically any project is going to bother someone, so every project had better have at least some benefits.

Here's where we run into one of the challenges of utility-scale renewable energy projects. In business-speak, these projects are high capex, low opex things. That means they cost a lot to build (capital expense), but don't cost much to operate (operating expense). What's more, most of the capital cost is paid outside the county, to manufacturers and to specialized construction crews that travel from job to job. So these projects don't translate into much in the way of jobs.

And here's also where we run into one of my pet peeves about renewable energy projects in Kittitas county and in Eastern Washington in general: out here is where the renewable energy is, and out here is where we get to live with the facilities that harvest the energy, but almost all of the benefits go somewhere else, especially when we're talking about out-of-county landowners.

That's all for now. I'm not going to presume to suggest how I think the BoA should proceed, but it has been helpful to me to think through these issues.

Photo credit: the Jumilla solar farm in Spain, at about 38.48° north latitude -- about the same latitude as Sacramento; Kittitas county is around 47°. It was the largest in the world, at 20 MW, in 2008.