TSR Environmental Issues

I started this several post weeks ago, just after the Board of Adjustment meeting that led to the approval of the conditional use permit (CUP) for Teanaway Solar Reserve, but got distracted and didn't finish it until now.

I have been to a number of Board of Adjustment hearings and EFSEC hearings for wind farms, but I've never paid as much attention as I did at the BoA meeting on the Teanaway Solar Reserve project. I don't know any of the citizens who make up the BoA; I mean no disrespect here as I share some of my impressions of the meeting.

The meeting had two parts: first, the Board rejected an appeal of the County's mitigated determination of nonsignificance (MDNS), then they listened to presentations and testimony for and against the TSR project and voted to permit the project.

The MDNS appeal was interesting because it really seemed to me that the people bringing the appeal (the appellants) had a good case. They raised several points, but the ones that resonated most with me had to do with biological surveys looking for endangered or threatened species. These surveys were done over a single 5-day period in late June and early July last summer. I think it's pretty obvious that that's completely inadequate, but apparently it does meet the letter of the law. That doesn't make it OK, and one way to see that better surveys get done would be for the BoA to insist on them. Five days isn't enough time to wait for rare animals to wander by, and it's definitely not enough time to find plants. (Depending on the species, some plants start flowering when the snow melts, and others continue all summer into late fall. Because identifying plants generally depends on looking at their flowers, obviously it would be a good idea to check the site several times during the season. The biological survey for one of the wind farms missed a state threatened plant because the survey was done after the plant had flowered and died.)

One thing I think the appellants got wrong had to do with consideration of alternate sites -- they seemed to be focusing on alternate sites in Kittitas County, when the real question was whether the project would make sense anywhere in Washington.

The interesting thing is, I think the TSR people were prepared to lose the appeal. Their big-city attorney was definitely pounding the table, not the law or the facts, with sarcastic and trivial questions aimed at embarrassing the appellants. But instead the BoA voted 5-0 in TSR's favor.

I don't think the BoA realizes that they have the ability (and the responsibility, really) to insist that things like biological surveys be done not just technically correctly, but diligently. The BoA seemed entirely concerned that the application was technically correct, even though what we got was not good science, legal or not.

Another thing that struck me was that TSR used a WA Department of Fish and Wildlife document that provided guidelines for wind power projects. Apparently a similar document doesn't exist for solar projects. Which means WDFW hasn't had a chance to think about large solar projects in this state. And TSR is billed as the largest solar project in the country. It doesn't make sense not to do a full environmental impact statement, which is all the appellants were asking for.

This is all water under the bridge, of course, since the environmental appeal was denied and then the CUP approved. Now there's a new appeal, addressing the use of a parcel of land needed to connect the project to the transmission lines than run nearby.

Because a number of transmission lines run east-west through our county, various kinds of electricity generation projects will continue to be proposed for as long as there are incentives. I'm in the renewable energy industry, and I like renewable energy, but we don't need to approve every single project that comes along, and we can drive a hard bargain for the ones we do approve.