August 2004 Newsletter

In Our View: It's Time to Approve Wind Farms

Thursday, July 22, 2004
Kittitas Daily Record

It's time to treat Kittitas County's wind farm proposals like the sound propositions that they are: private business developments that bring minimal negative impacts to the county in relationship to the benefits.

Local, state and federal officials charged with review and approval of the projects should proceed with alacrity, confident that the projects have been properly vetted with area residents.

Kittitas County is an appropriate location for the three proposed wind farms: Kittitas Valley Wind Power Project, Desert Claim Wind Power Project and Wild Horse Wind Power Project.

Objections have been raised and addressed to most people's satisfaction. It's long past time that most objective members of the community have determined that many of the arguments against the projects have been satisfactorily addressed repeatedly, and that some are simply bogus. The turbines pose no real threat to the ecology of those areas they are to be sited at, won't destroy wildlife, won't decrease property values, spark fires, kill livestock ... won't alter local weather patterns ... or fling deadly spears of ice in the direction of innocent motorists or bystanders.

And it should be abundantly clear that this is in no sense at all a liberal vs. conservative, Democrat vs. Republican or business vs. social-values debate. Many conservatives who support the land favor wind farms; many progressives who like green energy favor wind farms.

How about questions about the true potential profitability of wind farms? Beyond necessary assurances on local impacts, including assorted contingency plans for success or failure, that's a private business concern. And if these farms represent fairly insignificant quantities of energy, as opponents argue, so what? Given the minimum impacts, we should let private business progress.

And any steps, including tiny ones, toward energy independence are vital to the country. Wind turbines provide clean with fewer environment entanglements than dams or coal-powered, oil-powered and gas-powered generators. We need to develop options other than hydro and fossil fuels. And there's a market: Energy buyers want wind energy to make balanced company portfolios.

It's true, given Washington's present tax structure, that the wind farms won't lead to an increase in tax revenues, but they will lower the tax rates for Kittitas County property owners. It will cost homeowners, businesses and farmers less to support critical services and schools.

Some folks with homes and property that could be developed do not want to live with wind turbines and feel they would lower values. That's the sort of argument that comes closest to raising legitimate objections, but the reality is that anyone with land out in rural areas is subject to the things that zoning in those areas might allow – from transmission lines to feedlots. And the locals who own land where Zilkha Renewable Energy and EnXco hope to erect turbines have the same right to profit from land-use leases as the people who profit from the sale and subdivision of rural land for home building.

Indeed, many observers of this issue and the commotions surrounding it note with irony that many of the opponents to wind farms in Kittitas County are people who bought homes in the country to get away from the cluttered Puget Sound area, while there are many supporters who have farmed and ranched around the sites for generations.

Members of a community should have some input in how their countryside and economy are developed, whether it's subdividing for homes, platting industrial sites, or building wind farms. In this case, there's been ample input, appropriate reaction, planning and mitigation.

It's time to move on.