POMEROY – Two Eastern Washington lawmakers are irate that Gov. Jay Inslee is pushing wind and solar farms on the region without providing for local input.
Rep. Mary Dye, R-Pomeroy, and Rep. Mark Klicker, R-Walla Walla, said Monday, March 28, that it’s unconscionable the governor vetoed portions of House Bill 1812 that would give local leaders and opportunity to challenge wind and solar farm placement.
The governor vetoed sections 19-22 of the bill establishing an independent evaluation committee that would look at the impacts of solar and wind farms on communities and the state.
“To say that we are beyond disappointed with the governor’s vetoes is an understatement,” Dye said. “It’s absolutely devastating to our Eastern Washington farmlands.”
Dye – who represents the 9th Legislative District including Lind, Washtucna and Ritzville – introduced an amendment that passed and was included in the bill that required a study of cost and energy benefits over 30 years before construction of solar and wind farms.
Her amendment was one the governor vetoed.
Without local input, Western Washington Democrats will continue pushing solar and wind farms on rural communities east of the Cascades, while refusing to site them in Western Washington.
During an interview Monday in the Tri-Cities, Dye pointed out the issues Lind faces due to solar farms.
“The largest solar farm in the state is in Lind. It’s a community that is extremely economically disadvantaged,” she said. “That is prime farmland in a location above the town that could have been part of the economic growth story for the entire region.”
Dye pointed out that with a new irrigation pumping station online now in Warden, that the solar farm could have potentially produced viable crops and improved the economy of Lind.
Furthermore, Dye said the solar farm owners failed to provide fiber-optic communications to the site, which would have brought high-speed internet to the Lind.
During the same interview, Klicker said he is worried the veto means Democrats controlling the state government will make any siting decision, regardless of local opposition.
Klicker said that without local involvement, it appears Democrats are pushing green energy on those living east of the Cascades and damaging Eastern Washington’s aesthetics by pushing large-scale solar and wind farms on rural residents here.
“We wanted to ensure that rural communities would have the opportunity to see what’s at stake for the total build-out on the rural aesthetic, not just the visual impact of individual solar and wind farms that are sited here and there,” Klicker said in a press release Monday.
“It is critical for our rural communities and local landowners, especially those in Eastern Washington, to see the ‘big picture’ of what 30 years of siting utility-scale wind and solar would do to Washington’s rural landscape,” added
Dye in the press release. “Now that the governor has vetoed these sections, it opens the flood gates for big out-of-state energy corporations to swoop into these small, rural economically-disadvantaged communities and offer leases at a fraction of the value of the agricultural land to struggling farmers and landowners.”
Klicker said Eastern Washington residents deserve an analysis of the “true costs” of any solar or wind farm, with the study looking at job losses, increased taxes and more.
“The big out-of-state energy companies will provide just enough jobs to construct the projects, and when that construction is finished, there will be no long-term employment -- just wind machines and solar panels surrounding our rural communities,” Dye said.
Without the amendment, Dye and Klicker say rural residents won’t have any input into the location of proposed solar and wind farms.
“The governor’s strategy amounts to a hasty build-out of clean energy to serve the Puget Sound without any burden of siting massive windfarms in the Puget Sound viewshed,” she said. “Instead, these facilities will all be sited in our rural counties that have no need for the energy and are already served by clean, affordable hydroelectricity.”
“This is a huge loss for people in rural Washington,” Klicker said. “It would have been great to receive a report with a forecast of what the full build-out of wind and solar facilities over the next 30 years would look like for rural counties. But the governor’s decision today means that won’t happen.”
Roger Harnack is the owner/publisher of Free Press Publishing. Having grown up Benton City, Roger is an award-winning journalist, columnist, photographer, editor and publisher. He's one of only two editorial/commentary writers from Washington state to ever receive the international Golden Quill. Roger is dedicated to the preservation of local media, and the voice it retains for Eastern Washington.
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