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Klickitat County Goes Proactive on Power Plant Development
Klickitat County is proposing a unique way to accommodate the wind farms and gas-turbine plants that officials there say will inevitably come to the county's remote regions – the county is picking potential sites for projects before the developers even arrive. Klickitat, a central Washington county bordering the Columbia River , is footing the bill for an environmental review covering two-thirds of the county that officials say will tell them which areas are appropriate for wind development and other power plants. The goal, says county economic development director Dana Peck , is to create a plan that will show developers where they are welcome to build projects Ð and where they are not. "This is shaping development instead of just having it land on you," says Peck.
Wind power advocates are enthusiastic about the initiative, the first of its kind in the state, because it would help developers steer clear of sensitive environmental areas and community opposition. But community activists in Klickitat, along with Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife officials, say the county could also be creating a short cut for developers that will prevent projects from receiving thorough environmental scrutiny. "The point is to get [projects] going as fast as they can and short-circuit the zoning laws," says Bill Weiler , a habitat biologist in Fish and Wildlife's Vancouver office.
Klickitat's draft version of its "programmatic" Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS ) – a pre-development survey of critical areas and wildlife populations that does not measure the specific impact of a given project – is not due until November. But Weiler says the study is already problematic because it's being conducted on a shorter timeline than the agency recommends. Once the county signs off on a PEIS, notes Weiler, its planning officials will then have the option to allow a developer to receive project permits without conducting a site-specific EIS. That makes it much more difficult to mount legal opposition to developments, he says. Dawn Stover , a local activist, says she doesn't trust county officials to have the last say on environmental protection. "This is not a county that historically has had a lot of concern for the environment," says Stover.
Klickitat County is one of the state's poorest regions and is in desperate need of a more diverse commercial base. Its economy is now heavily dependent on aluminum smelters, whose future is becoming more uncertain as the Northwest's supply of cheap hydropower Ð crucial to smelters' operational viability Ð gets stretched increasingly thin. But the county sees a potential new economic boom in energy production. The county has blustery ridge tops inviting to wind farmers, a natural gas pipeline that can feed turbine plants, and proximity to major transmission lines. The northern terminus of the California/Oregon intertie lies just across the Columbia.
Peck says Klickitat County is planning for the arrival of new industrial development in the most responsible way possible: by taking stock of its environmentally sensitive areas so officials can best decide what is and isn't appropriate development. "We're executing the process that people who do [Environmenal Impact Statements] have said is the ideal process," Peck says. He says the PEIS will lead to a comprehensive zoning plan (an "energy overlay zone") that will do as much to discourage inappropriate projects as it does to encourage favorable ones. "Everybody hears the Ôencourage' part but no one hears the Ôexclude' part," says Peck. "If someone comes in here and picks an area that is excluded from development, then god help them."
Once a developer chooses a specific site, Peck says, county officials will already be supplied with information that lets them know whether they should require the developer to do an additional, site-specific EIS to comply with State Environmental Protection Act (SEPA ) requirements. A zoning overlay has the advantage not only of providing a "two-tiered" environmental review, says Peck, but also of establishing an "enormous cumulative impact review" that's frequently overlooked in the permitting process. Peck says the process also benefits developers by letting them know the lay of the land before they invest in a potential site.
State environmental officials confirm that they do advocate for pre-development PEIS studies, but only if the sponsoring city or county also requires developers to follow up with Environmental Impact Statements particular to their projects. Weiler says that Klickitat County's history of environmental enforcement is not particularly stellar. The county has one of the weakest critical areas ordinances in the state, he says, and while the county has recently been responsive to Fish and Wildlife appeals to strengthen its protections, its recent permitting of a gas-fired power plant near Goldendale left doubts about the impact on surface and ground water.
"They have people there who are pretty responsible," says Weiler, referring to Peck, "but you're also dealing with a county that's off the deep end in terms of property rights."
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Kevin Fullerton