Published: September 06. 2009
By Hillary Borrud

The Oregon Natural Desert Association is drawing a bead on the Echanis wind project in remote Harney County. The proposed windmills would rub shoulders with Steens Mountain, you see, and that’s unacceptable to ONDA even though the land on which
they’d sit is privately owned. If we didn’t know better, we’d guess ONDA’s acronymn stood for Oregon No Development Association.
 
But no, ONDA insists, there are suitable locations for what the group likes to call “industrial wind development.”
 
“One possibility,” wrote ONDA board member Jack Sterne in an Op-Ed Wednesday, “lies juts 25 miles east of town on West Butte, where Pacific Wind Power is proposing a 104 megawatt wind farm sited in Crook County.”
 
Here, at least, we agree with Sterne. But his decision to hold out West Butte as an example of proper siting is interesting given the project’s proximity to a sage grouse “lek,” or mating site.
 
To safeguard the birds, which are being considered for listing under the Endangered Species Act, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife asked Crook County to require a three-mile buffer around the lek. The developers pointed out that such a requirement would destroy their project. Ultimately, says Crook County Planning Director Bill Zelenka, the county imposed a quarter-mile buffer.
 
Though ONDA expressed concern, the group didn’t consider the project’s proximity to the lek an insurmountable problem.
 
Meanwhile, ONDA practically channeled ODFW in its Aug. 26 comments on the Echanis project. Columbia Energy Partners, the developer, would like to site transmission lines on federal land managed by the BLM. In weighing Columbia’s request, ONDA argues, the agency “must evaluate the impact of the transmission line and generation sites on Greater sage-grouse.” It appears, the group continues, that the project “may result in
unacceptable impacts to his imperiled species.”
 
With that in mind, ONDA cites an ODFW conservation strategy that “expressly provides ... that wind energy projects should be sited at least five miles from known sage-grouse
habitat.” The italics are ONDA’s. ONDA then quotes the ODFW plan at length, including the following sentence, which the group again italicizes for emphasis: “Until better information is available, managers should err on the side of the birds’ biology and use the greatest set-back distance where feasible and necessary.”
 
All of this, remember, from a group whose board member praised the siting of a wind farm on which Crook County imposed a quarter-mile setback.

It seems to us that one of two things is true. Either ONDA’s grouse-protection zeal waxes and wanes for unrelated reasons — such as a project’s proximity to Steens Mountain — or the developers of the “good” West Butte project will eventually discover that ONDA doesn’t like their location very much after all.

“I think we need to address the policy and maybe develop new codes to address how we’re going to treat wind (turbines),” Unger said.

“There are people that want to use them, and there are people that do not want to look at them,” Unger said. “We need to address those issues. I think we’ll probably be looking at what other counties have done, and then where we are going to go with it.”

County Commissioner Tammy Baney said she wants to discuss whether the county should do something to allow wind turbines before the comprehensive plan update is completed. Baney met with Scarborough about his situation.

“The question for me was, is there something we could look at prior to that, and is it something the board wants to take on or not,” she said.

Scarborough said he hopes county officials will do something to allow wind turbines before state incentives to offset the costs are used up or phased out.

“I have asked the county if they would research the legal viability of granting me a waiver on the basis of a pilot study,” Scarborough said. “I’m hopeful we are going to move forward, but the concern I have is quite purely that these tax incentives and this money that is available will not just sit around.”

Hillary Borrud can be reached at 541-617-7829 or at hborrud@bendbulletin.com.