The Biden administration is advancing a massive wind energy project planned for southern Idaho that pits President Joe Biden’s environmental priorities directly against one another.
The Bureau of Land Management finalized a draft “environmental impact statement” and said Thursday it will begin taking comment on Magic Valley Energy’s proposed gigawatt-scale Lava Ridge Wind Project, which would be built mostly on federal lands. The project is a microcosm of the tensions between expanding utility-scale renewable electricity generation and respecting the interests of local farmers, landowners, tribal groups, and, in this case, Japanese-Americans in particular.
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The Biden administration set a goal of permitting 25 gigawatts of renewable energy on public lands by 2025 to help displace fossil fuels within the power sector, and the Lava Ridge project would go a long way toward that target.
Project developers want to construct up to 400 wind turbines with an estimated generating capacity of more than 1,000 megawatts across approximately 84,000 acres of federal, state and private land in south-central Idaho. Almost 90% of the acreage of the proposed project covered BLM-managed lands.
Magic Valley Energy’s development plan also provides for construction of new roads, power lines and other supporting infrastructure, like substations, maintenance facilities, and a battery storage facility.
But some local groups and landowners have strongly come out against the project for disrupting the landscape, affecting groundwater supplies, and bringing with it new restrictions on commercial or agricultural activity.
It’s a common story in the United States that has played out over and over again, where state governments, utilities, or the federal government face pushback against projects requiring the landscape to be altered in order to expand the production and transmission of energy.
The most common concern expressed during the Idaho project’s scoping period, which was finalized in December 2021, related to the Minidoka National Historic Site, according to the BLM. The site memorializes the Japanese internment camp located there during World War II.
#PeopleofInterior. Hanako Wakatsuki-Chong is the Chief of Interpretation at Minidoka NHS, a gateway for AAPI people during WWII. She considers it an honor to narrate the experiences of the resilient AAPI people who engaged this facility at critical time in American History. #AAPI pic.twitter.com/7YHDwkfY5O
— Careers at Interior (@DOICareers) May 4, 2021
Those commenting asked the BLM and project developers to find another site that wouldn’t diminish the historic site.
The Biden administration has championed an environmental justice agenda, which in part seeks to enable local residents, especially minorities, to have more input in the kinds of infrastructure and other facilities constructed near them.
The BLM should suspend its environmental review process and “go back to square one to develop a revised proposal consistent with racial and environmental justice and our nations commitment to National Parks,” read one comment from Friends of Minidoka, a non-profit group.
Others said they are worried that frequencies generated from the turbines would harm their livestock and that restrictions on working around the turbines would make it harder to do their jobs.
“One of the biggest ones is my crop-dusting ability,” farmer Dean Dimond said in a recent interview. “If we have to spray for bugs or whatever, you can’t fly an airplane within two miles.”
The BLM, in an engagement report published in December reviewing participants’ opinions of the project, noted a “general support for wind energy” but said most felt this choice of site “has unfortunately pitted them against a cause they believe in, creating a conflict between two of the Biden Administration’s priorities of green energy and equity.”
Magic Valley Energy has published a FAQ page that maintains the project will have “minimal ongoing water requirements” once in operation and therefore not compete for water for agriculture or other use.
It also stresses that its turbines can “coexist easily with public land use, grazing, and recreation” and includes an estimate that an estimated $4 million in new tax revenue will be available each year to surrounding tax districts.
The BLM’s new draft EIS identifies its own preferred alternatives to the Lava Ridge project as it’s proposed, both of which would reduce the total acreage and number of turbines compared to the proposal, as well as reduce the impact of the project to the Minidoka NHS by excluding the land corridors closest to the site from development.
Biden and members of Congress in both parties seek reforms to speed up the review and permitting of such projects. Republicans seek faster approval of oil and gas pipelines, while Democrats and Biden want the process to be streamlined so more wind and solar farms can be built more quickly.
A bill from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) that failed to pass during the final days of the previous Congress was written to speed up all kinds of projects, including by limiting litigation against them.
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All but a few Senate Democrats supported the bill, which got Biden’s endorsement when it came up for a vote. Most Republicans opposed it, one reason being that Manchin’s bill was written without their input.
Dozens of House Democrats opposed Manchin’s bill, arguing that it would hamstring locals and environmental groups by seeking to limit lawsuits with a statute of limitations.
