Oregon's Steen Mountain, prized for wilderness views, to get wind farm.

[NNadir]

FRENCHGLEN, Ore. — Ruggedly beautiful Steens Mountain stands in an area of southeast Oregon so isolated that it's barely changed since cattle king Pete French arrived in the late 1800s.

Coyotes yelp at sundown. Drivers are so few that they wave to each other as they pass. Campers, hunters and bird-watchers trek from across the state to breathe in the majestic emptiness and to gaze from the Steens summit across a seemingly endless tapestry of high desert and open range.

But soon, the scenery will change.

Harney County has cleared Columbia Energy Partners of Vancouver to build a wind farm on the mountain's north slope. By year's end, 415-foot turbines could start rising from the juniper and sagebrush, among thousands of towers that developers are stampeding to build across eastern Oregon.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/outdoors/2011018180_websteensmountain09.html">The Seattle Times: Oregon's Steen Mountain, prized for wilderness views, to get wind farm

Now I ask you? What possibly could a place be that "drivers are so few that they wave to each other as they pass?"

The area could certainly benefit from more traffic. It's good for, um, business.

I hope they put a Taco Bell there too, along with a Burger King, so that we can all have something to eat while we admire the views. Also all those maintenance and construction crews will need lunch as they drive up to the mountain.

[wtmusic]

1. And when $1.25B in turbines becomes a rusting junkpile in 15 years

they will benefit from a scrap metal boom.

The gift that keeps giving.

[NNadir]

2. Good point. Although truth be told, no one has gone to scrap the useless wind farms

left over from the "wind boom" of the 1980's.

No one can, apparently, tell whether or not many of them are still working.

Maybe someone can tell us what, in fact, is going on in this mess:

[Statistical]

3. IIRC many still spin and generators are still functional however the whole mess

produces energy output that is so far out of spec that it has been disconnected from the grid a long time ago.

Last I heard they are going to do a "do over" build a new farm just down the hill from the current one. No plans to every tear down or scrap that eyesore. Likely it will be there for decades. Turbines uselessly turning in the wind producing energy that is completely unusable and not hooked to anything.

[bemildred]

4. Given all the hamburger farms in the area, I expect a few Burger Kings would fit right in. nt

[joshcryer]

6. Oh yeah, this sure does look like a factory farming location:

[bemildred]

9. There is nothing but ranches and empty land up and down that valley.

Growing beef. It's too far away from anything to haul milk out. It's annoying really, any where they can find water you got a cow ranch. But I suppose the people that live there are glad to have a job.

[joshcryer]

12. That beef ain't winding up in your fast food meal.

[bemildred]

19. So what, those cows are all pets? nt

[joshcryer]

21. Harney County produces almost exclusively free range beef. Grass fed beef. High quality beef.

If that beef winds up in any fast food establishment I would be shocked.

[malakai2]

5. Well hey, it LOOKS clean

That's what counts. They'd put them in the Bakken oil patch in North Dakota, but that's already a mess and getting messier by the minute. Put 'em out in the wilderness, and people can come to associate them with wide open vistas and clear blue skies.

Yeah.

As with the Bakken drilling, the Marcellus Shale drilling, the offshore drilling, and the tar sands development, this continental wind buildout is going to happen. Just like with the other four, people will still demand yet more. I'd give up and move to Alaska or some such place, but I have a feeling that pretty soon we'll be cutting that down for wood pellets.

[joshcryer]

7. How the hell did they circumvent the Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Act?

http://www.blm.gov/or/districts/burns/files/PL106-399.pdf

WTF

If those people couldn't build 15 cabins because of the viewshed restriction, it is mindboggling how wind turbines somehow are immune from that. Given that this is a poor county that needs the money, there probably won't be much resistance, but this is fucking mind boggling.

[joshcryer]

13. This is a fucking travesty.

[joshcryer]

8. Interesting comments by the Portland Audubon Society in this article, too.

Columbia Energy recently shelved its West Ridge and East Ridge wind projects headed for the Steens' north flank, in the face of opposition from the Audubon Society of Portland and the Oregon Natural Desert Association in Bend.

Liz Nysson, spokeswoman for the desert association, said visitors will be appalled to find "industrial-scale wind development" on the slopes of Steens Mountain. The Echanis project, she said, also will be built on habitat for falcons, golden eagles and sage grouse, which is being considered for federal protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Bob Sallinger, the Portland Audubon Society's conservation director, called the area "an incredibly valuable landscape from a wildlife standpoint."

"We have a gold-rush mentality in this state about wind," he said. "We could look back in 10 or 15 years and wish we had done it differently and more thoughtfully."

Both groups also accuse Columbia Energy of dividing the Steens projects into three pieces of about 104 megawatts each to skirt the state scrutiny that kicks in for projects of 105 megawatts or more.

[joshcryer]

11. Kick. Another example of energy companies exploiting poor communities.

[malakai2]

14. Good call

I could write a book on that based on what I see in ND.

[joshcryer]

17. Feel free to post your experiences.

I've been looking in to buying land for years now, and eastern Oregon was one of my prime candidates. I want somewhere pretty isolated, and it breaks my heart that these people are trying to turn environmentally pristine communities into big energy producers with large populations.

[Statistical]

15. "dividing the Steens projects into three pieces of about 104"

"Both groups also accuse Columbia Energy of dividing the Steens projects into three pieces of about 104 megawatts each to skirt the state scrutiny that kicks in for projects of 105 megawatts or more."

Ouch say it isn't so. I thought Wind companies do it just for the sheer "goodness" they bring mankind. Circumventing regulation to turn a profit and tear up the environment? I am sure Kris will be up in arms about this.

[joshcryer]

16. Wind companies are in it for the money, a certain poster here makes that abundantly clear...

...by citing the "economics" of wind and how they're the best of anything out there. It has little to do with being environmentally friendly and everything to do with markets.

Yeah, if you look to small and poor communities with a high rate of unemployment, they will take your wind farm. They'll even circumvent federal law to get it done. The Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Act shouldn't allow this to go forward. I can see the roads and infrastructure (transmission lines) just gracing the Steens, and the numbers of large federally protected birds that will die from it which otherwise wouldn't. It's a travesty.

[The2ndWheel]

10. Imagine if we just allowed that resource to blow by

What a beautifully wasteful act that would be.

[joshcryer]

18. Kick.

[joshcryer]

20. Kick. Note the silence from the wind power folks.

This is inexcusable.

1) Building on federally protected land.
2) Exploiting a poor community that needs jobs and money.
3) Splitting up their project into three so that it doesn't have as much scrutiny.

The list goes on, but I have to take a walk.