The existential risk of a warming planet caught up with the Strauss Wind Vitality Venture on the Santa Barbara County Planning Fee final week. Three of the 5 commissioners agreed to permit the venture to proceed with no federal allow to “take” golden eagles, a completely protected species in California recognized to nest in Lompoc’s San Miguelito Canyon and have a powerful migration via the world within the late fall.
Venture developer BayWa r.e. has been engaged on the 27-turbine venture since 2016. It’s nearly the identical venture that the Lompoc Wind Venture had been engaged on for 15 years earlier than that. The 267-foot-tall generators can generate as a lot as 98 carbon-free megawatts, sufficient electrical energy to energise 43,000 houses. The ability has already been bought to Marin Clear Vitality for 15 years, decreasing the necessity for fossil-fuel peaker vegetation within the vitality coalition’s 4 Bay Space counties — and avoiding roughly 40,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
From the get-go, the venture confronted stiff resistance from residents residing close to the generators, in addition to from the avian group. Appeals have been denied by the Board of Supervisors in 2009, which have been upheld within the federal courts. BayWa was near flipping the “on” swap this fall, till it realized the U.S. Fish & Wildlife allow was going to take one to 3 years to finish. The corporate then returned to the Planning Fee to revise its circumstances that required the allow. As Commissioner Laura Bridley stated, the day’s resolution was a “tradeoff between two noble objectives, saving wildlife and getting wind vitality on the grid.”
On the August 9 listening to, the second held on the allow revision, Andy Caldwell from the Coalition of Labor, Agriculture & Enterprise (COLAB) and Katherine Emery and Steven Ferry of the Santa Barbara Audubon Society protested that BayWa was going to be allowed to be late in making use of for the federal “incidental take allow.” Caldwell argued that the change was substantial sufficient to require a supplemental environmental affect report (EIR). Emery and Ferry supplied a number of mitigation measures that BayWa ought to embody as an alternative, corresponding to requiring a seek for eagle carcasses as soon as per week throughout the practically 3,000 acres utilizing canines to search out them.
Through the commissioners and employees dialogue of the “incidental take” allow, John Parke, who chairs the Planning Fee, spoke of two articles he’d learn just lately. In a single, the Nationwide Audubon Society stated local weather change was a far larger risk to pure wildlife than powerlines or wind generators. The nationwide group felt so strongly about this, stated Parke, that it had advised native teams that to oppose chicken deaths on precept was to overlook the larger image.
The second story was about an examination of 175 chicken carcasses that had died on energy traces, presumably of electrocution. Two-thirds contained shotgun pellets or fragments of rifle bullets, main Parke to comment that the cost to the feds to retrofit powerlines in opposition to unintended chicken kills was possible a wasted effort.
Parke indicated that the Hen and Bat Adaptive Administration Plan written for the Strauss Wind venture would cowl the identical, or bigger, territory because the federal take allow. Within the county plan, for one eagle killed or injured, BayWa must notify the county and enhance its carcass search. If a second creature have been injured or killed, the penalty rises to “adaptive measures” per the Planning Fee. These embody decreasing the amount of prey attracting the eagles by means apart from poison, erecting warning towers to divert birds, curbing turbine operations selectively primarily based on location of mortalities or seasonal chicken exercise, or proscribing turbine operation to low wind speeds. The plan additionally consists of non-listed, non-sensitive chicken and bat species, and raptors, and the take numbers go from 2-12 fatalities per yr for these species.
The federal “take” allow remains to be a brand new one for wind farms, county vitality planner Errin Briggs later advised the Unbiased. BayWa was solely the second wind farm within the nation to use for the allow, which requires an in-lieu payment for an estimated species kill or damage by a venture, cash that goes towards bettering energy traces to forestall eagle deaths. California is establishing an “incidental take allow” primarily based on the federal phrases, but it surely has but to exit the idea stage.
BayWa, represented by CEO Gordon MacDougall, acknowledged they have been pleased to adjust to the fee’s additions to the circumstances, and that the corporate would full its allow software with U.S. Fish & Wildlife for the incidental take allow. For the county, BayWa moreover agreed to weekly searches for eagle carcasses, however with out canines; that the corporate pay $30,000 to a raptor rehabilitation middle for every carcass or damage; as soon as California’s incidental take allow is in place, that BayWa acquire one; and that the change was of such insignificance {that a} supplemental EIR was not needed.
COLAB’s Caldwell indicated he would attraction the Planning Fee resolution to the Board of Supervisors. He additionally proclaimed to the commissioners that the golden eagle was the image of the USA, the poster youngster of the Endangered Species Act, till he was corrected by John Parke, who suggested him to verify the colour of the eagle’s head — the nationwide chicken has a white head, not golden. To which Caldwell retorted, “Shut sufficient.”
