HEADLINES & HISTORY SINCE 1879 Goldendale, Washington
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2024
Vol. 145 No. 8
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School District levy poised to barely pass
Denmark could leave its mark on Goldendale
KLICKITAT AUDITOR WEBSITE
GOLDENDALEENERGYSTORAGE.COM
THE VISION: Rye Development is exuberant about the environmental impact study recently completed regarding the proposed Goldendale Energy Storage project. Below, the company’s projected timeline for the project.
NEWS ANALYSIS
With the Klickitat County Auditor’s office showing no more ballots left to count for the February 13 election, the levy for the Goldendale School District appears to be inching into passage, pending final certification. There were 1,058 votes for the levy (51.38 percent) to 1,001 votes against it (48.62 percent.) Turnout county-wide for the
levy elections in several county school districts was 39.14 percent. Most districts sailed to easy levy passage. Wishram School District passed 57 to 43 percent. Centerville passed 66 to 34 percent. Glenwood passed by the same margin, 66 to 34 percent. Roosevelt passed 63 to 37 percent. Goldendale’s levy looks to pass by a mere 57 votes.
Lou Marzeles Editor
Denmark is a country of about 6 million people. The greater Seattle area has about 4 million people in it. Denmark has a gross domestic product (GDP) of around $400 billion. Washington State alone has a GDP of about $830 billion. Denmark’s land mass could fit within the state of Colorado. All that notwithstanding, a Danish investment firm called Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, through its ownership of Rye Development, is poised to wield an enormous economic and cultural influence on the Goldendale area and the Pacific Northwest. Rye Development is the company behind the Goldendale Energy Storage Project. The company sent a breathless email out last Thursday heralding a milestone, the issuing of an environmental impact study (EIS) from the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee (FERC). That EIS concluded the Goldendale Energy Storage Project was sound and recommended the project proceed. “This brings us one step closer to creating a more sustainable energy future for the Pacific Northwest,” Rye Executive Vice President Erik Steimle said in his message. “We appreciate the work of FERC to review and guide how the project’s construction and operation will proceed while protecting the environment and creating thousands of new jobs.” (Steimle’s message had a typo in it that we corrected; it initially said, “creating thousands of news jobs.” We in journalism salute his enthusiasm.) Rye has a website devoted to the project, appropriately titled GoldendaleEnergyStorage.com. The site has a plethora of docu-
See Energy page A8
CARRIGERSOLAR.COM
CONFLICT WITH DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE: The proposed Carriger Solar project met with comments about its potential damage to soil conditions around Goldendale. The company behind pushed back.
Solar project gets warning on soil, pushes back LOU MARZELES EDITOR
WSU
TREATY TERMS: The opening page of the Treaty of 1859 between the Yakama Nation tribes and the U.S. government. The treaty detailed terms for access by Native peoples to ceded territory.
Blood alcohol level bill dies in Senate committee CODY A. COURSON FOR THE SENTINEL
Senate bill 5002, which aimed to lower the legal blood alcohol level (BAC) from .08 to .05 for DUI arrests, was given the “X” file this past Thursday, February 15, by the Rules Committee in the Washington State Senate. The bill was headed up by 12 Senators, including Senators John Lovick, Marco Liias, Manka Dhingra, Patty Kuderer, Jim McCune, Joe Nguyen, Christine Rolfes, Sharon Shewmake, Javier Valdez, Claire Wilson, Jeff Wilson, and Lynda Wilson. The bill was introduced last year on January 9 and in its first reading was referred to review by the Senate Committee of Law & Justice. On January 19, executive action was taken to pass a substituted version of the
bill, where clarifications were made, and the bill was edited for readability. On January 20, the bill was referred to the Senate Committee for Transportation, and a reading was scheduled for February 9. Executive action was again taken to edit the bill, and it passed the Rules Committee to be scheduled for a second reading. However, on March 10, the Senate ruled against the bill. In the first meeting of the Senate’s 2024 Regular Season, on January 8, the bill was reintroduced on its present status and scheduled for a second reading by the rules committee. However, the bill once again was killed. The demise of the bill came as a relief to many Goldendale residents, who opposed the bill and called it “unnecessary, silly, and potentially dangerous” to the community’s civil rights
and local businesses. Though the bill has now been killed twice in Senate before it ever reached the House of Representatives, it is not necessarily gone for good. According to congress.gov, “Most questions that the Senate considers—from a motion to proceed to a bill, to each amendment, to the bill itself—are not subject to any debate limit. Simply put, Senate rules provide no way for a simple numerical majority to cut off or otherwise impose a debate limit and move to a final vote.” The bill can be introduced as many times as the sponsoring Senators have the desire to do so, regardless of how far along the process the bill may get. Though the bill is currently dead, it remains to be seen if it will come up in the next Senate session and in what form.
The company behind the Carriger solar project projected for the Goldendale area learned of a dire warning last month from the Washington State Department of Agriculture (Agriculture), and quickly rejected the agency’s assertions. Kelly McLain, policy advisor for Agriculture, warned the Washington State Energy Facility Site Evaluation Committee (EFSEC) in an email last August and reiterated last month that there was serious danger to soil conditions from the Carriger project. Agriculture warned, “This land is being removed from agricultural production. It is unlikely that the ground will produce yields after the project is decommissioned that equal the production values right now.” In August Agriculture detailed optimal processes for the Carriger project. These included avoiding placing solar equipment on high-value soil and irrigated land. “The softness of the soil has been acknowledged by the applicant and there are plans to add additional hardscaping products (gravel) to the site to allow for vehicles, equipment installation, and maintenance access,” Agriculture added. “In the original application, these are acknowledged as permanent site impacts. WSDA would like to see the proposed decommissioning information and requests that every effort is made to remove any material brought in for the purpose of energy production. The site should be re-vegetated by the applicant with the intention of returning the site to productive agricultural land use if possible.” Cypress Creek Renewables, the company behind the Carriger project, in rejecting Agriculture’s
comments stated, “As noted in the Project’s Application for Site Certification (ASC), the Project’s Maximum Project Extent (MPE)1 includes a total of 1,326 acres. Of that acreage, less than 70 acres are irrigated. The Applicant [Cypress Creek] has worked with its landowners to carefully site the Project to minimize impacts to irrigated ground to the extent practicable.” Cypress Creek then went on to say it evaluated data on high-value soils in the area. “The Applicant is not aware of a legal definition of high-value soils from WSDA or in the Revised Code of Washington (RCW) or Washington Administrative Code (WAC),” it said. “In addition to the crop productivity information provided by the NRCS NCCP Index, the Applicant also has landowner testimony to reference. One landowner that farms wheat in the southern portion of the Project MPE reported an average of 35 to 40 bushels of winter wheat per acre on an every-other-year basis. In comparison, the state’s average yield for winter wheat from 2012 to 2021 was 66 bushels per acre (USDA 2022). Furthermore, according to the Farmland Value Map produced by the Washington State University (WSU) Least-Conflict Solar Project (WSU 2023), the majority of the area within the MPE was ranked by the Project as having a relative farmland value of less than zero, which indicates a ‘low’ to ‘moderately low’ farmland value as compared to other agricultural lands in the Washington Columbia Plateau.” The Carriger project would unfold on about 1,300 acres and is projected to have a lifespan between 25 and 40 years. Agriculture considers the overwhelming majority of that land to be prime
‘It is unlikely the land will produce yields ... that equal production values right now.’
See Solar page A8