(The Center Square) – A bill to give local communities more say in large renewable energy projects got a public hearing this week, but Washington Rep. Mary Dye, R-Pomeroy, isn’t holding her breath that her sponsored legislation will get a vote out of committee this session.
House Bill 1188 would prohibit the governor from approving recommendations by the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council if county commissioners for affected counties or tribes do not support it.
Dye is the ranking Republican on the House Environment & Energy Committee and told The Center Square the bill was introduced in response to former Gov. Jay Inslee’s decision to press ahead with the massive Horse Heavens wind and solar energy project near the Tri-Cities.
That’s despite opposition from Benton County, local residents and members of the Yakama Nation, as well as concerns from state biologists over impacts to ferruginous hawk nests.
Inslee’s final decision did include the incorporation of some mitigation measures to address wildlife and habitat concerns.
“There were so many good people that signed in and testified, and I was very pleased that the counties came in in support,” Dye said. “Overall, the message got back to this body loud and clear that the people that are expected to host renewable energy are not being heard.”
Dye said Inslee’s handling of the process for authorizing the Horse Heaven Hills project left locals out.
“They’re being disrespected, and they are not considering that we care about our community and our environment, and these projects are not without significant impacts on our community,” she explained.
As previously reported by The Center Square, EFSEC initially voted to scale back the Tri-Cities wind and solar project based on concerns from the local community, but Inslee pushed back, convincing EFSEC to approve the initial plans with a much larger footprint.
“When you place large industrial development in a small community where people are being exploited, they have no power to confront the situation,” Dye said. “They are going up against the power of government and these global corporations that have enormous amounts of capital behind them and lots of federal subsidy behind them, so it’s like David and Goliath.”
“This is debilitating the moral character of what we are as a culture,” she said. “It’s crushing who we are and taking away our identity.”
She urged people to pay attention to the large investment companies behind renewable energy projects in Washington.
“We don’t even know the holdings in these giant corporations,” Dye said. “They’ve got to get us off the land because they can’t fundamentally transform the American system with us staying there and they are destroying us through energy policy.”
Before the public hearing, 85 citizens signed in support of the bill, with 27 signing in against it.
The Center Square reached out to the committee chair that gave Dye’s bill a hearing to see if a vote is expected on the measure but didn’t receive a response to an emailed inquiry by the time of publication.
When asked if she thought the bill would be voted on out of committee, Dye said, “I doubt it.”
HB 1188 contains an emergency clause, which means that if it’s approved by the Legislature and signed into law by new Gov. Bob Ferguson, it would take effect immediately.
This article was originally published at www.thecentersquare.com
