Eastern Oregon attracts wind power
Officials say they have seen a jump in interest in places like Harney County
By KATE RAMSAYER
The (Bend) Bulletin
Thursday, August 14, 2008 10:29 AM PDT
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| Wind turbines tower over a tractor and plow on Eastern Oregon farmland being prepared for summer wheat near Wasco, March 4, 2002. In Oregon’s Harney County, the Bureau of Land Management and the county have seen a jump in interest surrounding the windy Eastern Oregon ridges and peaks near Steens Mountain as companies look for different sources of the renewable power to meet state standards. |
BEND (AP) — The amount of wind power produced along the blustery Columbia Gorge is expected to more than triple in coming years. But the Gorge isn’t the only Oregon locale that wind development companies are eyeing.
In Harney County, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the county have seen a jump in interest surrounding the windy Eastern Oregon ridges and peaks near Steens Mountain as wind development companies look for different sources of the renewable power to meet state standards.
Harney County has already permitted one wind farm and is considering three more — a wind farm typically has between 45 to 50 turbines that each measure 400 feet tall. And the Burns BLM district is handling numerous requests for permits to test the winds in the area.
“We are seeing quite a bit of interest,” said Karla Bird, field manager with the Bureau of Land Management’s Burns district. “Within the last three months, we’ve had multiple companies racing each other through the doors.”
This summer, the bureau has received seven applications for wind-testing facilities, said Skip Renchler, real estate specialist with the Burns district.
That’s in addition to requests to amend the permits for the two existing test towers, which were approved a couple of years ago.
The new companies hope to put 34 meteorological towers across the Burns district that would gauge the winds across 158,000 acres of public land to see if they are strong enough to turn turbines consistently.
“When we typically have little mountain ranges, every time the air moves past, it’s pushed up and over,” Bird said. “Currently, wind farms in Oregon produce almost 900 megawatts of electricity, said Lou Torres, spokesman with the Oregon Department of Energy. One megawatt can power between 300 and 400 average homes. But the wind farms that have either been approved or are under construction would add 2,400 megawatts to that total in the coming years, he said.
“Oregon in the next couple of years will move from around ninth in the country (for wind power production) to maybe third,” Torres said.
Under the 2005 Energy Policy Act, the Bureau of Land Management was directed to make as much public land available for energy development as it can, Bird said, but it still has to do environmental analysis on the effect of the wind turbines.
And there are regulations that prevent testing in a wilderness area, a wilderness study area, areas covered by the Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Act, and areas that are within two miles of a sage grouse lek, or mating site.
“We may not have as much as people would like us to have available,” she said.
Horizon Wind Energy, which has developed more than 2,000 megawatts of wind power across the country, applied for permission to put up meteorological test poles in both the Stinkingwater Mountains and Pueblo Mountains in southeastern Oregon in 2006, said Valerie Schafer Franklin, project development manager with the company. The test poles make sure there would be winds strong enough to generate sufficient power.
