While progress is often necessary, it usually costs. Society's burden is deciding what moves make the most sense.
Magic Valley Energy (MVE), an affiliate of LS Power, is a recent player to seek investment in one of Idaho’s most prevalent natural resources: wind. However, in an unprecedented move, MVE is proposing a large-scale wind energy project on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land.
BLM manages its land for multiple uses; yet, this is the first time a wind project of this magnitude has gone this far in the BLM approval process.
In 2018, MVE began the process of siting a wind project in southern Idaho. They were turned down in several locations, including China Mountain, due to environmental and sage grouse concerns. They settled on the Lava Ridge site, located northeast of Twin Falls from Jerome to Rupert, citing it had fewer natural resource conflicts and was already an altered landscape.
In August of 2021, MVE submitted its proposal to the BLM. The BLM then acted to analyze the project.
BLM issues statement
On June 7, the BLM released its final environmental impact statement (EIS) for the proposed Lava Ridge Wind Project in Jerome, Lincoln and Minidoka Counties.
“The final EIS analyzed the proposed action, the no-action alternative and four action alternatives, assessing the impact of different corridor configurations,” writes Heather Tiel-Nelson, public affairs specialist for the BLM, Twin Falls District.
Each action alternative was designed to further reduce potential impacts to cultural resource concerns, visual resources, wildlife habitat and migration corridors, and surface and air transportation routes, she adds.
The BLM responded to more than 11,000 comments from stakeholders. The chosen preferred alternative seeks to balance renewable energy with environmental conservation and ensures other aspects of multiple-use are maintained, Tiel-Nelson writes.
Key aspects of the preferred alternative include:
- A maximum turbine corridor acreage of 100,000 – down from 197,000 acres
- A maximum turbine tip height of 660 feet – down from 740 feet
- A maximum number of turbines from 400 to 241
- The closest turbine to the Minidoka National Historic Site is located 9 miles away
- Requires seasonal use restrictions during construction
- Requires construction agreements between the applicant and ranchers to avoid major construction in pastures actively being grazed
MVE responds to final EIS
MVE has made several promises to Idahoans.
To keep energy local, MVE will:
- Set aside 100 megawatts through 2024 for any Idaho electric provider to procure for its customers
- Sell as much power as Idaho utilities want to purchase at a competitive price
For ranchers, MVE will:
- Improve forage and noxious weed control
- Make range improvements
- Increase access to trough sites and pipelines for ranchers
- Create opportunities to increase animal unit months (AUMs) held by permittees
Environmental and wildlife considerations include:
- Colocating infrastructure along existing disturbance areas, when possible
- Using appropriate setback distances from noted resources
- Limiting the number of fences
- Buffers from critical wildlife habitats (irrigation canals, sage grouse leks)
- Minimizing construction during wintering period
- Minimizing new roads, observing speed limits, minimizing noise disturbances
MVE projects that their wind project will generate $80 million in tax revenue and provide around $4 million to local schools, county general funds and recreation, and fire districts in Jerome, Lincoln and Minidoka counties every year.
Rancher, community response
John Arkoosh is a fourth-generation rancher from Gooding, Idaho. Between 2019 and 2020, Arkoosh was notified by his local BLM field office that a proposed wind energy project was going to be sited on his Star Lake allotment.
“We were given a heads-up that it was going to be pushed through, and we should get what we could out of the deal because there was pretty much no way to stop it,” Arkoosh recalls.
He and the six other permittees on the allotment immediately retained counsel with a public lands attorney.
The Lava Ridge proposal has already had a large financial impact on the ranchers’ businesses through the tens of thousands of dollars paid in attorney fees and in the hundreds of hours spent participating in the process to oppose the project.
With the help of the Stop Lava Ridge Committee and Friends of Minidoka, a group of Japanese-Americans who have ancestral ties to the WWII detention camp at Minidoka, Arkoosh’s group began traveling the state to spread the word about the Lava Ridge Wind Project.
“We spoke to both senators' [and] both representatives’ offices, Idaho Cattle Association, the governor, the lieutenant governor, all the county commissions that are involved, plus others that are in the surrounding area.
“And we really found no one that was in favor of this project. No one!” says Arkoosh.
“We’re currently preparing to appeal the record of decision if it’s anything but the no-action alternative.”
When asked about BLM’s reduced plan and MVE’s commitments, Arkoosh is skeptical and says promises and reality often look much different.
Permittees in the Star Lake allotment have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in water infrastructure for their cattle – pipeline, 50-plus water troughs, five wells throughout the allotment, etc. MVE has admitted that during construction, much of that will be damaged, and they are prepared to fix it.
“The problem is, how do you have cattle out there with no water?” Arkoosh challenges. “If you have an afternoon or a day where they interrupt the water to a group of cattle for even a few hours during hot, summer weather like this, you’re killing cattle.”
The original proposal calls for 2,200 vehicle trips per day across the allotment. Gray Weber, co-owner of Star Gate Ranch, lives 80 yards off the main allotment road.
“It’s basically a two-track farm road right now,” says Weber. “It’s going to become as busy as a lot of the main intersections.”
According to Weber, for MVE to do dust abatement on that many miles of road, especially during the summer months, it will be equivalent to irrigating 900 acres.
For its water, MVE is planning to drill six wells and rent water from the Idaho water bank, says Arkoosh.
“Maybe the state of Idaho is going to let them do that,” Arkoosh notes, but adds, “I hope they don't because I don’t think anyone is on board with it. I know the water users won’t be. Neither side will be.”
Weber and Arkoosh both cite concerns about drilling wells through a fractured basalt bedrock and MVE’s proposal to blast through bedrock for 50-foot-deep tower bases in an area with a bad history of blasting causing contamination problems in nearby wells.
“The amount of blasting that’s going to have to happen for a project of this size (two times per day for 525 consecutive days), that means, there’s going to be some stuff that messes up, for sure, whether that’s your irrigation wells or private wells. If your irrigation wells go offline for 10 days during the summer, you’re done for.”
Maybe the biggest concern that’s being overlooked, says Arkoosh, is the largest recharge site in Idaho sits in the middle of the proposed project.
“It takes 650 cubic feet per second, if you feed into it. It goes out there over about 100 acres and sinks into the ground, so that tells you what the aquifer is like under there. It’s just a really fractured basalt, and there’s potential for a lot of contamination.”
This is to say nothing of the disruption construction will cause to wildlife migration and wintering patterns; cattle management problems due to additional fencing, traffic and changes in watering locations; and the ever-present question of who the investors are for this kind of project, say both ranchers.
At the heart of the problem, Weber foresees trouble for the community’s future. He estimates the Star Lake allotment generates income for around 70 families. It’s obvious then that those ranch operations support many more businesses and schools throughout the small and large towns of southern Idaho and are part of the economic base for the state.
“If all the promises are true, and everybody sees the money they give to the schools and this and that and the other, to me, it’s really not a fix if those guys dry up and leave when you look at what they have invested.
“You're kind of trading a dollar over a dime, in my opinion,” Weber concludes.
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