Harney County and the Steens Mountains: the next Gorge?
Posted on 12. Feb, 2010 by crowley in Blog, General
People see a lot of turbines in the east end of the Columbia River Gorge and wonder, “Is that going to happen in the Steens and southeastern Oregon, too?”
No. No, it’s not. For several reasons.
First and foremost, there simply are not many acres of land with sufficient wind resource. In fact, much of the best land (from a wind resource standpoint) is federally owned and designated as Wilderness or Wilderness Study Area (WSA). Those lands cannot be developed, period.
The map here has an overlay of publicly-available wind resource data and land ownership. Note how few acres show “developable” wind – it’s a total of about 95,000 acres. In a county of 10,000 square miles!
No, southeastern Oregon is NOT going to be the next Gorge, though a few good projects will be built where it is legal and appropriate to harvest these essential winter season winds to compliment the spring and summer winds in the Columbia River Gorge.
Oregonian to print retraction for erroneous photo, headline
Posted on 11. Feb, 2010 by crowley in Blog, General
The Oregonian’s early editions of the Sunday February 7th paper (printed on Saturday the 6th, called a “bulldog” edition) raised alarms around our community with a terribly misleading photo and headline… The headline was, “Picture a hundred turbines here” pasted across a beautiful photo of the High Steens.
Of course, there will be ZERO turbines in the High Steens or any part of the Wilderness. The editors apparently felt they could drum up interest with that headline and photo. Happily, they realized their mistake when we called them on it. They apparently agreed that it is reasonable that when a newspaper says “here,” they mean “here.” Once we discussed it, the editors agreed to change the paper substantially for the later editions that were delivered to Portland area subscribers.
But people outside the Portland area, or those who bought the “bulldog” in stores or coin boxes, saw the erroneous version and it did have an impact. Here’s an example we found on one web site that was posted after The Oregonian story ran.
Even we got a laugh out of this, kind of…
We love the Steens as much as anyone. We believe strongly that our projects there, on private property, outside of any federal or restricted land, will supply a vital link in the Northwest’ renewable energy mix with winter-peaking wind power and help rebuild a community eager to join the green economy.
Click here to view what the turbines will really look like. You’ll need to use the zoom tool in the pdf link to see the turbines in many of the viewpoints.
We appreciate The Oregonian’s willingness to correct the error. A retraction will appear in The Sunday Oregonian on Valentine’s Day, February 14th.
President Obama speaks out on jobs
Posted on 03. Feb, 2010 by crowley in Blog, General
“Jobs will be our No. 1 focus in 2010,” the President told an audience in Nashua, NH this week. “And we’re going to start where most new jobs do — with small businesses.”
We say hooray to that. The effects of the down economy are still felt acutely around Oregon.
A friend from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) provided some stark statistics from Oregon locals. Unemployment among IBEW members was 33% in the Portland area (Local 48); 47% percent in central Oregon (Local 280) and 47% in southern Oregon (Local 659). Unemployment that high among those skilled workers is a sure sign that recovery still has a ways to go.
CEP and IBEW have worked together on projects and policy for years. We’d like to work together again on putting IBEW members to work on the Greater Echanis wind projects and help to bring these fabulous resources on line soon.
Two voices speak out on need for jobs…
Posted on 27. Jan, 2010 by crowley in Blog, General
The Oregonian Editorial Board wrote on January 25th about ‘Obama’s plan to aid the middle class:’
When President Barack Obama addresses the nation Wednesday night, he will drag to the lectern rock-heavy bags from a trying first year: an economy at the edge of collapse, stepped up war deployments and metastatic joblessness. All of it big, all of it morphing with each passing week, all of it occurring at stratospherically expensive levels as Oregonians struggle to pay their rent or mortgage and feed the family.
His announcement Monday that he would … aim his best efforts at removing economic pain from the middle class is good news to us, indeed. Exactly how he will do that is just emerging, and we hope to hear in his State of the Union address that measures designed to make life easier for middle-income workers will be swift and without corollary damage to the untargeted.
-Oregonian, January 25, 2010
In Harney County Oregon, where our Greater Echanis wind projects are located, the pain of this recession is acute. Here’s what one person wrote in a letter to the Editor of the January 20th Burns Times Herald:
“A voice needs to be heard! A helping hand needs to be extended to the hardworking men and women who break their backs every day just to try and survive! Proud Americans are struggling to make ends meet. One paycheck doesn’t make it to the next. (…) The people sitting in their big comfy chairs on Capitol Hill need to take a step down and spend a month in the shoes of a struggling middle class citizen. Maybe then they will understand how hard it is to make it from paycheck to paycheck. Maybe they will see the real hardships people are facing every day.”
- Letter to the editor of Burns Times Herald, January 20, 2010
CEP hopes the President will renew his pledge to rebuild America’s economy on the strength of renewable energy projects and infrastructure, which produce jobs in fragile communities like Harney County that cannot be exported, produce many other long term benefits and will help reverse global climate change. Our Greater Echanis Projects are ready to be part of that effort – now!
The future for PGE’s Boardman coal plant
Posted on 22. Jan, 2010 by crowley in Blog, General
PGE’s recent announcement that the company plans to step up the timetable to close its Boardman coal-fired power plant has generated a range of reactions, from “hooray!” to concerns for cost and ability to meet base load power needs. The Oregonian opined on the topic on January 19:
Some environmentalists have argued that emissions from the Boardman plant are such that it should be shut down as early as next year, or at least by 2014. Whether Boardman’s emissions merit that action, a rash one in our view, has yet to be proven to the appropriate regulators, but it is certain that shutting down the plant in 2011 or 2014 would throw customers of the state’s largest electric utility into a world of uncertainty.- Oregonian, Jan. 19, 2010.
Maybe, but probably not so much. PGE will not put their customers in jeopardy in terms of reliable supply. And the whole process, which requires Oregon Public Utility Commission consideration and approval, is likely to end up with a good result. A compromise result, to be sure, but anyone concerned about global climate change should be encouraged by this step.
Whatever resource PGE taps for power to replace power from Boardman, having electrons from our Greater Echanis projects on the grid will help decrease the likelihood that all of that replacement power comes from fossil fuels alone. If you look at the comparative production profile of our wind projects and those in the Columbia River Gorge area, you see that “blending” these diverse resources provides a remarkably uniform, renewable resource. That’s what the region needs to replace coal and reduce our dependence on fossil and imported fuels. The Greater Echanis wind projects are a vital part of making that goal a reality!
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