Editorial: Dressing up the West with wind turbines
Published 4:00 am Thursday, November 16, 2023
- Wind turbines line up across portions of the West.
What’s been missing from the scenic grandeur of the American West? Why massive solar arrays and gigantic wind generators.
The accounts of 16th Century European explorers of what would become the Western United States are filled with descriptions of awe-inspiring mountain ranges and river valleys. Today’s travelers from the Eastern U.S. still marvel at the spectacular beauty of the country.
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But now there’s something new to look at in the West — vast stretches of former farm and ranch land planted in solar arrays and wind turbines.
They may blot out the view of those iconic wide open spaces, but at least one developer says those alternative energy facilities can be neat and attractive.
Scout Clean Energy proposes to install up to 231 turbines and more than 5,000 acres of solar panels on farmland near the Tri-Cities in Washington’s Benton County, creating the state’s largest renewable energy installation.
“Turbines would dominate the existing landscape and viewshed,” according to the report prepared for the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council.
Seems a bit of an understatement.
Turbines would stretch for approximately 25 miles, with blade tips extending 499 feet into the air. Under an alternative plan, Scout would put up fewer turbines, 147, but with blades reaching 657 feet into the air.
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To reduce visual impacts, the EFSEC report recommended that turbines have no advertising and be kept clean. It says those measures would “incrementally lessen visual contrast,” but not reduce “impact magnitude.”
And, the report also suggested Scout mitigate impacts to views by installing color photographs at scenic viewpoints picturing the landscape before the windmills and solar panels were there.
Golf clap for the bureaucracy there. We agree that advertising would make these monstrosities worse. But, we don’t think photographs of the lost horizon are an adequate replacement for the real thing.
Still, the developers have put the best spin on all of this.
“The turbines and solar arrays will be uniform in design to present a trim, uncluttered, aesthetically attractive appearance,” according to Scout.
No doubt. We wonder if that’s what the people of Seattle would think if these facilities were built on a 25-mile swath of the shore of Bainbridge Island, and rose up to obscure their views of the Olympic Mountains.
Wind turbines are exactly what’s needed to dress up an otherwise drab West.
They may be necessary to meet the state’s carbon policies, but they are hardly attractive.