Snake River Wind

Snake River Wind. I’m Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report.

Wind energy is really finding a home in the Pacific Northwest like the new Lower Snake River Wind Project. Alesia Ruchert is the Garfield County Managing Director for the Southwest Washington Economic Development Association.

RUCHERT: The Lower Snake River Wind Project is a privately developed wind energy farm and it’s located in Garfield County which is in southeast Washington. Puget Sound Energy actually owns the project and it consists of 149 2.3 megawatt Siemens turbines. They’re currently online; they flipped the switch at the end of March and they have the capacity to create up to almost 343 megawatts of electricity.

She says that contributes to the 25% of Washington’s renewable energy profile that all of southeast Washington is creating. It took a few years to get this project up and running.

RUCHERT: It started in 2002 or 2003 with the project developer Res-Americas coming to town and looking for sites to put up net towers which are the towers which monitor wind activity. Puget Sound Energy were the innovators and the forward thinking pioneers in looking at wind as a renewable resource in southeast Washington. They partnered with Res-Americas early on as the developer and the project just grew from there.

And there are plans for expansion.

RUCHERT: This is the first phase of a multi-phase project. The zoning and ordinance committee that was put together by the Garfield County commissioners actually wrote ordinances that would allow capacity for, I believe, between seven and eight hundred turbines in the county. Puget Sound Energy has been planning for subsequent phases following phase one.

Ruchert says some federal program dollars were important to getting the project off the ground and of course there is the benefit to the rural community.

RUCHERT: It has had a huge impact on our community in particular and Columbia County it kind of went before us with their projects and what I see is that renewables such as wind are an effective tool for diversification in rural agricultural communities that’s relatively low risk. It also subsidizes the farm income through land leases. As well it contributes to job creation

For additional information on clean energy, visit harvestcleanenergy.org. That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.