1. Benton County, Washington – The Horse Heaven wind farm in Washington State could become the next Lava Ridge — if the Federal Aviation Administration wants to take up the cause.
- On Monday, Dan Newhouse, Republican congressman of Washington, sent a letter to the FAA asking them to review previous approvals for Horse Heaven, claiming that the project’s development would significantly impede upon air traffic into the third largest airport in the state, which he said is located ten miles from the project site. To make this claim Newhouse relied entirely on the height of the turbines. He did not reference any specific study finding issues.
- There’s a wee bit of irony here: Horse Heaven – a project proposed by Scout Clean Energy – first set up an agreement to avoid air navigation issues under the first Trump administration. Nevertheless, Newhouse asked the agency to revisit the determination. “There remains a great deal of concern about its impact on safe and reliable air operations,” he wrote. “I believe a rigorous re-examination of the prior determination of no hazard is essential to properly and accurately assess this project’s impact on the community.”
- The “concern” Newhouse is referencing: a letter sent from residents in his district in eastern Washington whose fight against Horse Heaven I previously chronicled a full year ago for The Fight. In a letter to the FAA in September, which Newhouse endorsed, these residents wrote there were flaws under the first agreement for Horse Heaven that failed to take into account the full height of the turbines.
- I was first to chronicle the risk of the FAA grounding wind project development at the beginning of the Trump administration. If this cause is taken up by the agency I do believe it will send chills down the spines of other project developers because, up until now, the agency has not been weaponized against the wind industry like the Interior Department or other vectors of the Transportation Department (the FAA is under their purview).
- When asked for comment, FAA spokesman Steven Kulm told me: “We will respond to the Congressman directly.” Kulm did not respond to an additional request for comment on whether the agency agreed with the claims about Horse Heaven impacting air traffic.
2. Dukes County, Massachusetts – The Trump administration signaled this week it will rescind the approvals for the New England 1 offshore wind project.
- Justice Department attorneys motioned Tuesday to remand previous approvals for the project in a federal case brought by anti-offshore wind activists, stating that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is “reassessing its consideration” of “factors” considered in its environmental review under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. The DOJ also asked the court to stay the case.
- At this juncture, it feels likely the court will approve the Trump administration’s request because of a previous ruling on the SouthCoast wind project granting permission for its permitting decisions to be remanded back to BOEM.
3. Washtenaw County, Michigan – Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel waded into the fight over an Oracle and OpenAI data center in a rural corner of the state, a major escalation against AI infrastructure development by a prominent Democratic official.
- Last month, Nessel intervened with the Michigan Public Service Commission against a deal between DTE – the largest utility in the state – and the developer of a data center in Saline, a tiny town northwest of Detroit with lots of farmland (a classic tell that there’ll be problems for the project). Nessel told the PSC to consider the case “contested” and that the public versions of the contracts were so significantly redacted that even her office couldn’t tell if there were risks to ratepayers.
- Now Nessel is doing a media tour against the facility, telling anyone who will listen that she is against the project and thinks it could be giving Michiganders a raw deal. This has put Nessel at odds with the state’s current governor Gretchen Whitmer, who backs the project and is urging a hasty approval.
- I covered Nessel’s race for attorney general as a cub reporter nearly a decade ago, when she rode consternation against Trump into office during a midterm election, and she is considered to be a likely future gubernatorial candidate. For that reason alone I believe her outsized opposition to this project is a tell she is trying to ride the political wave against this industry – and we should expect other attorneys general to follow in Democrat-controlled states.
4. Nacogdoches County, Texas – I am eyeing the fight over a solar project in this county for potential chicanery over species and habitat protection.
- At issue is Middlebrook, a utility-scale facility proposed by Solar Proponent, which is being developed near an incredibly popular fishing area, Lake Nacogdoches. Texas, unlike many states, does not afford its counties the right to completely ban solar projects via moratoria. This means any aggrieved residents will have to use unorthodox methods to stop a project like this.
- This is probably why people fighting the project have keyed in on its proximity to the lake and the existence of federally endangered and threatened species elsewhere in the county to petition county officials to demand the Fish and Wildlife Service survey the project site before construction, as well as Texas Parks and Wildlife.
- What happens if the county demands a Fish and Wildlife review? The Trump administration has ordered the agency to screen all survey requests for solar projects through the Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum, and other top political leaders at the agency. If this effort gains steam, it would give opponents a potential leg up to delay development.
5. Fulton County, Ohio – In brighter news for the solar industry, Ohio is blessing more of their projects.
- The Ohio Power Siting Board greenlit a Repsol solar project – Ritter Station Solar - that’ll be located outside the town of Fayette. The project will have to comply with nearly 60 conditions for development but the project is able to proceed with its large size of more than 1,000 acres.
- Per the OPBS, residents were divided in testimony at the agency’s public hearing on the project, and both the host community of Gorham Township and the Fulton County Commission both submitted statements opposing the project. Nevertheless, OPSB staff found no reason to object against issuance of the certificate – a permitting win for a project that seems to have needed one.
