Wind Farm Trump Killed Derails a Major Transmission Line
The collateral damage from the Lava Ridge wind project might now include a proposed 285-mile transmission line initially approved by federal regulators in the 1990s.
The same movement that got Trump to kill the Lava Ridge wind farm Trump killed has appeared to derail a longstanding transmission project that’s supposed to connect sought-after areas for wind energy in Idaho to power-hungry places out West.
The Southwest Intertie Project-North, also known as SWIP-N, is a proposed 285-mile transmission line initially approved by federal regulators in the 1990s. If built, SWIP-N is supposed to feed power from the wind-swept plains of southern Idaho to the Southwest, while shooting electrons – at least some generated from solar power – back up north into Idaho from Nevada, Utah, and Arizona. In California, regulators have identified the line as crucial for getting cleaner wind energy into the state’s grid to meet climate goals.
But on Tuesday, SWIP-N suddenly faced a major setback: The three-person commission representing Jerome County, Idaho – directly in the path of the project – voted to revoke its special use permit, stating the company still lacked proper documentation to meet the terms and conditions of the approval. SWIP-N had the wind at its back as recently as last year, when LS Power expected it to connect to Lava Ridge and other wind farms that have been delayed by Trump’s federal permitting freeze on renewable energy. But now, the transmission line has stuttered along with this potential generation.
At a hearing Tuesday evening, county commissioners said Great Basin Transmission, a subsidiary of LS Power developing the line, would now suddenly need new input, including the blessing of the local highway district and potential feedback from the Federal Aviation Administration. Jerome County Commissioner Charles Howell explained to me Wednesday afternoon that there will still need to be formal steps remanding the permit, and the process will go back to local zoning officials. Great Basin Transmission will then at minimum need to get the sign-offs from local highway officials to satisfy his concerns, as well as those of the other commissioner who voted to rescind the permit, Ben Crouch.
The permit was many years old, and there are outstanding questions about what will happen next procedurally, including what Great Basin Transmission is actually able to do to fight this choice by the commissioners. At minimum, staff for the commission will write a formal decision explaining the reasoning and remand the permit. After that, it’ll be up to Great Basin Transmission to produce the documents that commissioners want. “Even our attorney and staff didn’t have those answers when we asked that after the vote,” Howell said, adding that he hopes the issues can be resolved. “I was on the county commission about when they decided where to site the towers, where to site the right-of-ways. That’s all been there a long time.”
This is the part where I bring up how Jerome County’s decision followed a months-long fight by aggrieved residents who opposed the SWIP-N line, including homeowners who say they didn’t know their properties were in the path of the project. There’s also a significant anti-wind undercurrent, as many who are fighting this transmission line previously fought LS Power’s Lava Ridge wind project, which was blocked by and executive order from President Donald Trump on his first day in office. Jerome County itself passed an ordinance in May requiring any renewable energy facility to get all federal, state, and local approvals before it would sign off on new projects.
Opposition to SWIP-N comes from a similar place as the “Stop Lava Ridge” campaign. Along with viewshed anxieties and property value impacts, SWIP-N, like Lava Ridge, would be within single-digit miles of the Minidoka National Historic Site, a former prison camp that held Japanese-Americans during World War II. In the eyes of its staunchest critics, constructing the wind farm would’ve completely damaged any impact of visiting the site by filling the surroundings of what is otherwise a serene, somber scene. Descendants of Minidoka detainees lobbied politicians at all levels to oppose Lava Ridge, a cause that was ultimately championed by Republican politicians in their fight against the project.
These same descendants of Japanese-American detainees have fought the transmission line, arguing that its construction would inevitably lead to new wind projects. “If approved, the SWIP-N line would enable LS Power and other renewable energy companies to build massive wind projects on federal land in and around Jerome County in future years,” wrote Dan Sakura, the son of a Minidoka prisoner, in a September 15 letter to the commission.
Sakura had been a leading voice in the fight against Lava Ridge. When I asked why he was weighing in on SWIP-N, he told me over text message, “The Lava Ridge wind project poisoned the well for renewable energy projects on federal land in Southern Idaho.”
LS Power did not respond to a request for comment.
It’s worth noting that efforts have already been made to avoid SWIP-N’s impacts to the Minidoka National Historic Site. In 2010, Congress required the Interior Secretary to re-do the review process for the transmission line, which at the time was proposed to go through the historic site. The route rejected by Jerome County would go around.
There is also no guarantee that wind energy will flock to southern Idaho any time soon. Yes, there’s a Trump permitting freeze, and federal wind energy tax credits are winding down. That’s almost certainly why the developers of small nuclear reactors have reportedly coveted the Lava Ridge site for future projects. But there’s also incredible hostility pent up against wind partially driven by the now-defunct LS Power project, for instance in Lincoln County, where officials now have an emergency moratorium banning wind energy while they develop a more permanent restrictive ordinance.
Howell made no bones about his own views on wind farms, telling me he prefers battery storage and nuclear power. “As I stand here in my backyard, if they put up windmills, that’s all I’m going to see for 40 miles,” he said
But Howell did confess to me that he thinks SWIP-N will ultimately be built – if the company is able to get these new sign-offs. What kind of energy flows through a transmission line cannot ultimately affect the decision on the special use permit because, he said, “there are rules.” On top of that, Idaho is going to ultimately need more power no matter what, and at the very least, the state will have to get electrons from elsewhere.
Howell’s “non-political” answer to the fate of SWIP-N, as he put it to me, is that “We live on power, so we gotta have more power.”
