During more than 15 years of reporting on the opposition to solar and wind projects, I’ve never seen anything like the opposition to the Lava Ridge wind project.
As I explained in these pages last September, the entire state of Idaho was against it.
In 2023, the Idaho House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution stating its opposition to the proposed project, which aimed to put a 1,200-megawatt wind project on 57,000 acres of federal land near the southern Idaho town of Dietrich. Residents objected to the project for multiple reasons, including concerns that it would infringe on the Minidoka National Historic Site, which commemorates the incarceration of thousands of Japanese-American citizens during World War II.
Despite the state’s fierce opposition, the Biden administration predictably did Big Wind’s bidding. On December 11, 2024, less than six weeks before Joe Biden left the White House, the Department of Interior published a short note in the Federal Register saying that it would issue a permit for New York-based LS Power to build the 231-turbine project on acreage owned by the Bureau of Land Management.
Last Wednesday, in a move that numerous Idaho politicians applauded, the Trump Administration rescinded that permit. The Interior Department said it “will no longer provide preferential treatment towards unreliable, intermittent power sources that harm rural communities, livelihoods and the land.” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the decision “defends the American taxpayer, safeguards our land, and averts what would have been one of the largest, most irresponsible wind projects in the nation.”
Now that the Trump administration has done the right thing on Lava Ridge, it should also put a stop to Philip Anschutz’s massive Chokecherry and Sierra Madre wind project in Wyoming, which aims to use even more federal land than Lava Ridge. Anschutz, a Denver-based billionaire, is a major Republican donor. If he succeeds in getting his Wyoming wind project built, it will have a deadly, long-term impact on America’s Golden Eagle population. It will also slaughter thousands of other birds and some 6,300 bats every year.
Let’s take a look.
The wind industry’s deadly impact on birds is well known. I have been reporting on the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act for more than 30 years. For decades, the wind industry has largely been exempted from the enforcement of those statutes.
Read the rest of this piece at: Robert Bryce Substack.
Robert Bryce is a Texas-based author, journalist, film producer, and podcaster. His articles have appeared in a myriad of publications including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes, Time, Austin Chronicle, and Sydney Morning Herald.
Photo: Jon Nelson, via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.
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