March 21, 2018
Washington

EFSEC to meet Tuesday in Ellensburg

By Daily Record Staff | March 20, 2018 | www.dailyrecordnews.com

The Washington Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council will meet at 1:30 p.m., Tuesday at the Kittitas County Event Center. Included on the agenda are discussions of the TUUSSO Energy solar wind farm proposals and the Desert Claim wind farm.

TUUSSO Energy applied for a site certification agreement from EFSEC to construct and operate five solar arrays and two generation tie lines in Kittitas County. Collectively the installations would span 200 acres of leased land and are known as the Columbia Solar project. Each new solar array would be capable of providing up to 5 megawatts of solar energy within the Puget Sound Energy service area, for a total of 25 megawatts of electrical power generation.

TUUSSO Energy requested in its application an expedited review process. An application is eligible for expedited review if EFSEC determines the environmental impacts are not significant or can be mitigated to non-significant levels under the State Environmental Policy Act and when a project is consistent with city, county, or regional land-use plans.

EFSEC released an environmental determination of mitigated non-significance for the proposed Columbia Solar project in February.

If the Columbia Solar project is determined to be eligible for expedited review, EFSEC would have 180 days from the time of application submission to make a recommendation to the governor.

DESERT CLAIM

The Desert Claim Wind Power project originally received a site certification agreement from EFSEC in 2010 to construct 95 wind turbines, producing 190 megawatts, located on approximately 5,200 contiguous acres in Kittitas County.

On Feb. 26, Desert Claim Wind Power LLC submitted to EFSEC a request to amend its site certification agreement to build a smaller project instead.

The proposal calls for a maximum power capacity of 100 megawatts using 31 turbines.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2018/03/21/efsec-to-meet-tuesday-in-ellensburg/