Labrador Letter – LAVA RIDGE
From Raul Labrador, Idaho Attorney General
June 21, 2024
Dear Friends,
There are few projects that have solidified such widespread opposition as the Lava Ridge wind development proposal, forced on the people of Idaho by the Biden Administration and an East Coast energy consortium. They want to build a massive wind farm on federal land in Idaho’s beautiful Magic Valley and sell the generated power to California so they can run their air conditioners and charge their mandated electric vehicles. All at the expense of Idaho’s farms, ranches, tribes, natural resources, and beautiful vistas, while turning Idaho into a giant windmill wasteland to power the Biden Administration’s radical green-energy agenda.
The original proposal was for several hundred wind turbines at the Lava Ridge site, towering at over 700’. These would easily be the tallest turbines in the nation, taller than the largest building in downtown Boise and even taller than the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. The initial backlash against the proposal prompted the proponents to marginally scale down the size and scope. Nonetheless, the problems with this proposal persist.
These towering turbines, still the tallest in the nation, would harm migratory birds and bats. They would be built right on the migratory path for pronghorn antelope and mule deer. The blasting required to install these behemoth turbines can result in coliform contamination or collapse in nearby domestic wells. The turbines would be built on top of archaeological sites of cultural significance to our tribal nation neighbors, as well as casting an ominous shadow across the historical sites of Idaho’s Japanese internment camps of WWII.
Every project of this size requires an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), with comments from potentially involved federal agencies. Keeping in mind this project is being rushed through by the Biden Administration, it’s no surprise that federal agencies are either supportive of this project or suspiciously mute.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) submitted comments to the EIS stating these towering turbines posed “no hazard” to aviation in the area. Of course, the FAA specifically declined to account for low-level flights that occurred below 500’. There are almost 13,000 annual flights out of the Magic Valley airports related to agricultural support, like crop-dusting and aerial re-seeding. Each of those flights occurs at under 500’. But that inconvenient fact didn’t get mentioned by the FAA.
That’s when my office stepped in and filed an administrative appeal to the FAA’s report, insisting they account for those low-level flights and evaluate the danger this causes to our local pilots and agricultural community. The FAA must now amend their comments to the Bureau of Land Management before a final report is issued. It may seem like bureaucratic wrangling and legalese, but this is only the beginning. We will take every legal step and use every resource and recourse my office has available to stop this project in its tracks.
The Lava Ridge project has united farmers, ranchers, environmentalists, hunters, water users, tribal nations, state and local governments, aviators, historians, archaeologists, and almost anyone that doesn’t want to see a massive windfarm sprout up in the middle of Idaho designed to ship power out-of-state.
The Biden Administration often drones on about unity and bringing people together. The Lava Ridge proposal might be their biggest accomplishment yet; they brought Idaho together, just not in the way they likely intended.
Best regards,
