OPINION: Wind farms are drying out the soils of eastern Washington

Who would have ever thought that Washington Gov. Jay Inslee wants to turn the eastern portion of his state into a region of dry counties? Apparently he thinks that the residents over here have too much liquid in their lives and so they need to dry up. Actually, he probably doesn’t even know that he’s desiccating you or, if he does, he doesn’t care since that would interfere with his green energy agenda.

Oh, don’t worry. He’s not taking your access to alcohol away. He likes taxing you too much to do that. What he wants to do is to put more wind farms in place and at a faster rate so that somehow Washington can save the planet from “human-caused climate change.” The problem is that in the throes of his obsession, he’s ignoring the science and his clean energy program is going to create even more problems for the farmers and ranchers east of the Cascades.

In their article titled “Climatic Impacts of Wind Power,” which was published in the Dec. 19, 2018, edition of the scientific journal Joule, authors and Harvard University researchers Lee M. Miller and David W. Keith show that wind farms at the local level increase the overall surface and ambient air temperatures by as much as 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit to 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit. Now that doesn’t sound like much but the higher temperatures occur mostly at night and that difference can be as high as 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit. The warming is caused by the windmills mixing warmer upper atmospheric air with the cooler ground level air. The effect is to keep the entire area warmer than it would be naturally. The local area effect is exacerbated by a greater number of windmills and those that have larger blades.

Where these higher temperatures come into play is the subject of a study titled: “Wind farms dry surface soil in temporal and spatial variation,” which was published in the January 2023 edition of Science of the Environment by professor Gang Wang and others from the School of Resources and Environmental Engineering at Ludong University in China. Their study looked at the effect of wind farms on the grasslands of China. Their conclusions were:

Wind farms significantly reduced soil moisture within the wind farms and in the upwind and downwind directions. Compared with the upwind and downwind directions, the decrease in soil moisture within the wind farms was the most, and the annual decrease in soil moisture within wind farms reached 4.4%.

Wind farms have different influences on the soil moisture in the upwind and downwind directions in each season. Reductions are greatest in the upwind direction in spring and the downwind direction in summer and autumn.

The wind farm reduced the soil moisture most significantly downwind of the wind farm throughout the day, with an average value of up to 2.85%. The decrease in the soil moisture upwind was the least significant, only by 0.21%.

Similar studies within wind farms in Texas and Illinois also showed significant decreases in soil moisture.

A further study from northern Germany, which has a high concentration of wind turbines, has seen an unusual dry spell since 2019. The North Sea region has an extremely high concentration of installed wind energy capacity. Conversely, southern Germany has a very low concentration of installed wind energy capacity. Germany’s drought happens to be worse in the regions with lots of wind turbines.

In his final approval of the Horse Heaven wind farm in Benton County, south of the Tri-Cities, Inslee made it clear to the members of the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council that he was not happy with how long they had taken to approve the project. As reported by the Tri-City Herald, Inslee stated: “I strongly encourage the council to identify opportunities to increase its efficiency and provide for more timely decision making.”

Now remember that this council originally scaled back that project to protect ferruginous hawks, a threatened species. After hearing complaints from the developers, Scout Energy, LLC, Inslee directed the council to reconsider the application and approve the full size project as originally proposed. His comments at that time included this statement: “ ... Significant impacts may be accepted as part of this vital project where they cannot be reasonably mitigated.”

Apparently some of those significant impacts that are acceptable to him include higher temperatures and drying out the soil in and around the wind farm.

Now, Inslee won’t be able to ram future wind energy projects down the throats of eastern Washington residents. What his successor, Gov.-elect Bob (“I want to sue Trump everyday”) Ferguson, will do is anyone’s guess. However the existence and power of the state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council will go a long way to the approval and development of further wind farm energy projects. And that will include the approval of the Harvest Hills wind project at the base of Kamiak Butte.

Almost all of the agriculture in Whitman County is dryland farming. As such, soil moisture is very precious and there is no surplus that can be lost to the soil drying caused by wind farms. Property owners who are downwind and outside the project may very well want to look at a lawsuit to stop a wind farm that can easily reduce their crop yields and negatively affect their livelihood.

Lee, Miller and Wang all state that wind farms come with significant environmental costs. Perhaps it’s past time for the wind energy supporters, politicians and regulatory agencies to look closely at their research and listen to what they say before they force their agenda onto the people who will pay the price for their obsession.

Hassoldt is a field forester who lives in Kendrick.