The status of a nearly completed wind power station, in construction since 2020 in the Lompoc Valley, is up in the air due to an “embarrassing” oversight, Santa Barbara County Planning Commissioner John Parke said during a recent hearing.
“This is an embarrassing item in a lot of ways. … Embarrassing is not a strong enough word,” Parke said at the county Planning Commission’s July 12 meeting, during a three-hour discussion on the Strauss Wind Energy Project and its owner’s request to begin operating without a golden eagle incidental take permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
When the project was greenlit by the county Board of Supervisors in January 2020, one of its conditions of approval was to either obtain the permit—designed to mitigate a permit holder’s significant impacts to golden eagles—or provide a letter from Fish and Wildlife stating that the permit is on track to be granted or has been deemed unnecessary before operations commence.
BayWa, the renewable energy company behind the project, began its application process for the permit in March 2023, but hopes to begin operating its 29 wind turbine generators southwest of Lompoc before the end of this summer.
“It was not given the right priority. But I can’t do much about that,” Gordon MacDougall, the CEO of BayWa since February, said at the commission’s July 12 meeting. “Maybe the reason it’s not been done is one of the reasons I’m standing here, as a different face and a different leader of our business, and I think that’s an important point that you need to consider.
“We could have gone much quicker, so I can spend time trying to find reasons and soften that somewhat,” MacDougall added. “What I haven’t been willing to do is come and say here’s a scapegoat, here’s an individual—there’s no point in me doing that.”
While BayWa waits for Fish and Wildlife to conduct its analysis of the project to consider issuing the permit, an “unknown and likely lengthy time frame,” according to the staff report, the company requested authorization to begin operating in the meantime.
“This is not a contest on whether BayWa was good or bad. … That’s not what this is about,” Parke said during deliberations. “It’s about do we, this commission, find legitimate reasons to want this project to go forward and go forward today. Every time we shorten, delay, deny wind energy projects and so forth, then the longer we continue with some of the nuclear power and other options that some citizens don’t like.”
In favor of granting BayWa’s request, Parke suggested that a new condition of approval should be that a representative of the company returns to the Planning Commission on a periodic basis, determined by staff, to disclose updates on the project’s progress in obtaining the permit.
“Whether they [BayWa] were diligent or not, let’s not hurt everybody else in the county and the state by denying this fix,” Parke said. “I think of it in family terms. If I have a son and he borrows my car and stays out too late, does it do any good for the rest of my family for me to take the car and say, ‘I’m gonna lock it in the garage for three years’? No. It just hurts everybody else.”
Members of the county Planning Commission unanimously agreed to direct staff to make findings to approve BayWa’s request to modify the Strauss Wind Project. The topic will be revisited at the commission’s Aug. 9 meeting.
