PCW 'breezes' through permit hearing

Chairman Shawn Warner closed the meeting by telling Bill Miller and his crew to "enjoy your 15 minutes of euphoria".

Miller, the Senior Vice President of Energy and Land Resources for the Anschutz Corporation, president and CEO of Power Company of Wyoming (PCW) and the Overland Trail Cattle Company, and the rest of PCW congratulated each other with hugs, handshakes and tears.

This was at the end of day two of PCW's Industrial Siting Council (ISC) hearing for the Chokecherry Sierra Madre wind farm (CCSM). The ISC voted unanimously to approve PCW's application for the CCSM project. All of the 15 interested parties voiced their support of the project moving forward.

Throughout the two-day ISC hearing, details of housing availability, the pool of available local workforce and standards for decommissioning and reclamation were the only three concerns consistently voiced.

Linda Wagner, a council member from the town of Hanna, wanted to know how the housing study was conducted and why some of the available rentals in and near Hanna were not included in the application report. Joe Hammond, Principal Project Manager for CH2MHill, explained the intricacies of how the available housing was reported, and how commitments by interested property owners were gathered. Hammond was also responsible for detailing the available workforce and potential effects on Carbon County employers.

Peter Branjord, ISC member, wanted clarification on the differences between federal and state standards for the depth of soil that must be reclaimed. The concern is PCW is asking the state for a variance that will allow them to reclaim only enough soil to remove the pedestal portion of the foundation. That is the BLM requirement, which is often six inches less than the 48 inch ISC requirement.

According to PCW, only reclaiming to the depth of the pedestal will cause significantly less disturbance around the foundation of the wind turbines than the state requirement because the underlying concrete mat will not have to be removed. Ultimately, the ISC was satisfied with this explanation, and it would not set a detrimental precedent for future projects.

Other decommissioning issues involved leaving structural cables in the ground, removal and reclamation of roads, vegetation restoration and the soil needs of sagebrush.

Legally interested parties in the PCW CCSM project include: the counties of Carbon, Albany and Sweetwater, the towns of Saratoga, Encampment, Riverside, Rawlins, Sinclair, Medicine Bow, Hanna, Elk Mountain and Laramie, Voices of the Valley, the Saratoga-Encampment Conservation District and the Wyoming Building and Trade Council.

Plans for the CCSM project include: 1,000 wind turbines, a system for collection of the electric power and distribution to the proposed TransWest Express transmission line, a man camp to house workers and related facilities, a railroad distribution facility, a project specific haul road and an onsite quarry for road materials.

When completed, the CCSM wind farm will be the largest in Wyoming. Miller said the CCSM is so large because "they realized early in the process the project had to be significant to overcome the cost of moving that power. There was not a renewable power requirement in Wyoming, there is not significant renewable power opportunities in the Rocky Mountain West today, however, (he thinks) that is changing." Because of this the power will be transmitted to the Las Vegas, Nev. and southern California areas.

Currently, there are no power purchaser agreements in place for the energy generated by the CCSM wind farm.

"No, we do not have power purchase agreements, and that simply is an issue of certainty for the customer and certainty for the developer. We, early in the process, recognized that the power purchase agreements that would be appropriate for this project were not going to be attainable from the utilities or any other customer ... in the desert southwest ... simply because they weren't going to sign a power purchase agreement for a project that had the amount of uncertainty that this one did," Bill Miller said.

The ISC is a Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality program with the mission of ensuring proposed industrial projects are in no way potentially harmful to the people, natural resources, or economy of Wyoming. Proposed facilities that are subject to the ISC process include those with an estimated construction cost of $193.8 million or more, and wind energy projects with 30 or more towers in all phases. PCW's CCSM project qualifies on both counts.

The DKRW project is not currently included in PCW's analysis considering potential concurrent projects and their effect because there is "no current or accurate publicly available information to conduct analysis ... previously filed information on schedule and workforce has been rescinded," said Joe Hammond, Principal Project Manager for CH2MHill.

According to a PCW press release, after the hearing, two subsequent tiered Environmental Assessments addressing PCW's site-specific plans of development are anticipated to be completed by the BLM before the end of the year. The project also has received the necessary major permit from Carbon County.

When fully built, the CCSM Project will generate enough electricity to supply nearly 1 million western U.S. households. It also will create 114 operations and maintenance jobs, and will pay millions of dollars in state and local taxes and federal royalties.