Sue Lani Madsen: Measuring the sound of silence

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the year in which the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council was started.

In an area where the tallest structures are grain elevators, industrial wind turbines are more than simply a disturbance to the rural skyline. They are transformative. Modern turbines are 600 to 650 feet tall. They change a rural landscape into an urban one.

As one neighbor put it, “If I wanted to look at tall buildings and blinking lights I’d move to the city.”

Modern wind turbines are taller than the Space Needle, twice the height of downtown Spokane’s Bank of America Building and six times taller than the average grain elevator. It’s two football fields including the end zones.

Industrial wind turbines are massive. And there’s never just one. Developers in Lincoln and Whitman counties are talking about 40 or 50 or 75 turbines per project. Besides the visual disturbance, they bring with them the low thrum of noise, disturbing the sound of silence.

The tension in rural communities is exacerbated by the number of parcels owned by out-of-county investors, trusts and charities. Absentee landowners will never feel the impacts – but do reap financial benefits – from leasing access to multinational energy corporations who are farming billions in tax credits. Tenant farmers are in a tough spot, some afraid to speak out because they fear losing their agricultural leases while having to farm around turbines and the roads that connect them less efficiently.

Or a local landowner might be seeking a way to resist increasing development pressures to subdivide agricultural land for housing. Farmers looking for ways to diversify crops for greater resilience as grain prices rise and fall might decide “planting” turbines is a positive addition to their business plan. They understand the risk of no-fly zones inhibiting fire-fighting efforts because their houses are on the line too. Balancing the financial and social tradeoffs is a heart-wrenching dilemma, but at least they literally have skin in the game.

Gov. Jay Inslee’s remarks to the U.N. Climate conference in 2022 dismissed opposition simplistically as “not in my backyard,” saying regulatory reform was needed to overcome it. The Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council was formed in 1970 and became an independent agency in 2022 to provide an alternative to bothersome local permitting processes. After being asked if Inslee stood by his remarks, Mike Faulk said in an email, “The governor sees a dichotomy between legitimate concerns about potential siting impacts and those who simply oppose clean energy for the sake of opposing clean energy, i.e. NIMBYism.”

It’s easy to dismiss anyone who isn’t a decarbonization cheerleader as just a NIMBY. But there are legitimate questions about the life cycle of industrial wind energy facilities and how clean they really are. There are equally legitimate questions on the deadly conflict between wind turbines and the eagles and other wildlife.

So how much is a dead eagle worth? “In environmental ethics a key term is intrinsic value. Some would argue all living things have intrinsic value and others have instrumental value based on their utility. The risk is saying all values need to be characterized instrumentally,” said Brian Henning, professor of philosophy and environmental studies at Gonzaga University and a frequent writer on the ethics of environmental decision-making. “How do we go about designing a future recognizing both kinds of value instead of reducing them all to economic measures? That’s a fair concern and a complex one.”

We value what we can measure, and we can’t measure the value of an eagle, or the value of quiet. “People who love the wilderness, places not dominated by human sounds and human structure would understand … rural communities may have the same response,” Henning said, but “we insist on a cost benefit analysis and then we’re only looking at the number of bodies affected.”

It’s the noise, the unwanted sound, that causes health issues. There’s over a decade of peer-reviewed studies on the health effects of noise from wind turbines. The degree of impact is related to the setback distance, terrain, temperature, sound characteristics and decibel level at each specific residence. Health impacts are also related to perceptions of fairness and community control. Impacts are greater when local decision making is trumped by an appeal to an outside permitting process, like the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council.

Henning agreed the question is one of environmental justice. “Statistically, if you’re poor you’re more likely to live in a community that’s polluted. In a fair community, how much money is in your wallet shouldn’t affect your environment,” he said. Residents in rural counties where the median income is less than half of King County’s question the fairness of mining Eastern Washington’s rural environment for Western Washington’s urban energy. Why not wind turbines in backyards on the other side of the Cascades? “That’s a fair response,” Hennings said. “If communities in Seattle are benefiting from energy they should have to do it too.”

And in Seattle, wind turbines wouldn’t disturb the sound of silence.

Contact Sue Lani Madsen at rulingpen@gmail.com.