Epic battle brewing between California and deep-red Shasta County

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/shasta-wind-climate-
politics-18499963.php

MONTGOMERY CREEK, Shasta County — In the sprawling green hills of
California’s far north, where the politics run red and rowdy, a new state
law designed to clear a path for climate-friendly energy projects is
facing a tough debut.

State officials are using their authority under the law, for the first
time, to gain approval powers over a plan to build 48 giant wind turbines
in Shasta County — powers typically held by local officials. In doing so,
they’ve encountered not only opposition to the project but broader anger
in a region known for its distaste of heavy-handed government and, in
particular, Sacramento Democrats.

Previously, the county Board of Supervisors here rejected Gov. Gavin
Newsom’s COVID mandates, scoffed at the state’s support of tighter gun
restrictions and vowed to take on the Legislature over whether the county
could hand-count ballots amid concerns, though unsubstantiated, about
fraud in President Donald Trump’s failed reelection bid.

Now, the new climate law, Assembly Bill 205, has rural Shasta County in
yet another dust-up with the state. The confrontation was cemented late
last month with a lawsuit filed by county officials, challenging the
California Energy Commission’s jurisdiction over the Fountain Wind
Project.

“It’s the right thing for us to address this and fight back,” Board of
Supervisors Chair Patrick Jones said during a public discussion of the
matter.

Yet the county’s latest fight with the state is distinct in crucial ways.

Resistance in the region has typically come from the right, and recently
the far right, after a political shift sparked by pandemic-era
frustrations and fueled by a group of activists that included anti-
vaxxers, self-styled militia members and evangelicals. By contrast, the
wind project, proposed in timberlands 35 miles east of Redding, has drawn
opposition across the spectrum, including the local Pit River Tribe, which
is joining the county as a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

“All the people are on the same side now: the pagans, the Christians, the
Democrats, the Trumpsters,” said Brandy McDaniels, a member of the Pit
River Tribe, standing in front of her home one afternoon at the Montgomery
Creek Rancheria, below the project site, on a wooded slope with views of
distant Mount Shasta. “Our community is bonded by our love of the area.”

The objections to the turbines, some of which would rise 600 feet, range
considerably. They include doubts about the benefits of clean energy,
anxieties over firefighting planes navigating the tall towers, and worries
about disturbance to forests and wildlife.

The tribe helped forge the unlikely alliance against the nearly half-
billion-dollar proposal because it doesn’t want to see its ancestral lands
developed. Tribal members say the project could “erase” their people from
history.

The concerns about the wind farm reflect the unpopularity of renewable
energy ventures in many California communities that might host them — an
aversion that threatens to slow the state’s push to replace planet-warming
fossil fuels with clean sources of power. California officials have been
frustrated by what’s often perceived as NIMBYism, and for developers, it’s
a minefield.

“We need all the wind that we can get in the state to reach” California’s
energy objectives, Mark Lawlor, vice president of development at
ConnectGen, the Houston company that wants to build the Fountain Wind
Project, told the Chronicle. “There’s just not that many places that have
suitable wind with all the right resources, like transmission.”

While McDaniels is pleased to see Shasta County coming together to fight
the state and the turbines, she and others have expressed a possible
downside: Their cause could get entangled in the area’s reputation as a
hotbed of right-wing extremism.

“We’re not all insurrectionists up here,” McDaniels said. “But the
question has been posed: Will we be taken seriously because of the other
shenanigans in Shasta County?”

The path to 100% clean energy

Newsom signed AB205 into law last year, in part to help the state reach
its goal of generating all its power from carbon-free sources by 2045. The
ambitious target is one of California’s marquee initiatives to combat
climate change.

The new law, among other things, allows developers of wind and solar
projects to apply to the California Energy Commission for streamlined
review and authorization. That process has historically been handled by
cities and counties.

The change in jurisdiction, which was done with little fanfare as part of
California’s convoluted budget process, was urged by state officials who
worried about too few renewable energy projects coming online. The move is
one of several efforts by the Newsom administration to cut red tape for
vital infrastructure such as power production.

While the state has met its interim objectives for zero-carbon
electricity, getting about 37% of its energy from clean sources at last
count (not including nuclear and large hydropower), the path to 100%
remains uncertain. Increasing demand for electricity complicates matters.

“As we think about building really fast, doubling or tripling the (clean)
electric grid, the challenge identified by the administration is the
challenge of long permitting timelines,” Siva Gunda, vice chair of the
California Energy Commission, said in an interview.

Commission officials did not want to discuss specific power proposals or
Shasta County’s lawsuit against the state. But Gunda acknowledged that,
under AB205, local concerns will have to be weighed against the bigger and
broader threat of climate change.

“No matter what kind of project we’re trying to build, no matter where
we’re trying to build it, there’s always going to be potential benefits to
the community but there will also be impacts,” he said. “This is a brand-
new program. As we go through the process, the agency will learn.”

The proposal in Shasta County is among renewable energy plans that have
been shot down locally, from wind turbines on the breezy ridges of
Humboldt County to solar arrays in sunny Southern California. Los Angeles
and San Bernardino counties have gone as far as banning renewable projects
in certain places.

The Fountain Wind Project, near the foothill town of Montgomery Creek, was
denied by Shasta County’s Planning Commission two years ago after hundreds
of people poured into community meetings to protest. The Board of
Supervisors, on appeal, also rebuffed the proposal. The supervisors have
since put large swaths of the county off-limits to utility-scale wind
power.

With the passage of AB205, however, ConnectGen petitioned the California
Energy Commission to put the plan back in play, and this fall, the agency
agreed, making it the first project to be taken up under the law.

The county’s suit against the state commission, filed in Shasta County
Superior Court, argues that undoing local decisions and providing a
developer a “second bite at the apple” is inappropriate and illegal.

Absent court intervention, the commission’s governing board is expected to
make a decision on the Fountain Wind Project next summer. The timeline is
within the expedited schedule set by AB205, which requires environmental
reviews to be wrapped up in nine months.

The project would consist of four dozen remote turbines, down from 72
initially proposed, across 2,855 acres of private forest owned by Shasta
Cascade Timberlands. It would generate up to 205 megawatts of electricity,
enough to supply more than 80,000 homes, according to ConnectGen.

The site is within easy reach of existing transmission lines operated by
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. A smaller wind project already runs across
the adjacent Hatchet Ridge.

Lawlor, with ConnectGen, said the project would yield significant benefits
for the county: hundreds of construction jobs and 10 to 20 permanent
positions, $50 million in property tax revenue over 30 years and, despite
what critics say, a reduction in fire danger with the company’s plans to
build fuel breaks and increase vegetation management.

Opponents generally say they’re not against green energy, just the
location of the proposal. But at least some residents believe the historic
threat posed by climate change appropriately trumps local concerns.

“People say ‘no’ all over the place, and that’s got to stop because we
need this energy,” said Redding resident Randy Smith, who identifies as
nonpartisan. “We’re on the edge of a warming climate that may displace us
if we don’t respond more actively.”

A tribe fears for the land

At the Montgomery Creek Rancheria, McDaniels said she selected the site of
her modest home, amid the scruffy brush and pine, because of the views of
the surrounding mountains. She fears they’ll be tarnished if the turbines
go up.

Many residents on the reservation reside in old trailers along dirt roads,
with no running water or electricity. McDaniels, a cultural representative
for the Pit River Tribe’s Madesi Band, says the primitive conditions are a
trade-off for being able to live amid the sacred hills and valleys of
their ancestors. The hardship also reflects the struggles the tribe has
endured.

“The original narrative of our people is written in this landscape,” she
said, looking up at the tree-covered slopes where the wind farm is
proposed. “They’ll just come and destroy the land.”

The tribe counts about 3,800 members in Northern California, organized
into 11 independent bands, many of which expect to be affected by the
project. The tribe’s headquarters is in nearby Burney, where members run a
small casino that only recently got a sign that lights up and still
operates with limited hours.

On this particular afternoon, a work crew was laying the foundation for a
new house at the Montgomery Creek Rancheria, part of an effort to improve
the quality of life for residents.

“We’re trying to build a community here. Now we’re in limbo,” McDaniels
said. “We really don’t deserve this. We’re still healing from what’s
happened to us in the past. When is enough enough?”

Not far from the reservation, Joseph Osa, a retired Department of Defense
engineer, was taking a stroll with his two dogs on his 95-acre plot, where
he can see a few of the existing turbines on Hatchet Ridge.

The self-described conservative Christian, who joked that “with all the
labels we put on people these days, I’m probably one of the bad ones,”
acknowledged that he hadn’t thought much about the Pit River Tribe — until
the Fountain Wind Project emerged.

His initial concerns were that bald eagles and other birds would get
caught in the spinning blades and that firefighting, especially from the
air, would be hampered, a claim the developer rejects. For many in the
area, the memory of wildfire remains fresh, foremost from such recent
monsters as the Dixie Fire, the Zogg Fire and the Carr Fire, all of which
took homes and lives.

Now, Osa says, the concerns of the tribe are top of mind.

“Prior to this, I kind of stayed on the property and didn’t meet a lot of
people,” he said, noting his increased interaction with neighbors after
the project surfaced. “Here (the tribal members) are telling their
stories, the kind of stuff they’ve gone through over the years. It’s hard
to imagine. We don’t want to be adding to that.”

One of the organizers against the proposal, Beth Messick-Lattin, said she
is encouraged by how easy it was to get different types of people together
to discuss their opposition to the turbines, especially amid the
divisiveness that has come with the rising voice of the county’s hard
right. Messick-Lattin says she leans Democrat on social issues in general
but Republican on the right to carry.

She remembers only a few tense moments during the community discussions
she helped lead.

“One person honestly believed he was having email conversations with Trump
every morning,” Messick-Lattin said. “But mostly, everyone was
respectful.”

Divisions in deep red country

County Supervisor Mary Rickert, who represents the Montgomery Creek area
and is also critical of the wind proposal, wants to make sure Shasta
County is taken seriously in its new fight with the state.

“We have become such a laughingstock nationwide,” she said recently,
referring to the widespread news coverage of the county’s surge in anti-
government fervor within deep-blue California.

A rancher and Republican, Rickert was on the losing end of a campaign that
swept control of the Board of Supervisors from establishment conservatives
and gave it to right-wing populists early last year.

She has since been among the minority on the politically divided board,
which has set its sights on belt-tightening and deregulation while taking
stands on culture-war issues such as LGBTQ celebrations. The board has
seen the departure of several top county administrators, including the
CEO, county counsel and public health officer.

This year, when the supervisors began thinking about challenging the state
over the new climate law, they discussed doing it in tandem with an attack
on Assembly Bill 969, which prevents counties from hand-counting votes.
The state bill was signed this fall to put a lid on election conspiracies
after Shasta County canceled its contract with Dominion Voting Systems
amid unfounded claims that the company’s machines were rigged against
Trump.

Board of Supervisors Chair Jones said AB969, like AB205, represented state
overreach. But Rickert argued against a suit packaging the two laws
together, calling them “apples and oranges,” a strategy that ultimately
won out.

Jones, who helped lead the board’s swing to the right, couldn’t be reached
to talk with the Chronicle about AB205 despite phone calls and a visit to
his family’s gun shop in Redding, where he keeps office hours. Recently,
though, he publicly pegged the county’s chances of winning the fight
against the state and the wind farm at 50-50.

At the first hearing held by the California Energy Commission on the
Fountain Wind Project two weeks ago, Jones was clear about his disdain.

“You do not live here,” he told state officials. “You do not have the
history, and you do not represent the people of Shasta County.”

Reach Kurtis Alexander: kalex...@sfchronicle.com Twitter:
@kurtisalexander


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