||| FROM ALAN MIZUTA |||
OPALCO bought land with a recorded Native Growth Area covenant and open-space protections intended to preserve a wildlife corridor. Its solar project conflicted with those restrictions. San Juan County has now approved moving the open-space designation to accommodate the project.
The protections dated to 2012. OPALCO bought the property in 2025.
Apparently, the forest was in the wrong place.
And what project warrants this accommodation?
A solar expansion approaching $6 million that, even at peak production, would contribute less than 1 percent of countywide demand. It descended from a Bailer Hill project that never got built, supported by a Commerce grant that began at $1 million and was subsequently reduced to $430,000.
The grant-funded effort moved to Decatur. The recorded restrictions were already here.
On October 1, the County approved relocating protected open space on OPALCO’s property, including placing portions of the replacement designation over land already protected by a separate Native Growth Area covenant.
Two conservation labels can occupy the same acre. They do not turn it into two acres.
Every resident who has relied on recorded open-space protections should pay attention. When the next applicant wants to move an inconvenient restriction, what principle will distinguish that request from this one?
A cooperative’s failure to plan around the property it purchased should not become the County’s reason to move the protections.
In May, OPALCO announced there were “no legal reasons the project cannot move forward,” while acknowledging that conditions remained. Months later, advancing its chosen configuration has required County approval to relocate recorded open-space protections.
That development deserves the same fanfare as the permit announcement. Members should hear what had to change to make the next “win” possible.
I am an OPALCO member and an original subscriber in the existing Decatur solar installation. I invested in the promise. I expected the experience to produce useful lessons before we financed a larger version.
Here is one lesson that deserves considerably more attention.
OPALCO describes the existing array as producing approximately 570,000 kilowatt-hours annually. Its own cumulative dashboard data through the present indicate average annual production of approximately 468,000 kilowatt-hours.
Roughly 18% less. Nearly eight years of operating history.
That compares actual generation with advertised annual production. It has nothing to do with confusing nameplate capacity with output.
How much of the shortfall comes from shading, maintenance, downtime, equipment, or optimistic assumptions? What has been corrected, and how have the results changed the expansion’s forecast?
A projection does not become an operating result through repetition.
Yet members are being asked to accept another multimillion-dollar investment while the first installation’s production discrepancy remains publicly unreconciled.
The financial story needs the same daylight. Members deserve a complete accounting of what Bailer Hill cost, what transferred to Decatur, what grant money has already been spent, and what remains to be paid.
The projected low-income benefit was revised to approximately $50,000 annually. That assistance matters. So does explaining the full cost of delivering it.
Members should not need a public-records request to understand what their cooperative is financing.
They have also expressed a preference about where these investments belong. In OPALCO’s representative survey, 60% of respondents selected disturbed or industrial sites as preferred locations for renewable projects. 13% selected forested land.
That was useful member feedback. What decision did it change?
Nor should regional energy concerns substitute for demonstrating the value of this particular project. Our submarine cables and electrical infrastructure will still need investment. Solar panels do not replace a cable. They do not generate electricity through a winter night.
We deserve a credible plan for the system we depend on, with the contribution and limitations of each investment stated plainly.
Then there is the battery.
Battery energy storage can sound like tomorrow’s planning problem. On Decatur, it is already operating, beside the substation and beneath the lines that distribute mainland electricity onward to the other islands.
On Decatur, there is no fire engine coming down the road.
The island shares the isolation of many outer islands. But for this battery installation, OPALCO has identified no outside agency committed and equipped to respond, no response agreement, and no assured means of getting the necessary equipment to the site.
Naming DNR does not create that commitment. Neither does estimating how long a boat trip might take.
Even if outside help could be arranged after an incident began, getting people here would not get their equipment here. Heavy equipment would require a private barge, potentially many hours or days later.
The fire will not wait for the barge. And there is no agreement assuring us that a response is coming.
At Bailer Hill, OPALCO contemplated a water-based vanadium-flow battery it described as nonflammable, in an open field accessible from all sides, with a fire department on the same island. Planning addressed the battery and emergency response as parts of the facility.
Decatur has an operating lithium-ion battery beside critical electrical infrastructure, yet the fire plan presented for the expansion omitted that battery.
The more difficult site received the narrower treatment. OPALCO and DCD should explain how that makes sense.
The County Council has adopted a Community Wildfire Protection Plan identifying the Decatur substation, solar installation, and battery installation as critical infrastructure. Residents should read it and ask how its warnings are reflected in the arrangements on the ground.
Adopting a plan is easy. Preparing to act on it is the part that matters.
An emergency will not respect the paperwork boundary around the proposed expansion. A monitoring system can report a problem. The response still has to exist.
OPALCO’s board has already shown that it can change course. It directed staff to leave the Native Growth Area covenant alone. It can show the same judgment about the recorded open-space layout.
Bailer Hill did not get built. Decatur’s existing production falls roughly 18% below the annual figure OPALCO publishes. The expansion has required repeated revisions and now an accommodation of recorded conservation restrictions.
At what point does this history become a reason to reconsider the project, rather than another reason to insist it must proceed?
The board should end the expansion in its present configuration and pursue a location or design that respects the recorded conservation layout. It should publish the operating results, the complete financial history, and a credible emergency-response plan for the facility already here.
The County should explain what confidence residents can now place in recorded open-space protections.
A permit is permission. It is not an obligation to spend the money or cut the trees.
The board still owns that choice.
Permanent, until inconvenient, is a poor conservation policy. It is an even poorer excuse for a project that should have confronted these realities before the land was purchased.
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OPALCO continues to work to satisfy the 11 conditions outlined by the San Juan County Hearing Examiner as part of the permit for the Decatur Island Solar Expansion Project. There are limited lands where utility-scale solar projects can be sited and permitted and the current project is allowed with a Conditional Use Permit. Additionally, this project has the benefit of being adjacent to the OPALCO substation for easy connection into the existing grid. You can find all information related to this current project and the original Community Solar project on Decatur on our website: http://www.opalco.com/decatur or reach out the OPALCO team with your questions at communications@opalco.com
The County’s position on this is completely wrong! Those recorded safeguards mean nothing if the County’s staff can change them, move them around, superimpose one on top of another with no regard for the original intent. Why bother in the first place? We have no guarantees of future protection if this is a precedent.
And in case of fire? Power must pass thru Decatur on it way to other islands. If Decatur burns how long would it take to reestablish power to the other islands? If Decatur burns ….. how long will it take to get any first responders to the island. Read OPALCO’S proposal for fire mitigation! The gates are locked! No one is allowed to enter!! So our
forest and the substation burns for a minimum of 1 hour? 2 hours? 3 hours? before help can arrive? This is unconscionable.!
Assuming the facts as stated, does anyone have a suggestion beyond Nothing or NIMBY to propose for the benefit of all? That would be helpful.
Bonneville power has a successful history of providing San Jaun County with electricity. OPALCO has taken that power and moved it throughout the islands. . OPALCO, for the most part, has distributed the power provided by Bonneville.. To think that the San Juan islands has the resources to generate any significant amount of power is, in my opinion, a fairytale. The Pacific Northwest is not the best climate for solar energy. Past performance of the existing solar array on Decatur Island proves that. To add good money after bad is a fools errand. We should be putting our resources, our financial backing. to strengthen our main source of provided power.
It is my understanding that our friendly neighborhood co-op is well over $90 million in debt. This program of providing solar power from a forested area in a small island in the midst of other small islands seems to have been thought up by someone whose basic interest is not for the betterment of the membership of this small co-op.. A successful company usually concentrates on doing what they do best. OPALCO does a good job of distributing the power generated by Bonneville that arrives to the islands via under sea cables. OPALCO should continue to do that which it does best..
Bill, you can cry NIMBY in every letter(I think you are battling 1,000) but that will not change our lack of fire protection, the millions spent in chasing a grant that is currently under $500,000, or the fact that only 13% of members want trees cut for solar. They are doing the very things they said they wouldn’t during the time they were seeking the EPF distinction: they ARE asking for special treatment, they ARE removing environmental protections,(with county help), they ARE ignoring member concerns as rates continue to increase
Mr Mizuta thank you for this concise and thorough thought process that raises questions that absolutely make sense. Then I read Krista Bouchey’s response and respectfully I see words, but there are no answers to those questions you raise. It’s more “talking points” without saying anything. When I read this political response then I have to ask the number one question in my mind….. that I’m sure many are thinking, but will say it out loud here….. whose pockets are getting lined? This is more than the community receiving this added minimal amount of electricity (because really it’s being painted as best for the community) Truly I ask whose pockets are getting lined? Whose favor is getting paid for by pushing this to then make more money or business opportunities? County can you simply please explain the fire mitigation right here and right now since this has been approved? Not kicking it down the road and “we will get to it if something happen”. . Are u putting the residents on Decatur island at risk to make some sort of business deal that lines your wallet? No jargon please, real words that forms a complete sentence of an answer.
This is a two-part response.
#1 is my (Karen Pearson’s) personal response to OPALCO’s Decatur Island solar array proposal in line with Alan’s thorough and relevant writing above.
#2 is a reposting of a comment made during discussion among Decatur Islanders, and is reposted with permission from the original author.
#1 Anonymous response to Bill Appel’s comment: “…does anyone have a suggestion…for the benefit of all?” Decatur Island has supplied, in writing, to the county and to OPALCO, a minimum of three options of ALREADY CLEARED LAND – all parcels suggested (one by the owner of the parcel) are one to three acres more than the eight acres of the current OPALCO Solar project proposal’s stated needs. OPALCO has dismissed these offers with the ambiguous comment of “not feasible,” without due diligence evidence of said non-feasibility in studies, charts, cost analysis comparison, or research data of any kind.
A benefit is a symptom of integrity. Any benefit to all has the integrity to withstand scrutiny and the intelligence to change.
If OPALCO’s proposed solar array on Decatur was a benefit to all, it would have withstood the scrutiny of its origins as the Bailor Hill solar array proposaal. The Bailor Hill solar array failed under general due diligence and San Juan resident scrutiny. Bailor Hill is now the Decatur Island solar array proposal, which is also failing under the scrutiny by due diligence and Decatur Island residents. OPALCO’s Decatur Island solar array continues to be met with opposition, just as it did in its original state as the Bailor Hill solar array, because it continues to dismiss the scrutiny and discuss change.
#2 From anonymous:
Bill, yes. Start with the alternatives OPALCO itself identified in the Commerce records: its Mt. Baker Road property in Eastsound, the Guard Street location in Friday Harbor, and its truck shed, warehouse and office roofs.
The constructive proposal is straightforward: publish the comparison explaining which options remain feasible, which were rejected, and why. Show members the costs, expected production, permitting constraints, environmental impacts and actual outage benefits. If these alternatives cannot meet the need, explain that with evidence.
Your own April 21 comment acknowledged that you did not have the full facts about the Decatur expansion and were open to a different location. These records provide a concrete place to start.
Your role also matters here. OPALCO lists you on its Elections & Governance Committee, which helps recruit and select board nominees, and its records document your appointment in 2020. Members can reasonably ask someone involved in shaping that board to press it for an accountable explanation of this choice.
Calling the objections “Nothing or NIMBY” does not answer the questions raised about this particular project. Supporting reliable electricity is entirely consistent with requiring OPALCO to justify its siting decisions and treatment of recorded land protections.
Will you support releasing that comparison and asking the board to address it publicly?
The Open Space protections are now at risk. Not just here on Decatur but on all islands. Once trees are cut everything changes. Ecosystems become vulnerable and habitats disrupted. Instead of dismantling these protected spaces we need to honor our commitment to future generations by keeping these protections in place.
OPALCO is a distributor. Generation is not its job.
San Juan County’s power problem is not a shortage of ideas for local panels. It is a shortage of firm electricity at the end of long submarine cables. That is a distribution and reliability problem. Treating it as a reason for the co-op to become a power producer has already produced a stalled Bailer Hill project, a Decatur expansion that collided with recorded open-space limits, and an existing array whose published output sits above what the public dashboard implies.
The hardware being financed now is also hardware that will soon be outdated!
Commercial silicon modules convert roughly 21 to 23 percent of sunlight into electricity. Perovskite-on-silicon tandem cells, which stack a thin film over ordinary silicon so each layer takes a different part of the spectrum, have reached certified lab efficiencies of about 34 to 35.5 percent. Early commercial tandem modules are already shipping near 25 percent, with 26 to 28 percent in pilot production and the first full IEC module certifications arriving in 2026. Against today’s panels, that is on the order of 15 to 20 percent more energy from the same ground, before the lab figures ever reach a warrantied product. Warranties are still shorter than silicon’s 25 to 30 years. The point is not that Decatur should wait for a miracle cell. It is that clearing restricted forest for a silicon layout sized to today’s modules locks in yesterday’s conversion rate.
Small modular reactors sit on a longer clock and solve a different problem. A few are operating abroad. In the United States they are still in licensing and first-of-a-kind construction, not a catalog item for an island co-op. What they represent is firm, weather-independent capacity measured in tens or hundreds of megawatts, delivered to the mainland grid OPALCO already buys from. Solar does not do that. It does not run through a December night. It does not replace a cable. A battery beside a Decatur substation does not either, and on an island with no fire engine it adds a response problem the expansion has not resolved.
A distributor’s work is the cables, the substations, the contracts, and the rates. OPALCO already does that work, and the islands depend on it. Buying land to manufacture a fraction of one percent of county demand, then asking the County to relocate the open space that came with the deed, is a producer’s project. Members did not elect a board to outbuild the next decade of panels and reactors on a restricted parcel. They elected it to deliver power.
The board can still decline to spend the money. A permit is not an obligation to cut the trees. Leave generation to the technologies and the sites that can actually carry it. Keep the co-op in the business it knows.
I would like to hear from Sev Jones, the Director of Community Development for San Juan County, why he chose to relocate the protected wildlife corridor and allow Opalco to stack the required open space protection on top of land that is already protected, including the Native Growth area covenant.
Was this done to protect the wildlife and forest land on Decatur or to help circumvent and expedite the permit process for Opalco?
First, my membership on the Elections and Governance Committee gives me no inside information, nor entitles me to seek inside information, concerning solar or any other siting. The Committee reviews people for board qualities, and takes no position on specific projects that OPALCO may or may not undertake.
Having spent two decades on Waldron, I’m very familiar with community dynamics. These dynamics, however strong, don’t entitle the community to have whatever it wants. It does pretty well as it’s organized by a Community Meeting that goes back at least the 50 years of my familiarity, and many decades earlier.
Our islands are are the end of very expensive cables. Decatur finds itself at an essential point in their attachment to us all. Much as a community beside a highway that gets expanded to serve distant areas, the settlements along it find traffic increasing and moreover, highway widening, encroaching on lawns and gardens.
No utility today can be “just a distributor”. The Northwest Grid is rapidly becoming a zone of “everyone for themselves”. OPALCO is attempting to respond to assure its members adequate and continuous electric power. Doing nothing is not an option. Thus my suggestion that affirmative suggestions and support would be helpful.
I am very concerned about the risk of fire without any quick emergency response available. I am also very concerned about trees that had protected status being cut down for this project. Solution: Do the project at one of the alternative sites that OPALCO identified, all of which DO NOT require cutting down protected trees that benefit wildlife and the environment and DO have quicker/easier access to emergency response. The currently planned Decatur location is not the best location for the project (not because of NIMBY but because of all the reasons Alan and others have laid out for months), and Decatur risks so much in this. I hope something changes so OPALCO and all the islands can avoid this huge mistake.
I want to add my support to the Decatur residents who have spent an extraordinary amount of time researching this project and raising substantive questions about it. It has seemed complicated to the general public unless you spend a lot of time tracking the details. Thanks to those who have done so.
I support solar energy and believe local renewable generation should be part of our future. My concern has never been that a solar project is being proposed. It is whether this particular project, on this particular site, has been subjected to the level of scrutiny we should expect before longstanding land-use and environmental protections are modified to accommodate it.
I am not a land-use expert, and I don’t pretend to be able to independently evaluate every legal and technical issue that has been raised. But I have read enough of the record to be concerned by the number of important questions that remain: about which property configuration actually governs, the relocation of protected open space, the conservation consequences, fire and access requirements, and the basis for changing restrictions that existed before this site was selected.
Those questions deserve answers; asking them should not be characterized as opposition to solar, opposition to OPALCO, or simply NIMBYism.
Perhaps the most basic question should be simpler: if a site requires this many existing restrictions, interpretations and protections to be changed or reconsidered in order to make the project work, is it reasonable to ask whether this was the right site in the first place? Particularly when other options existed? And among other issues, the purchase of older panels, sitting idle – technicalities I may not be fully informed of but certainly raise red flags, create more concern. And as a board member of DEB, understanding our vulnerabilities, the fire issue is of great concern to me.
I hope the next stage of review gives those questions and the careful work behind it, the consideration it deserves. Thanks to Alan and all of the others who have worked so hard to bring clarity to the community on this project.
Why, oh why, is OPALCO so adversarial towards its members? They bully landowners and threaten to turn off their electricity if OPALCO doesn’t get to steal their land? They want to further clearcut on Decatur? They need to be stopped! https://www.king5.com/article/news/community/120-foot-cell-tower-could-block-an-iconic-leavenworth-view/281-ee91d468-9485-4bec-8891-3f408cbd1244
“In general”?
file:///var/mobile/Library/SMS/Attachments/35/05/1D2BCA4E-22F6-477C-851E-43026E813933/IMG_0813.heic
Look up the King news article titled : Tower of trouble: 120-foot cell tower appears on couple’s property uninvited. I’m unable to attach the link.
“In general, OPALCO follows all permitting requirements when installing infrastructure.”
That is the statement attributed to an OPALCO spokesperson in KING 5’s reporting linked below. Members should expect a more specific answer when property rights and permitting are being questioned.
On Decatur, we deserve that same specificity. What documents demonstrate compliance with the conditions governing this project? How much distinct protected land remains when overlapping designations are counted only once? What spending can still be avoided, and where is the documented comparison of alternative sites?
Invoking reliable power and the public benefit of infrastructure does not answer those questions. A worthwhile mission does not make every project a sound decision.
The board should end the current Decatur expansion and evaluate other locations. At a minimum, it should suspend further discretionary commitments and clearing while publicly examining that choice.
“In general” is no substitute for accountability on a specific project.
https://www.king5.com/article/news/investigations/120-foot-cell-tower-appears-on-couples-property-uninvited/281-859820a3-3a7b-4dcb-8f25-0af401162a9c
I’m against any proposal that brings nuclear power to the islands… to me that idea is ludicrous.
Here’s the link to the article Amber refers to–
King 5 News (Eric Wilkinson) 10/06/26– Tower of trouble: 120-foot cell tower appears on couple’s property uninvited
A Friday Harbor couple says a utility built a massive cell phone tower on their land without consent. Now they’re taking it to court.
https://www.king5.com/article/news/investigations/120-foot-cell-tower-appears-on-couples-property-uninvited/281-859820a3-3a7b-4dcb-8f25-0af401162a9c?ref=exit-recirc
“Invoking reliable power and the public benefit of infrastructure does not answer those questions.”
Foster’s constant refrain of “we are mandated to provide power” all while spending millions that, best case scenario, would still result in less than 1% of the goal of 30%? Think about it: 4-5 million for every percent?!? I’m being hyperbolic but given the fiasco the Decatur Project has become under the current management, it could happen. We need a CEO that listens to members, not more performative engagement
This is the part of this entire process that I find most troubling.
These protections existed long before OPALCO purchased this property. They were part of the land OPALCO chose to buy. Yet rather than designing the project around those existing protections, we are now watching the protections themselves be moved to accommodate the project.
And apparently San Juan County DCD is willing to allow that.
That should concern all of us, not just those of us on Decatur or those opposed to this particular project. What does a recorded Open Space designation actually mean if it can later be relocated when it conflicts with a proposed development? And how is placing some of that replacement Open Space over land already protected by a separate Native Growth Area covenant an equivalent replacement?
This isn’t about being for or against solar. I support renewable energy. But supporting renewable energy doesn’t mean accepting the clearing of healthy forest when other viable siting options exist within our county. And it certainly doesn’t mean existing land-use and environmental protections should be moved or rewritten to make a particular site work.
OPALCO purchased this property with these restrictions already in place. The project should have been designed to fit the land and its existing protections, not the other way around.
I think San Juan County DCD owes all of us a very clear explanation of how this decision is consistent with the intent of those protections and what precedent it creates for protected land throughout San Juan County.
Protective Covenants usually can be enforced by the benefited parcel owners, or in cases where the benefit is public members of the public may have standing to bring a lawsuit to enforce the restrictive covenants.
So well said Mark. We Need and deserve answers.
Nationwide we are seeing environmental protections rolled back for business/infrastructure. We are seeing parts of our National Parks bulldozed and property taken by eminent domain for data centers. Are “environmental concerns” just a late 20th century fad that’s over? I NEVER thought we would see this touch the hard fought for protections we have this county.Even if you started out very pro-solar, believing the OPALCO spin, we now know that they simply cannot deliver on promises made… and apparently they don’t have too. How many meetings did we attend where Foster and Russell Geary assured us that the EPF distinction would NEVER let them change environmental covenants (nor would they want to.) I continue to ask: How “Essential” is 1% for 3-4 million dollars on an island that has no fire protection for battery fires?
I am a current full time resident of Decatur, and on the DEB board. I have a career of project management and construction in extreme locations, working thru the process of permits and red tape and logistics here in this country and across others. I am appalled at the transparent level of negligence (bordering on criminal) and casual disdain for community input that we have seen from Foster and the board of OPALCO. I’ve lived in other small towns in the west and certainly undertand when the needs of the many outweigh the objections of the few. Usually that has been water rights, but certainly the situations are similar here. However, what is most galling is the very simple inefficiencies of their plan. It is absolutely ludicrous to claim that this solar array will ‘solve’ any energy issue in these islands. This is not the place for commercial level solar, and it is entirely inappropriate to claim that the battery system they have will contribute anything meaningful in case of an outage. If energy security was really the goal, then OPALCO would subsidize a home battery system or propane generator purchase program. Instead, they’ve decided to cram a solar array down their member’s throats, and to misrepresent the benefits vs the cost. Every resident of these islands should stand in opposition to this malign plan, and call for the Board to put a stop to it before one more tree is cut down. All of this has been said by other commenters, and said better…but I too also wonder whose pockets are being lined in these transactions. Surely it can’t be to simply feed one small group’s ego and inability to admit when a plan has to be abandoned.
I am also truly appalled by OPALCO messing with protective covenants and the county going along with them.
Another issue of concern that OPALCO refuses to discuss is impacts to stormwater and groundwater.
There are approaches that minimize these impacts, but OPALCO refuses to acknowledge that their utility-scale solar could negatively impact our limited groundwater supplies by altering runoff patterns.
About the fire risk of storage batteries:
I recently bought an EV that has very safe batteries.
My engineer daughter insisted that this be a criterion for the EV that I chose.
Here is a summary of the advantages, disadvantages, and applications of LFP batteries:
An LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate) battery is a type of rechargeable lithium-ion battery that uses lithium iron phosphate as its cathode material and a graphitic carbon electrode as its anode.
Key Advantages
• Long Lifespan: Offers thousands of charge cycles (often 3,000 to 5,000+ cycles) before dropping significantly in capacity.
• High Safety & Thermal Stability: Much less prone to overheating, catching fire, or experiencing thermal runaway compared to traditional nickel-based chemistries.
• Lower Cost: Relies on abundant iron and phosphorus rather than expensive and scarce materials like cobalt and nickel.
• 100% Charging: Can be charged fully to 100% regularly without accelerating major degradation.
Disadvantages
• Lower Energy Density: Stores less energy per unit of weight and volume than traditional lithium-ion (NMC) batteries, meaning it takes up more space for the same amount of power.
• Cold Weather Sensitivity: Charging in freezing temperatures (below 0°C/32°F) can damage the battery unless it has a built-in low-temperature cutoff or internal heater.
• Flat Discharge Curve: Maintains a very steady voltage level as it drains, making it harder for electronic systems to accurately gauge the exact remaining percentage without a smart Battery Management System (BMS).
Common Applications
• Electric Vehicles (EVs): Used increasingly by major automakers like Tesla and BYD for standard-range passenger cars.
• Renewable Energy & Solar: Popular for off-grid home power storage, RVs, and marine auxiliary setups.
• Backup Power: Employed in uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) and industrial energy storage