||| FROM AMY LOVELESS-WHITNEY |||
San Juan County’s October 1 approval relocating recorded open space for OPALCO’s proposed Decatur solar expansion raises questions that matter throughout our islands.
The County acknowledges that portions of the replacement open space overlap land already protected by a Native Growth Area covenant. It maintains that those protections remain enforceable and that the revised configuration meets conservation requirements. County explanation
But maintaining a percentage labeled “open space” does not, by itself, demonstrate that the same conservation benefits remain. How much previously protected land becomes available for development?
How much replacement acreage was already protected? What additional protection, if any, does the revision provide?
The County should publish a clear before-and-after map and acreage accounting, together with the ecological evidence supporting its conclusions.
Wildlife movement deserves particular scrutiny. The application describes six-foot fencing topped with one foot of barbed wire around the solar-array areas. How will animals move through the revised landscape once those barriers are installed? Washington Fish and Wildlife’s solar guidance recommends avoiding barbed wire, preventing dead ends, and designing fencing to accommodate wildlife passage where appropriate. Application materials; WDFW guidance, page 44
Connected boundaries on a map are not enough. The public deserves evidence that the remaining habitat will function on the ground.
Has the County approved comparable arrangements before? Is the same revision pathway available to individual homeowners, companies, and utilities, under consistently applied standards? If this decision is new, what will prevent it from becoming a justification for weakening recorded protections elsewhere?
This approval does not itself authorize filling wetlands or reducing their physical boundaries. The concern is whether overlapping conservation designations releases previously protected land without providing equivalent protection elsewhere-and whether forest cover, natural drainage, and wildlife connectivity remain adequately protected.
Our wetlands and surrounding forests form interconnected living systems. Stewardship requires protecting those functions for future generations, not simply satisfying acreage calculations.
Residents who have encountered environmental permit restrictions may wish to ask how the County distinguishes their circumstances from this approval.
The identified appeal deadline is October 22, 2026. Anyone considering an appeal should promptly confirm filing requirements and fees; ordinary comments or telephone calls do not substitute for an appeal. County appeal rules, SJCC 18.80.140
Please contact Community Development Director Sev Jones at sevj@sanjuancountywa.gov, reference LANDUSE-26-0123, and request the supporting evidence and comparable decisions.
This deserves countywide attention while there is still time to participate.
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It’s crazy that the county is helping OPALCO to ram this project through despite such strong public opposition. The project won’t even provide 1% of the county’s total electrical demand. Solar panels are great but the siting matters. Install them in areas with existing construction – schools, stores, parking lot canopies – instead of clear cutting forests and trampling your own environmental regulations.
Spot on, David!
The gerrymandering of recorded “Open Space” protections onto land already environmentally protected, while stripping those protections from the original wildlife corridor, should concern EVERY resident of San Juan County!
And the fact that this request came from our very own member-owned co-op, OPALCO, makes it particularly troubling.
YES… SITING MATTERS‼️
Thanks to the folks on Decatur for letting the rest of us know what’s going on there.
Anyone who knows anything about protected land knows that the length of time a specific place is protected and how it is connected with surrounding protected land are critical to the value of that protection to the species that inhabit and travel through it because of the STABILITY created by the protection. These are, as Amy stated above, LIVING SYSTEMS. Trading protections from one spot to another like moving chess pieces around completely defeats the value of the protection.
It’s VERY important that this new action be reversed both for this specific situation and also to avoid setting any kind of precedent that allows any baseline of protection to be moved. To make the point, here’s an exaggerated example: designating a recently logged area as “open space” so that an existing forest that was previously designated open space can now be developed is far from a fair trade. I haven’t been to Decatur, so have no direct knowledge of what sort of trading of open space designation is going on over there, but I’m very concerned about the precedent.
We need more than a map to make any sort of determination about the specific situation here. Anyone involved in making the decision needs to both have been on site and to have observed it over time, along with accurate data on species, rainfall and surface water, drainage patterns, soil, sunlight, toxicity, pollution, and any other noxious influences.
I understand that Opalco spent a lot of money on solar panels, and seeks a place to set them up since the Bailor Hill site was nixed. It makes zero sense to install them on open land versus use them above previously created impervious surfaces, and even less sense to cut down trees to create the open land. With that in mind, plus having to barge all the supplies over to Decatur, plus the 20% lower energy output than predicted on the existing solar array, the negligible contribution to county energy needs, the whole project makes no sense at all ecologically or economically.
Speaking of impervious surfaces, as I understand, the surfaces of the panels themselves aren’t even counted in the measured area of impervious surface. I would think that erecting solar arrays on open land converts any previously healthy habitat to unhealthy, plus sets up the conditions of flooding down-slope land. (I admit to not viewing any statistics on this theory, but anyone growing a garden knows that putting a roof (solar panel on posts) over it deprives it of rainfall and sunshine, which would certainly impact the vegetation beneath it.) The impact of rainfall would depend on the angle of the panel, but certainly shade would be an impact.
If solar panels are to be used, I vote for much more rigorous use of existing impervious surfaces closer to the place of electricity use (like on rooftops and over parking lots) rather than on a remote island that doesn’t even have fire protection.
If recorded open -space protections can be relocated to make a particular project easier to build, what assurance do island residents have that similar protections will be respected in the future ? Seve Jones San Juan County’s CDC’s was willing to sacrifice Decatur for the benefit of OPALCO’s CEO Foster Hildreth and Board chair Tom Osterman. This is morally and ethically wrong and one person should not be in a position to rewrite or interpret the law based on their own wishes and desires, when is goes against the wishes and desires of 87% of OPALCO’s membership and the the vast majority of the Decatur island population.