Terra-Gen’s Humboldt Wind Project was flawed but it would have offered this: a large and sudden pulse of low-carbon energy, enough to fill approximately 56 percent of Humboldt’s total electricity needs. With its demise, our odds at reaching our global climate goals become more distant while our challenge to achieve 100 percent clean, renewable energy […]
Terra-Gen
Posted inNews
Top 10 Stories of 2019
Does it feel like 2019 was about seven years of news cycles crammed into 365 short days? That can’t be just us. In Humboldt County, it was a year filled with conflict and hope, discord and solidarity, miracle and tragedy. As we collectively turn the page to a new year and a new decade, here’s […]
Posted inNews
Why the Supes Denied Terra-Gen’s Wind Project, Despite a Series of 11th Hour Concessions from the Company
With Humboldt County supervisors Rex Bohn and Virginia Bass having indicated they would support controversial plans to erect a wind farm on Monument and Bear River ridges south of Rio Dell, and supervisors Steve Madrone and Estelle Fennell having indicated they would not, Supervisor Mike Wilson was left as the swing vote. Obviously deeply conflicted […]
Posted inNews
Divided Board Votes Down Wind Project
Clearly conflicted individually and collectively, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to reject controversial plans to build a wind farm project on Monument and Bear River ridges south of Rio Dell. The vote, which saw supervisors Virginia Bass and Rex Bohn support the project and the balance of the board reject it, came […]
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Rio Dell Mayor Asks Supes to Move Terra-Gen Appeal Meeting Down South
Rio Dell Mayor Debra Garnes has sent a letter to the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors officially requesting a change of venue for any future meeting on Terra-Gen’s proposed wind farm. The Humboldt County Planning Commission voted 4-2 Thursday, with commissioners Mike Newman and Alan Bongio dissenting and commissioner Brian Mitchell absent, to deny the […]
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Planning Commission Denies Wind Farm Project
The Humboldt County Planning Commission voted 4-2, with commissioners Mike Newman and Alan Bongio dissenting and commissioner Brian Mitchell absent, to deny a proposal to build a wind farm on Monument and Bear River ridges south of Rio Dell. An initial vote on a motion to accept the project stalled with a 3-3 vote, which […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Protect Tsakiyuwit, Deny Terra-Gen’s Wind Farm
Long before there was a company named Terra-Gen, an electrical grid or climate crisis threatening the planet, the Humboldt Bay region was inhabited by Wiyot people — as many as 3,000 of them, by some estimates — who lived in some 20 villages scattered around the bay. It’s where their ancestors lived, and their ancestors’ […]
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Overflow Crowd Again Turns Out for Public Hearing on Controversial Wind Farm Proposal
The debate over the proposed Terra-Gen wind energy project seemed no closer to resolution after a second heated five-and-a-half-hour public hearing at the County Planning Commission on Thursday. Once again, the Supervisors Chamber was packed with people standing in the aisles. About 40 people who could not fit into the crowded room stood outside in […]
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Green Versus Green
Two public forums held earlier this month on the proposed Terra-Gen Wind Generation Project covered the same topics but the moods were radically different. The first meeting, a Nov. 6 panel discussion sponsored by the Schatz Energy Research Center at Humboldt State University, was calm and rational in tone, attracting nearly a thousand people to […]
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In the Balance
Seven local environmental groups have signed onto a letter to the Humboldt County Planning Department demanding changes to a proposed wind farm project that would place dozens of large turbines on two ridgelines south of Rio Dell. The letter — signed by some of the North Coast’s environmental heavyweights — comes as the the large, […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
‘Hook, Line and Turbine’
How dispiriting to read that officials at Redwood Coast Energy Authority (RCEA) have fallen hook, line and turbine for a deeply flawed energy proposal. Like many outside colonizers since 1850, a Manhattan energy company, Terra-Gen, is relying on local officials to support its plan to place up to 60 wind turbines, each standing 600 feet […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Why I Support Terra-Gen’s Wind Project
I want to highlight why I support the Terra-Gen wind project and how the project fits into Redwood Coast Energy Authority’s (RECEA’s) larger, long-term goals for using local, renewable energy production to promote local economic development and reduce the environmental impact of our energy use. With respect to the Terra-Gen wind project, I support it […]