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CONNECTING COMMUNITY CONCERNS AND COLLABORATIVE
DECISION MAKING FOR WIND ENERGY PROJECTS
IN WASHINGTON STATE
by
Dakota Burt
A Thesis
Submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree
Master of Environmental Studies
The Evergreen State College
December 2017
©2017 by Dakota Burt. All rights reserved.
This Thesis for the Master of Environmental Studies Degree
by
Dakota Burt
has been approved for
The Evergreen State College
by
________________________
Edward A. Whitesell, Ph.D.
Member of the Faculty
________________________
Date
ABSTRACT
Connecting Community Concerns and Collaborative Decision Making
For Wind Energy Projects in Washington State
Dakota Burt
The effects of climate change are making countries around the world rethink their energy
infrastructure and move towards renewable energy, especially wind energy. In the United
States, wind energy projects are increasing but development is slow because there are
many concerns that arise with wind development. There is also a lot of support for wind
energy, but opposition and support push against each other causing projects to be built
slowly. This trend can be found in Washington State for wind energy projects. Looking at
decision-making processes to see if they are collaborative can help in understanding
opposition and support. This thesis asks the question “what have been prominent
concerns for community members during wind energy projects in Washington State and
how could agencies and public utilities create more collaborative decision-making for
future wind energy projects?” The methodologies used to answer this question were
qualitative content analysis and semi-structured interviews. Qualitative content analysis
was used to find out what concerns or reasons for support community members in
Washington State had during wind projects. Semi-structured interviews were used to
discover what decision-making processes were used for wind projects and if those
processes were collaborative. This thesis found that community members have many
concerns about wind energy projects in Washington State but there is also a lot of support
for wind energy projects and that decision makers try to be collaborative for wind energy
projects, but constraints exist that make collaboration difficult. This research shows that
decision makers are being collaborative with wind energy projects in Washington State
and with continued effort for more collaborative opportunities, more renewable energy
projects can be developed. If renewable energy development continues in the United
States and around the world, then the impacts from nonrenewable energy sources can
begin to be reduced.
Table of Contents
LIST OF FIGURES...........................................................................................................v
LIST OF TABLES............................................................................................................vi
AWKNOWLEDGEMENTS...........................................................................................vii
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................1
Climate Change and the Energy Infrastructure of the World..............................................3
Collaborative Decision Making...........................................................................................8
Public Participation Requirements in Washington State.....................................................8
Research Question and the Significance of the Study.......................................................10
Roadmap of Thesis............................................................................................................12
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW......................................................................14
The Concept of NIMBY in Wind Energy Decision Making.............................................15
Theoretical Perspectives of Decision Making...................................................................19
Community Concerns and Reasons for Support................................................................27
Practical Applications of Decision Making.......................................................................33
Conclusion.........................................................................................................................43
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY.................................................................................46
Wind Energy in Washington State.....................................................................................46
Qualitative Content Analysis Methodology.......................................................................51
Semi-Structured Interview Methodology..........................................................................56
CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION.............................................................62
Prominent Concerns Found in Environmental Impact Statements....................................63
Collaborative Decision Making for Agencies and Public Utilities....................................90
Connecting Community Concerns with Decision-Making Processes.............................102
CHAPTER 5: FUTURE RESEARCH AND CONCLUSION...................................106
Future Research in Decision-Making Processes..............................................................107
Importance of Collaborative Decision Making for Wind Energy Projects......................107
Broader Implications of Collaborative Decision Making................................................109
REFERENCES...............................................................................................................111
iv
List of Figures
Figure 1. Wind energy capacity (in gigawatts) and additions per year for the world..........4
Figure 2. Wind energy capacity (in gigawatts) and additions for top ten countries............5
Figure 3. United States primary energy production by source from 1949-2016.................6
Figure 4. Washington State energy consumption by source................................................7
Figure 5. Map of Washington State wind energy facilities...............................................48
v
List of Tables
Table 1. List of Codes Found in the Wild Horse Wind Power Project Public
Comments..........................................................................................................................64
Table 2. List of Codes Found in the Desert Claim Wind Power Project Public
Comments..........................................................................................................................69
Table 3. List of Codes Found in the Whistling Ridge Energy Project Public
Comments..........................................................................................................................73
Table 4. List of Codes Found in the Lower Snake River Wind Energy Project Public
Comments..........................................................................................................................77
Table 5. List of Codes Found in the Maiden Wind Farm Public Comments.....................80
Table 6. List of Codes Found in all the Public Comments................................................84
vi
Acknowledgements
I would like the thank my thesis reader Dr. Edward (Ted) A. Whitesell for all his
help this past year and half. Thank you, Ted for helping me through this entire process
and reading many drafts of my thesis before it was complete. I would also like to thank
my friends and family who have been with me throughout this entire journey. A special
thanks to my parents, Debra Burt and Thomas Burt, for supporting me all these years.
Also, my sister Sierra Burt, who has been there for me even though she is 400 miles
away. Thank you to Carrie Frazier and the rest of the MES cohort for being there to help
with any steps of the thesis process that I needed them for. I would also like to thank all
the MES faculty that helped me throughout the last two and half years. Lastly, I would
like to thank my interview subjects for their time and help with completing my thesis. I
could not have completed my thesis without you. Thank you.
vii
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
Climate change has introduced a series of problems and concerns for the entire
world that need to be addressed if any improvement to the climate is to occur. The energy
infrastructure up to this point in history has largely relied on fossil fuel energy sources.
These fossil fuel energy sources have resulted in higher carbon dioxide levels than ever
seen before in human history, which is a cause for great concern around the world (IPCC,
2014). Higher carbon dioxide levels have changed our climate and created an
unpredictable future, especially concerning energy sources. Moving the energy
infrastructure away from harmful fossil fuels though has been and will continue to be
extremely challenging. Fossil fuels have been used for so long that it is hard to change
the status quo and to develop new energy technology to fill the gap. But, energy
infrastructures around the world must change, and change rapidly, if the effects of
climate change are to be reduced from the current predictions (IPCC, 2014).
Renewable energy sources are being developed that could change the current
energy status quo. Wind, solar, geothermal, and hydroelectric energy sources have
become game changers for many energy infrastructures around the world. There are
many countries around the world that are working on moving to renewable energy
sources instead of fossil fuel energy sources for their country's energy needs, especially
wind energy. Slowly there has been a movement away from fossil fuel energy sources
and towards renewable energy sources. This movement has not been quick enough
though and climate change is still a growing concern worldwide. Renewable energy,
especially wind energy, needs to grow more quickly in the coming years in order to have
1
an impact on fossil fuel usage and ultimately take over the use of fossil fuels for energy
production.
The United States has been increasing the implementation of renewable energy
sources to meet the growing energy demands. As of this year, approximately 17,000 MW
of wind, solar, and geothermal are being constructed in the United States (WorldWatch,
2017). AWEA (2016) and WorldWatch (2017) predict that by the end of 2017 there will
be a total of 7,500 MW of wind energy added, which will increase the United States wind
capacity by close to 45 percent. But, with the increase of renewable energy
implementation there has also been opposition (Hall et al., 2013; Baxter et al., 2013) to
renewable energy projects, especially wind energy projects. Opposition and acceptance of
wind energy projects in the United States is multifaceted and complicated. Often
opposition stems from many different sources of concern and is unique to the community
that the project is going to be near. Some of the concerns that are often voiced about wind
energy projects are landscape changes, bird and bat mortality, noise, and concerns over
the consultation and decision-making processes. People also have concerns related to
justice. These justice issues are usually related to the distribution of impacts from the
proposed wind project or from the decision-making process used to site the wind project.
Addressing these justice issues is important for all energy projects, but especially wind
energy projects since they are faced with increased opposition. Deeper understanding of
the decision-making processes used for wind energy projects has the potential to alleviate
some opposition by making sure projects are as just as they possibly can be.
On the other hand, there are also many people who support the wind energy
projects that are proposed in local communities (Bidwell, 2013; Hall et al., 2013;
2
Mulvaney et al., 2013 (1); Bakker et al., 2012; Aitken, 2010; Olson-Hazboun et al.,
2016). People support wind energy projects for many reasons but some of the most
common reasons are supplemental income from having turbines on people’s property,
local jobs, tax money to schools, infrastructure development, and wind being a lower
impact energy source. Projects that bring benefits to the community get support from
people who see the value in those benefits. Oftentimes people can have concerns about
the wind project but also be in support of it as long as certain concerns are addressed.
Having concerns about projects and being in support for a project can happen side by side
instead of against each other.
Wind energy has the potential to change the energy infrastructure of the United
States by using an energy source that is better for the environment, economy, and society.
While wind and other renewable energy sources are becoming important parts of the
energy infrastructure of the United States, there is still an ongoing conversation about the
decision-making processes behind renewable energy projects. The question this thesis
examines is “what have been prominent concerns for community members during wind
energy projects in Washington State and how agencies and public utilities could create
more collaborative decision-making processes for future wind energy projects?”
Climate Change and the Energy Infrastructure of the World
In the first wakes of climate change, there has been an increase in concerns about
fossil fuel scarcity around the world. As of 2014, electricity around the world was
produced from coal (39%), gas (22%), oil (5%), and renewables, not including
hydroelectric (7%) (TSP, 2014). These numbers are slowly shifting as countries use more
renewable energy. Different renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, geothermal,
3
and hydroelectric are starting to become important parts of the global energy
infrastructure (Assefa & Frostell, 2007). Renewable energy projects are still a minority
compared to fossil fuel projects in energy production even though they are increasing
steadily (Groth & Vogt, 2014). As energy consumption continues to rise globally,
renewable energy projects will play an important role in how we will meet future energy
consumption demands. Figure 1 shows the wind energy capacity and the additions each
year for the world. Figure 2 shows wind energy capacity and additions each year by the
top ten countries with wind energy. Both these figures show how wind energy is
increasing around the world.
Figure 1. Wind energy capacity (in gigawatts) and additions per year for the world (REN21, 2017)
4
Figure 2. Wind energy capacity (in gigawatts) and additions for top ten countries (REN 21, 2017)
Climate Change and Renewable Energy in the United States
The United States energy production is made up of a few choice energy sources.
The main sources are coal, natural gas, crude oil and natural gas plant liquids (NGPL),
renewable energy, and nuclear (EIA, 2017 (1)). Climate change is starting to get people
to think about the fossil fuel energy infrastructure and how it can shift to be less carbon
intensive. Renewable energy is beginning to get more attention from decision makers
who are looking at how the energy infrastructure can move away from fossil fuel energy
sources. By observing Figure 3, the United States uses significantly more fossil fuel
energy sources than renewables. This allows for renewables to increase their
development in the United States.
5
Figure 3. United States primary energy production by source from 1949-2016 (EIA, 2017 (1))
Why Wind Energy is Important in Washington State
Wind energy is already used around the world and in the United States. It is part
of the energy infrastructure currently, but has the potential to be a more important in
Washington State. Wind power is the “cheapest and the fastest growing renewable energy
option” (Ottinger et al., 2014, p. 662) and this holds true in Washington State as more
wind energy projects are being proposed. Figure 4 shows the composition of
Washington’s energy consumption by power source. Hydroelectric power is immensely
important in Washington and comprises of approximately two-thirds of the energy
consumption (EIA, 2017 (2)). Natural gas is second to hydroelectric power consumed in
the state. Hydroelectric also is approximately nine-tenths of the renewable power
consumed in Washington (EIA, 2017 (2)).
6
Figure 4. Washington State energy consumption estimates for 2015 by source (EIA, 2017 (2))
Climate change impacts are affecting the energy infrastructure of Washington
State by changing available energy resources. As shown, hydroelectric power is
extremely important in Washington but with recent droughts brought on by climate
change, this energy source is less predictable. Reduced snowpack during the winter
months is impacting hydroelectric production during the snow runoff seasons and it is
uncertain which years in the future may be impacted by low hydroelectric production
(ECY, 2017 (1); Fosu et al., 2016). This uncertainty about hydroelectric production
means there needs to be a backup power source when snow runoff is not producing
enough energy. Currently, fossil fuel and nuclear energy sources are used when
hydroelectric power does not produce the same amount of energy being consumed
(CTED & ECY, 2006). Wind energy can be an option for substituting hydroelectric
power across Washington, instead of turning towards nonrenewable energy sources when
hydroelectric energy is unavailable. Implementing new energy sources as other options,
like hydroelectric power, stop being as productive can be challenging because of
7
decision-making processes and knowing if local communities want new energy sources
in their area.
Collaborative Decision Making
One of the main focuses of this study is collaborative decision making.
Collaboration has a wide range of possible definitions when looking at decision making.
For this study collaborative decision making means giving ample opportunities for
anyone who has a stake in the final project to give input and be active in the decisionmaking process. This means that people are part of the decision-making process and have
a more active role in the process than just getting information and being able to comment
on the project. In order for collaboration to be part of the decision-making process people
must be able to make a difference in the final decision for wind energy projects. This
could be in the form of getting the project design changed, the site for the wind energy
project changed or moved, or making sure certain important concerns are adequately
addressed in the environmental impact statement (EIS).
Public Participation Requirements in Washington State
There are policy requirements for public participation to happen during decisionmaking processes. These policies instruct decision makers on where to include public
participation but also what type of participation needs to occur during certain steps.
Federally, there is the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) which has certain
public participation requirements during the environmental impact assessment process for
wind energy projects. Then at the level of Washington State there is the State
Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) which is similar to NEPA regarding public
participation. Washington also has another layer of public participation requirements if
8
wind energy projects go through the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC)
decision-making process. All three of these, NEPA, SEPA, and EFSEC, are important for
decision makers when addressing public participation.
NEPA requires that the public participate in environmental decision making in
two distinct parts of the process. Decision makers are required to include the public
during scoping for a project and after the draft environmental impact assessment has been
published, which means it is available for public comment. Through NEPA, the scoping
process is when citizens can provide input at the beginning of the decision-making
process so that decision makers have issues to address in the Environmental Impact
Statement (EIS) (EPA, 2017). The methods used for scoping include public meetings,
conference calls, formal hearings, informal workshops, and opportunities to submit
written comments. The other part of NEPA that includes public participation is when the
draft environmental impact statement is published. There is a comment period with a
minimum of 45 days where agencies conduct public meetings and the public can send in
comments through email (EPA, 2017).
Washington’s SEPA process is similar and requires the same amount of public
participation during environmental impact statements. SEPA also requires public
participation during scoping and after the draft environmental impact statement has been
released. Public participation is taken a bit further with SEPA and agencies are
encouraged to push beyond the requirements to create a public participation plan. The
public participation plan can include different outreach methods, like newsletters, project
updates, public notices, radio announcements, internet web pages, and public hearings
during scoping and draft EIS comment periods (ECY, 2017 (2)). The plan should also
9
include methods that are innovative in order to reach community members that may not
be reached by the more traditional methods.
Siting councils, such as EFSEC, are unique to only Washington, Oregon, and
West Virginia (Ottinger et al., 2014). EFSEC is mandatory for projects over 350MW and
if local governments deny a permit then developers can go to EFSEC for approval. Once
part of the EFSEC decision-making process, an adjudicative proceeding will happen. The
adjudicative proceeding happens parallel to the public participation already required
through NEPA and SEPA but is an added public participation requirement only to
EFSEC. Adjudicative proceedings are similar to court hearings though, and they allow
for people with expertise to be heard (Ottinger et al., 2014). After the proceedings occur,
the siting council makes the final decision on the proposed project. By having states
control the siting decisions and not local governments the process is quicker and is often
seen as the best way to approve projects besides state voting (Ottinger et al., 2014).
Research Question and the Significance of the Study
There has been significant research assessing general concerns with wind energy
projects around the United States and the world. These studies typically address
community concerns by asking community members about their experience with wind
energy projects and the decision-making processes used. Studies also look at specific
decision-making processes that are often used and critique those processes in various
ways. All of the existing studies lack one critical component that is extremely important
in addressing community concerns and decision-making processes, which is discussing
these issues with actual decision makers. The people who are part of the decision-making
process often are left out of research conducted about wind energy projects. The
10
perspectives of decision makers are crucial in understanding decision-making processes,
determining how collaborative the processes are, and addressing constraints that affect
collaborative decision making.
This thesis specifically looks at the research question asking, “what have been
prominent concerns for community members during wind energy projects in the
Washington and how could agencies and public utilities create more collaborative
decision-making processes for future wind energy projects?” Asking this question is
important because wind energy is growing steadily in Washington State and decisionmaking processes have been the same for many years. With multiple ways to make wind
energy project decisions there is added tension about how collaborative different
processes are and how to expand collaboration with constraints affecting the
implementation of wind energy projects. There are many ways to answer these questions.
Interviewing decision makers and looking at written records from past wind energy
projects are one such way to find answers.
This thesis found that the most prominent concerns community members have
had in Washington are negative scenery changes, natural habitat loss, bird and bat
mortality, bird and bat habitat and migration loss, and noise. Also, it was found that there
was a lot of support for wind energy projects because of community benefits. It was also
found that decision makers try to be collaborative for wind energy projects and that
constraints exist that sometimes prevent the best collaboration possible, like time and
money. Decision makers believe that collaboration is important and want to give
community members opportunities for public involvement during the environmental
impact statement (EIS) process so that concerns are addressed.
11
Roadmap of Thesis
This thesis will be comprised of five main chapters. Chapter 2 will delve into the
past literature and studies concerned with community concerns and decision-making
processes of wind energy projects. The chapter is divided into four sections. The first
section looks at the role of Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) and how using the term
NIMBY is not relevant for current projects. The second section goes into the theoretical
frameworks of distributive and procedural justice issues associated with wind energy
development. The third section looks at community concerns and reasons for support of
wind energy projects. The concerns that are discussed in-depth are landscape change
concerns, bird and bat concerns, and noise concerns. The reason for support that is
discussed is community benefits. The fourth section talks about actual decision-making
processes and assessments that can be used for wind energy projects, as well as what is
usually found in those processes.
Chapter 3 will consist of the methodology used to conduct this thesis research.
The methodology that will be described is qualitative content analysis and semistructured interviews. Qualitative content analysis was used to determine what have been
prominent concerns for community members during past wind energy projects in
Washington State. Semi-structured interviews were used to find out from decision makers
what decision-making processes were used for wind energy projects and if those
processes were collaborative. This chapter will also discuss the limitations of the study
and how those limitations were addressed.
Chapter 4 discusses the results of the thesis research and connects the findings
with existing literature. This section will explore the study findings, dominant themes,
12
and discuss how community concerns and decision-making processes are connected. The
chapter will be separated into three sections. The first section will include the results and
discussion from the qualitative content analysis study looking at community concerns
from past wind energy projects in Washington State. The second section will look at the
results and discussion from the semi-structured interviews. The third section ties together
the results from the qualitative content analysis study and the semi-structured interviews.
Lastly, chapter 5 will provide conclusions for this thesis research. This chapter
will provide broader implications of this study that are relevant to Washington, the
United States, and around the world.
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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
To begin looking at the thesis question, “what have been prominent concerns for
community members during wind energy projects in Washington State and how could
agencies and public utilities create more collaborative decision making for future wind
energy projects?” it is important to delve into past literature. The literature review for this
study is divided into four sections that address the concept of Not in My Backyard
(NIMBY), theoretical perspectives, community concerns and support, and practical
applications. These four sections aid in understanding how to address the more general
question asking what community concerns are important during wind energy projects and
what processes decision makers have used to assess wind energy projects. There will also
be a conclusion that ties in the research for this thesis and how it fits within the literature
that has been presented. By understanding this general question addressed by past
literature, my research will be backed by theoretical perspectives and practical
applications that can help answer my thesis research question.
The first section of the literature review focuses on the concept of NIMBY, or Not
In My Backyard. The concept of NIMBY is explored because this is often the reason
given for people not accepting wind projects even though there is more complex
reasoning behind the views people have. NIMBY has been a term used by decision
makers in the past and needs to be explored in more depth to fully understand why it has
been used in the past and how it is not as relevant anymore.
The second section of the literature review looks at theoretical perspectives of
decision making. This section will be examining theories of justice and how community
concerns often occur during decision making for wind energy projects because aspects of
14
justice are not being adequately addressed. Two important theories of justice, distributive
justice and procedural justice, will be discussed as well as how knowledge, perception,
and fear play into these theories.
The third section of the literature review looks at concerns and support for wind
energy project that has been found throughout the literature. The section is separated
between main concerns found in the literature and the main influence for support of wind
energy. The community concerns that are discussed are landscape change concerns, bird
and bat concerns, and noise concerns. The reason for support that is discussed is
community benefits and how those community benefits can increase support.
The fourth section of the literature review will discuss practical applications of
decision making. Topics to be discussed in detail are public participation in
environmental decision making, how decision-making processes or assessments address
varying community concerns, what actual processes and assessments exist that decision
makers can use, and the reasoning behind using certain processes or assessments for wind
energy project decision making.
Finally, there will be a conclusion that connects the literature that has been
presented with the topic of this thesis. This conclusion will describe how the literature
ties into this thesis research and what gaps in the literature are being addressed by this
thesis.
The Concept of NIMBY in Wind Energy Decision Making
Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) is a term often used in renewable energy decision
making and in social acceptance issues. For wind energy projects, NIMBY is defined as
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people being in support of wind energy in general but not locally (Wolsink, 2000).
NIMBY is used to describe why people do not want a project, like wind energy projects
in their area (van der Horst, 2007; Wolsink, 2000; Wolsink, 2006; Devine-Wright, 2005;
Swofford & Slattery, 2010) The reason NIMBY is problematic is because people oppose
projects they do not want so they will not feel the impacts from the project in their areas.
Having concerns about local impacts from proposed projects are completely valid and
should be seen as such, but the problem that occurs with NIMBY is that people do not
necessarily see that if the project is going to be moved to another community then those
impacts will be felt somewhere else. The community that the project moves to may not
have the resources or ability to fully oppose and have the project denied in their area.
NIMBY was originally used to describe why people opposed environmentally
harmful projects in their backyards, such as landfills and toxic waste factories, but is now
used to describe any environmental project that people might have concerns about (van
der Horst, 2007). Wind energy projects are one such environmental project that labels
community concerns as NIMBY instead of addressing the deeper concerns about the
project. For renewable energy projects, NIMBYism usually is used to describe people
who are in favor of renewable energy projects but have opposition or concerns about a
project that is being proposed in their ‘backyards.’ Using NIMBYism to describe
people’s opposition to renewable energy projects is often portrayed negatively and as
selfish reasoning for opposing renewable energy in their own backyards but not in other
people’s backyards (van der Horst, 2007).
Benjamin Walker et al. (2014) argues that NIMBYism can still be a valid term for
discussing social acceptance of renewable energy projects because communities usually
16
are concerned with their own self-interest. Renewable energy projects that make sure to
address this self-interest and offer community benefits from projects can receive greater
social acceptance for proposed projects. But, self-interest and NIMBY are constantly
being contested because there are many reasons for people to oppose renewable energy
projects. NIMBYism more often occurs from perceived risk and worry about core values
related to who makes the decisions during renewable energy projects (Wolsink, 2007).
Selfishness can still be a motivation behind NIMBYism, but a deeper understanding
about why people oppose renewable energy projects locally is necessary.
Many studies contest the idea that NIMBY should be used to describe why
community members are opposing wind energy projects. One of the main reasons found
throughout the literature for why people oppose wind energy projects is proximity and
how close the project will be to their area (Devine-Wright, 2005; Devine-Wright, 2009;
van der Horst, 2007; Swofford & Slattery, 2010). Van der Horst (2007) found that
proximity strongly influences how people feel about wind energy projects, but that there
are other factors that influence public opinions. How people value the land is extremely
important in how people will reach to wind projects being proposed in their areas,
according to van der Horst (2007), and decision makers need to understand these land
values before pursuing development. Devine-Wright (2009) supports these findings and
goes farther to suggest that place attachment theory is important in understanding the real
reasons people oppose a project instead of using NIMBY.
Bidwell (2013), and many other researchers, bring up the point that NIMBY is an
outdated reason for opposition of wind energy projects and people have deeper reasons
for opposing projects (Devine-Wright, 2005; Devine-Wright, 2009; van der Horst, 2007;
17
Swofford & Slattery, 2010). In a study by Gross (2007), she found that the deeper reasons
for people to oppose projects stemmed from justice issues. She found that instead of
NIMBY as a reason for opposing projects, people generally had issues around the
distribution of impacts or how the decision-making process was conducted. These
findings are backed up by van der Horst (2007) who concluded that people oppose wind
projects because of the proximity of the project and based on what kind of values the
people who live in the area have. People are not necessarily opposing the project for selfinterest reasons but instead because they are in opposition of the wind project in general
(Wolsink, 2000).
Using NIMBYism to explain why people oppose renewable energy projects in
their communities oversimplifies why people actually oppose projects and takes the focus
away from the root causes behind why people feel the way they do about projects (Friedl
& Reichl, 2016). Recently, there has been a shift from using NIMBYism to explain
opposition and there are even instances where the negative connotations of NIMBYism
are being shifted to express positive attitudes about renewable energy projects. Different
terminology is starting to be used such as “POOL (Please On Our Land)” (Klein, 2014, p.
132) and PIMBY (Please In My Backyard) (Stigka et al., 2014) to describe people that
want renewable energy projects in their backyards. These changes are attempting to
destigmatize the use of NIMBY and give positive meanings to renewable energy projects.
Even with the move to destigmatize the use of NIMBY, local opposition of wind
energy projects are still being labeled as NIMBY by decision makers instead of trying to
further understand the concerns community members have. This is an ongoing issue with
energy project but specifically wind energy projects in Washington. Wind energy projects
18
receive a lot of opposition because there is lower energy output but higher visual impacts
(Wustenhagen, 2007). The visual impact concerns easily convert into NIMBY concerns
because local communities do not want to see the turbines in their backyards. Decision
makers must fully understand all concerns local communities have about wind energy
projects in order to make decisions that are collaborative. Defining concerns as NIMBY
does not allow for community members to adequately be part of the decision-making
process for wind energy projects. This thesis looks at those deeper community concerns
that arise instead of using NIMBY as the reason for opposition.
Theoretical Perspectives of Decision Making
Introduction to Theories of Justice
Justice issues have been at the forefront of many development projects, but
especially wind energy projects (Gross, 2007 & Walker, Wiersma & Bailey, 2014). Wind
energy projects have a history of justice issues, and understanding theories of justice can
aid in addressing these concerns before decision making. Though issues of justice have
been known for a long time, they are still very important to understand and address
(Gross, 2007). Theories of justice have changed and adapted through the years to better
understand how justice concerns have changed. For wind energy projects and decision
making, environmental justice is the most relevant theory of justice to use to understand
the complex relationships between environmental impacts and social justice.
Environmental justice is the most relevant theory of justice to use because it brings
together other theories of justice under the scope of the environment.
Dr. Catherine Gross is a Visiting Fellow at the Fenner School of Environment and
Society in Australian National University and is the author of the book Fairness and
19
Justice in Environmental Decision Making. She has written extensively about
environmental justice and has been cited extensively for the work she has done.
Environmental justice, as defined by Gross (2007), is the “inequitable distribution of
environmental impacts” (p. 2729) and is concerned with distributive justice and
procedural justice issues. Distributive justice “focuses on equitable distribution of
outcomes, which can be either public goods or public ‘burdens’” (Gross, 2007, p. 2729)
and procedural justice is “concerned with the processes by which decision are made”
(Gross, 2007, p. 2729). Originally, environmental justice scholars were concerned
primarily with distributive justice but now also focuses on procedural justice issues
(Gross, 2007). Focusing on both distributive justice and procedural justice is important to
decision making because decision-making processes determine the outcome of wind
energy projects making both justice issues relevant. Distributive justice and procedural
justice will be discussed in more detail in the next sections.
Environmental policies dictate decision-making processes that are used in wind
energy projects. Justice issues should inform the environmental policies and decisionmaking processes that are used. Historic precedent in decision making has made it
difficult to proactively address justice issues and policy requirements, such as
environmental impact assessments, often work against theories of justice by reactively
addressing justice issues (Gross, 2007). Gross (2007) found in her study that communities
do not see decision-making processes as being fair because concerns are addressed after
decision have been made. This same problem has appeared in other studies, such as a
study done by D’Souza and Yiridoe (2014) that found community members believed
decision makers did not want to address concerns people had about proposed wind
20
projects until after the decisions had been made. Community concerns are addressed later
in the decision-making process because the environmental policies that have dictated how
decision are made have been the same for decades. While decision makers can address
justice issues earlier in the decision-making process, it is often difficult to address all
community concerns proactively unless there has been adequate public participation early
in the process.
Distributive Justice and Wind Energy Projects
As mentioned in the previous section, distributive justice is defined as “equitable
distribution of outcomes, which can be either public goods or public ‘burdens’” (Gross,
2007, p. 2729). Addressing distributive justice issues is important because individual
community members can feel like winners or losers depending on what the impacts of the
wind projects end up being (Gross, 2007 & Hall et al, 2013). Distributive justice can be
separated into negative and positive impacts of wind projects on community members.
Some examples of negative impacts from wind energy projects are landscape changes,
bird and bat mortality, and noise irritation. Examples of positive impacts from wind
energy projects are community benefits and lower overall environmental impacts from
wind opposed to other energy sources. These impacts and community concerns will be
addressed more fully later in the chapter.
Procedural Justice and Wind Energy Projects
Procedural justice is “concerned with the processes by which decision are made”
(Gross, 2007, p. 2729), as was stated in an earlier section. It is often found that
procedural justice is more important than distributive justice (Schweizer-Ries, 2008)
because the decision-making process determines the outcomes of wind energy projects.
21
Community members will have concerns with how the decision making happened that
affects all other aspects of wind energy projects, like environmental, economic, and
social impacts. These concerns are important to understand so that procedural justice
issues can be addressed early in the decision-making process instead of after decisions
have been made.
Decision-making processes that are fair are more important than just using public
participation techniques that meet certain policy requirements (Gross, 2007). There are
different participation stages that decision makers use, and they are information,
consultation, cooperation, and self-empowerment (Friedl & Reichl, 2016). SchweizerRies (2008) offered a different interpretation of participation stages and put them in the
order of information sharing, consultation, shared decision making, and initiating action
(p. 4133). These ideas are very similar and just use different words to convey how lower
participation is just providing communities with information or consulting people within
a community about the wind energy project. More active participation goes beyond this
to include community members in decision making and for the community to be
empowered to create their own wind energy projects without outside organizations
bringing the idea to communities.
It is important to understand the different stages of participation because decisionmaking processes require different levels of participation. Some processes only require
information sharing with community members and some consultation, such as
environmental impact assessments (Frield & Reichl, 2016). When these processes are
used, there can be more conflict than originally planned by decision makers because
environmental groups know about decision making processes and procedural justice.
22
Since environmental groups know about procedural justice they are often loud in their
opposition of wind energy projects (Walker, 1995). People want more participatory
decision making and communities that are not part of the process early can develop very
negative perceptions about projects (Walker, Wiersma & Bailey, 2014; Simcock, 2016).
Though people want more participatory decision making locally, there is a
disconnect between planning and siting wind energy projects. This occurs because
national policies often require certain planning to take place, but more local decisions
determine siting of wind energy projects (Wustenhagen, Wolsink & Burer, 2007 &
Barboza, 2015). “Political institutions that do not support local collaborative approaches
can all act to reduce the success of national wind power” (Wolsink, 2007, p. 2694).
Decision makers should use more participatory and collaborative approaches so that
community members believe procedural justice is being addressed and thus promoting “a
positive attitude towards the project” (Frield & Reichl, 2016, p. 190). When community
members are not part of the decision-making process people feel like they are being left
out of the process, which can damage community well-being and create more opposition
to wind projects (D’Souza & Yiridoe, 2014). Being part of the decision-making process
creates a difference in how people feel about projects and can be influential in wind
energy projects getting built (Gross, 2007 & Hall et al, 2013).
Many studies found that community members want to be part of the decisionmaking process for wind energy projects in their areas (Frield & Reichl, 2016; Gross,
2007; Hall et al, 2013; Swofford & Slattery, 2010). Community members see the value of
being part of the process for many reasons. Gross (2007) had found that it can be
damaging to the well-being of a community if people are not part of the decision-making
23
process. This finding has been backed up by other research that looked at how
communities felt about projects that were built in their areas. D’Souza and Yiridoe (2014)
confirmed community well-being was lowered from not being included in the decisionmaking process. Including community members can benefit the community as a whole,
especially since community members want to be part of the process (Swofford &
Slattery, 2010).
Knowledge, Perception, and Fear
Knowledge, perception, and fear tie directly into theories of justice because
knowledge levels relate to perceptions and fears people have about processes or outcomes
of wind energy projects. G. Assefa and B. Frostell (2007) found that the public has a
difficult time discussing energy technology when they do not have information about the
technology, like wind energy, and that decision makers need to education community
members about the technology in order to be part of the decision-making process. Along
this same line of thinking, policymakers think that improving knowledge will create
better attitudes about wind energy projects (Wolsink, 2007). But, education about
projects does not mean community members will support them because opposition goes
beyond knowledge about wind energy (Walker, 1995). More knowledge can create more
opposition because community members realize that procedural justice or distributive
justice issues are not being adequately addressed.
Perceptions also play a huge role in how community members view projects.
Community member’s perceptions throughout wind energy projects can be described by
using a U-shaped curve, according to Maarten Wolsink (2007). People have positive
perceptions about wind energy in general when first learning about potential wind power
24
in the community, then people become more critical about the actual project being
planned and develop negative perceptions, but eventually people have more positive
perceptions after some time has passed after the construction of the wind energy project
(Wolsink, 2007). These negative perceptions begin to develop during project planning
because community members begin to see the process as unfair (Gross, 2007). Perceived
risks and core values start becoming strong influences when people begin to perceive the
decision-making process as not addressing justice issues that are of high concern to
communities (Wolsink, 2007).
Another important factor to consider with community member perceptions of
wind energy projects during decision making is that people have different perceptions
about what is defined as their “backyard” (van der Horst, 2007). People can define their
backyards as their physical backyards, communities, counties, and all the way extending
to the entire country. This adds an extra component to determining who will have
concerns related to distributive justice and procedural justice issues of wind energy
projects. Understanding and defining backyards also relates to the “Proximity
Hypothesis” which states that the closer someone is to a proposed wind energy project,
the more negative their perceptions will be (van der Horst, 2007, p. 2707). This
hypothesis has not been proven because there are so many factors that influence negative
perceptions of wind energy projects and proximity is just one factor. Dan van der Horst
(2007) also found that often people further away from existing wind energy projects see
more risk in wind projects because these people have not witnessed actual impacts to
communities after projects were finished. These negative perceptions of projects stem
25
from fears about potential impacts to communities from wind energy projects that may or
may not happen depending on the decision-making process.
Understanding the complex relationships between knowledge, perception, and
fear is difficult because “perceptions are complex and conflicting viewpoints are to a
large degree only to be expected” (Walker, 1995, p. 58). Decision making processes that
are fair matter for trust to be built in communities and so community members feel like
their concerns matter. Decision makers are often outsiders in a community and need to
build trust because wind energy decisions are loaded with potential risk to community
members (Wustenhagen, Wolsink & Burer, 2007). Distributive justice and procedural
justice issues need to be fully addressed before projects are decided on for decision
makers to create collaborative wind energy projects.
Methodologies Used for Theoretical Perspectives
To answer the question about what concerns are priorities to community members
during wind energy projects in general and how theories of justice play into decisionmaking processes that address or do not address these community concerns, there are
certain methodologies that are used throughout the literature. Case studies, interviews,
surveys, and deeper analysis of existing literature are common methodologies used to
answer questions about wind energy project development and justice. Often,
methodologies are used together to form better understandings about how theories of
justice work theoretically but also practically.
Methodological approaches such as the “adaptive theory” that Gross (2007) used
to conduct their research, suggests that “social research can be enhanced by the adoption
of a research method that encourages the continued interaction of the theoretical aspects
26
of the research with the practical” (Gross, 2007, p. 2728). This methodology is interesting
because it is useful for studies that go between theoretical and practical aspects of
research problems. Gross (2007) also conducted semi-structured interviews to gain a
deeper understanding about the perspectives of community members about the decisionmaking process. There are gaps in this research method though because while community
members could voice their perspectives there is still the missing voice of the decision
makers. Throughout the studies that were discussed, the voice of the decision maker has
been left out when looking at justice issues and decision making. Studies use community
members voices for their research, but the decision makers are not part of many studies.
The decision maker is an important voice to capture since they are the ones deciding
which process or assessment to use in developing wind energy projects.
Community Concerns and Reasons for Support
Community Concerns for Wind Energy Projects
Landscape Change Concerns
Landscape change is one of the most important concerns that community
members have during wind energy projects because people have deep rooted connections
and values for the areas they live near (Baxter et al, 2013; Bidwell, 2013; Olson-Hazboun
et al, 2016; Schweizer-Ries, 2008; Swofford & Slattery, 2010). People value the
landscapes that are meaningful to them and when a landscape is changed for a wind
energy project people can feel like the outcome was unfairly distributed. Visual
landscape changes are dominant concerns community members have but auditory,
olfactory, and haptic senses also matter to people (Schweizer-Ries, 2008 & Wolsink,
2007). Wind energy projects usually need to be on certain landscapes that offer the most
27
available wind generation potential and decision makers need to understand the dynamics
between these landscapes and how community members feel about landscape changes.
Petra Schweizer-Ries (2008) showed that people prefer natural and untouched
landscapes which is one reason people will oppose wind energy projects on certain
landscapes. Types of landscapes matter to people and certain landscapes, such as
mountains and pristine areas, people will fight for to protect from development (Wolsink,
2007). Places that have had industry or other energy infrastructure are less likely to
oppose projects because the project is not changing an undeveloped landscape (van der
Horst, 2007). Walker (1995) presents the idea that smaller wind energy projects are better
than wind farms because visual impacts to landscapes will be less and landscape change
will be reduced. While landscape change is important, the decision-making process must
be fair because every wind energy project will be different, and the community members
will have different concerns related to landscape change.
Research on landscape changes and place attachment have shown that community
members value the land around them and do not want those places changed. As Hall et al.
(2013) found, it is important to understand the local area before deciding on wind energy
projects because the project should “ideally enhance the characteristics of a place or be
compatible with its history” (p. 206). When people are attached to their landscapes then
they are more likely to oppose wind development if it does not match their values. Being
able to see the wind energy project relates to how supportive or not community members
may be (Olson-Hazboun et al, 2016). If people could not see the wind projects, then their
landscape values were not in danger of being changed. Place attachment is strong in
places that wind energy projects are being built because the landscapes are often
28
undeveloped and rural. This means it is important that decision makers understand the
communities they are trying to build these projects in so that the projects aren’t in
opposition of the values of the community.
Bird and Bat Concerns
One of the most important concerns community members have for wind energy
project development are the impacts to birds and bats (Barclay et al., 2007; Barrios &
Rodriguez, 2004; Mulvaney et al., 2013 (2); Rand & Hoen, 2017; Slattery et al., 2012;
Zerrahn, 2017). The concern for birds and bats occurs for wind energy projects because
these projects do change the natural landscape and habitat. With this landscape and
habitat change, studies have shown that there is an increase in bird and bat fatalities in
North America (Barclay et al., 2007; Barrios & Rodriguez, 2004; Zerrahn, 2017). Barrios
& Rodriguez (2004) found that bird and bat fatality studies are still not accurate and there
is still not a good understanding of how many birds and bats get killed each year from
wind energy projects. Research is continuing to be pursued to fully understand the impact
of wind energy projects on bird and bat fatality, as well as habitat loss and migration loss.
Community members concern over birds and bats affect how they feel about wind
energy development in the area they live. It has been found in many studies that
community members believe wind turbines are dangerous to birds and bats (Mulvaney et
al., 2013 (2); Rand & Hoen, 2017; Slattery et al., 2012). Since wind energy is built in
undeveloped and rural areas there are more concerns about how the birds and bats will
react to development. Community members care about the wildlife in their areas and
have concerns over what will happen with increased development. Rand and Hoen (2017)
looked at research spanning over thirty years about wind energy development and found
29
that community members are less likely to support wind projects if they believe harm will
come to birds and bats. This is supported by other research that addresses opposition and
support of wind energy projects based on bird and bat impacts (Mulvaney et al., 2013 &
Slattery et al., 2012).
Noise Concerns
Noise is one of the top concerns that community members have about wind
energy projects being built in their areas (Bakker et al., 2012; Baxter et al., 2013; Groth
& Vogt, 2014; Onakpoya et al., 2015; Shepherd et al., 2011). The main reason noise is a
concern to people is that it creates annoyance, which in turn disrupts quality of life and
health. Bakker et al. (2012) found that noise annoyance from turbines can cause people to
have sleep disturbance and even psychological stress. These impacts are not felt by
people who do not hear noise from turbines. These results are consistent with other
findings that concluded noise from turbines reduced quality of life, sleep, and health
(Bakker et al., 2012; Baxter et al., 2013; Groth & Vogt, 2014; Onakpoya et al., 2015;
Shepherd et al., 2011). Community members are less likely to support a wind energy
project if they have concerns about the noise that will be generated from the wind
turbines (Baxter et al., 2013).
Reasons for Supporting Wind Energy Projects
Community Benefits
Decision makers often try to find ways to reduce concerns for wind energy
projects. One such way to reduce potential burdens that communities may have during
the development of a wind energy project is to provide community benefits (Hall et al.,
30
2013; Liljenfeldt & Pettersson, 2017; Walker, Wiersma & Bailey, 2014; Walker, 1995).
Community benefits can be offered in many different forms, such as payments to
community members, payments to community investments, and funds for future projects
in the community. An increase in support for wind projects has been seen when
community benefits are part of the wind project design (Bidwell, 2013; Hall et al., 2013;
Mulvaney et al., 2013 (1); Bakker et al., 2012; Aitken, 2010; Olson-Hazboun et al.,
2016).
Community benefits, especially economic benefits, are important to community
members because oftentimes wind energy projects are being developed in rural areas that
have been hit hard economically (Mulvaney et al., 2013 (1)). Economic benefits can go to
the surrounding communities but also to individual people. Individual economic benefits
are usually provided as income for people who have wind turbines on their properties.
Farmers, and other property owners, have increased support of wind energy projects if
they get income from hosting wind turbines on their land (Hall et al., 2013). While the
individual economic benefits are important for support of wind projects, benefits to the
widespread community are more important for overall support. Bakker et al. (2012) and
Aitken (2010) both found in their studies that community benefits need to go to
surrounding communities instead of just to individual people. This increases the
community support of projects and not just support of individual people. Aitken (2010)
also found that community benefits need to go to all surrounding communities and not
just the community that is nearest to the wind energy project. Along with this finding, he
also found that community benefits must continue even after the project is finished so
that the community feels like they are being compensated for the wind project impacts.
31
Community benefits can be perceived as bribery by the decision makers to gain
support for wind energy projects and to reduce the amount of opposition (Bakker et al.,
2012). Bribes can be seen as paying communities off for negative impacts in the future
that will be felt from the project implementation (Walker, Wiersma & Bailey, 2014).
Community members who think bribery is happening instead of community benefits can
think the decision-making process is not fair and potentially biased (Walker, Wiersma &
Bailey, 2014). This potential bribery issue can negatively affect how the community
members perceive the decision-making process of wind energy projects. As long as
decision makers are creating community benefits that are personalized and address what
the local communities need, bribery does not have to be an issue with wind energy
development and support will increase (Olson-Hazboun et al., 2016).
There are some solutions to the different issues that arise from using community
benefits to address concerns. Benjamin Walker et al. (2014) suggest that decision makers
need to be strategic about community benefits so that community members do not think
they are being bribed into not opposing wind energy projects. One strategic method
suggested is to put the money in funds for the community and to not pay community
members until after the wind energy project has been implemented (Walker, Wiersma &
Bailey, 2014). These methods of community benefits are still not completely addressing
the problem though. Community benefits do address certain outcomes from concerns but
often these outcomes could be reduced from the decision-making process being more
collaborative, so community members have a say in the outcomes.
32
Practical Applications of Decision Making
Public Participation in Decision Making
Public participation for environmental decision making, especially with wind
energy decision making, is an important part of the decision-making process. Almost all
countries with environmental impact assessments require public participation (Glucker et
al., 2013). Public participation is a vital tool for environmental impact assessments but
hasn’t been as effective as possible because participation processes are often seen as
ineffective, costly, and time consuming (Doelle & Sinclair, 2006). This often happens
because public participation is not adequately defined because researchers and decision
makers define it differently, using words like ‘participation’ and ‘consultation’
interchangeably even though they explain different things (Glucker et al., 2013).
O’Faircheallaigh (2010) defines public participation as “any form of interaction between
government and corporate actors and the public that occurs as part of EIA processes” (p.
20). But, that still doesn’t clearly define public participation or who the public is that
should be part of the participation process, causing ambiguity.
Why include the public in decision-making processes to begin with? Shepherd
and Bowler (1997) discuss four basic reasons for including the public in the decisionmaking process. These four reasons are 1) public participation is regarded as proper, fair
conduct of democratic government in public decision-making activities; 2) public
participation is widely accepted as a way to ensure that projects meet citizens’ needs and
are suitable to the affected public; 3) the project carries more legitimacy, and less
hostility, if potentially affected parties can influence the decision-making process; and 4)
the final decision is ‘better’ when local knowledge and values are included and when
33
expert knowledge is publicly examined (Shepherd & Bowler, 1997; O’Faircheallaigh,
2010; Glucker et al., 2013). But, others may argue that not including the public is quicker
and more cost-effective (Shepherd & Bowler, 1997; O’Faircheallaigh, 2010; Doelle &
Sinclair, 2006). Including the public in decision making is required but there is a purpose
and benefits to including the public.
Including the public in decision making is extremely important for the reasons
listed above but it is also important because these projects are going to exist in areas with
people. Those people should be part of the process and have a say in the final project.
Beyond just having more knowledge about the local area, people in surrounding
communities genuinely want to be part of the decision-making process (Swofford &
Slattery, 2010). Studies have shown that people are concerned about wind energy projects
being developed because they do not think decision makers will address community
concerns (D’Souza & Yiridoe, 2014). D’Souza & Yiridoe (2014) also found that
community engagement and participation can be vastly important in getting community
support for wind energy projects. By including community members in the decisionmaking process, the overall process can be smoother and community members are more
inclined to support a project that they are part of.
As public participation becomes more important in decision-making processes,
people are beginning to view participation differently. “Participation in environmental
decision-making is increasingly becoming regarded as a democratic right” (Reed, 2008,
p. 2418) and something that must be included in environmental decision making. Public
participation is moving away from just being a tool to gather information and disseminate
knowledge about a planned project and is becoming a part of community involvement.
34
This is changing how communities view and react to projects in their local areas. One
benefit of participation is that “stakeholder participation may increase the likelihood that
environmental decisions are perceived to be holistic and fair” (Reed, 2008, p. 2420).
Also, engagement with stakeholders early on can increase the “likelihood that local needs
and priorities are successfully met” (Reed, 2008, p. 2420), can create a sense of
ownership over the project implementation (Shepherd & Bowler, 1997), and create
community empowerment from participating (O’Faircheallaigh, 2010). If public
participation is done well, marginalized groups can feel empowered by having a voice in
the decision-making process (O’Faircheallaigh, 2010).
There are a few different metaphors used to describe public participation, such as
a ladder or a wheel. The ladder metaphor shows that each rung of the ladder is a form of
participation and the higher up the ladder you go the better the participation is (Reed,
2008). An example is that a lower rung would be passive dissemination of information to
the public and a higher rung would be active engagement in the decision-making process.
The ladder metaphor has recently been replaced with the wheel because a wheel shows
that multiple participation types can be used during the decision-making process (Reed,
2008). During the decision-making process it is important to use different participation
types depending on the project that is being implemented and the desired outcomes.
Different forms of participation aren’t in a vacuum, they are connected and work together
(O’Faircheallaigh, 2010).
Public participation processes continuously change and look different to be more
successful. Doelle and Sinclair (2006) suggest that there needs to be legislation requiring
public participation before project design has been decided on but also an independent
35
review panel that assesses how meaningful the public participation was. Institutionalizing
that public participation must happen at even more points in the decision making is
important so that decision makers do include the public (De Santo, 2016 & Reed, 2008).
Including the public during the part of the decision making even for decisions like what
participation techniques to be used during the process since not all techniques work for
everyone or every community. “It is important to note that early participation would not
add to the time it takes to make decisions” (Doelle & Sinclair, 2006, p. 7) which is a
concern with public participation processes.
The literature suggests that there also needs to be more work done in defining
what public participation means at the onset of any decision-making process. Using
words such as ‘public,’ ‘stakeholders,’ and ‘citizens’ interchangeably creates confusion
as to who should be involved (Glucker et al., 2013). Clearly articulating who the public is
can make beginning public participation processes much easier in the long run. “The
process used to incorporate stakeholders is important, it needs to start as early as possible,
have clear objectives from the outset, excellent facilitation, be underpinned by strong
science incorporating both ecological and socioeconomic parameters” (De Santo, 2016,
p. 92 & Reed, 2008) in order to be effective. Public participation is so important in
decision-making processes and with greater care can reach the full potential.
Throughout the literature there is a call for more participation and for decision
makers to include the public at more stages of project planning and development. This is
incredibly important for wind energy projects because community members have many
concerns with wind projects and need to have those concerns addressed. Even though
public participation is required, there needs to be effort put in to make sure the public is
36
included in the process. Including the public will make for wind projects to be better and
have more support from community members. The rest of this thesis will look at what
those community concerns are for people in Washington State and how collaborative the
decision-making processes are for wind energy projects.
Processes and Assessments for Decision Making
This next section looks at the actual process and assessments that are used to
make decision for wind energy projects. Different processes and assessments will be
discussed for a better understanding of what the strengths and weaknesses are for each of
the processes and assessments. Along with the discussion, each process or assessment
will be looked at regarding what is included in the process or assessment. The triple
bottom line is important to understand when looking at decision-making processes and
assessments. The triple bottom line is broken up into ecological/environmental,
economic, and social (Assefa & Frostell, 2007). These three dimensions are important to
consider when developing wind energy projects and need to have equal consideration in
the decision-making process. Since wind energy projects have plenty of pros and cons,
decision makers need to use processes that assess all three aspects of the triple bottom
line (Barboza, 2015).
Processes and assessments that are used to decide wind energy projects are
important because they lay out the foundation of what will be addressed during the
decision-making process. While there are policy requirements that determine which
assessments should be used, there are options for decision makers regarding how in depth
they want to assess projects. Sustainability assessments in general are tools “that can help
decision-makers and policy-makers decide which actions they should or should not take
37
in an attempt to make societies more sustainable” (Ness et al., 2007, p. 499). Wind
energy projects have many reasons for being developed but a main reason is to create
more sustainable energy infrastructures. There are many different types of decision
making processes and assessments that are used by decision makers to determine if wind
energy projects should be developed and I will briefly discuss some common processes
and assessments that have been highlighted in past literature.
Environmental impact assessments or EIAs are often required through policy to
develop wind energy projects. As the name suggests, EIAs are supposed to evaluate
potential environmental impacts of projects, usually large development projects (Ness et
al., 2007). The large development part of this requirement is important because not all
wind energy projects require EIAs and smaller projects can be exempt from producing an
EIA or any kind of assessment. If wind energy projects are large enough to require an
EIA, there is a requirement for public participation and stakeholder engagement but often
not enough participation to address distributive justice or procedural justice issues that
may arise (Ness et al., 2007). Also, Wiek and Binder (2005) determined that EIAs do not
go far enough into the social side of complex renewable energy projects and mostly focus
on the systemic requirements for projects. This concern can be addressed by using other
assessments to enhance the EIA that is required by policy and expand upon other aspects
of sustainability that EIAs fall short on.
One way to expand upon the required EIA is to also conduct a Social Impact
Assessment or SIA. By using a SIA, decision makers can look at different aspects of
societies that might be changed from wind energy projects. SIAs involve looking at the
wellbeing of individuals but also interactions between individuals in a community
38
(Assefa & Frostell, 2007). Conducting a SIA requires looking at changes to people’s way
of life, culture, community, political systems, environment, health and wellbeing,
personal and property rights, and fears and aspirations (Assefa & Frostell, 2007). Using
an assessment like this can address potential justice issues that arise from using an EIA
and not assessing social impacts of wind energy projects. The main purpose of
conducting an SIA “is to bring about a more sustainable and equitable biophysical and
human environment” (Assefa & Frostell, 2007, p. 68).
While EIAs do allow for some level of social assessments, those assessments are
often not included or are not adequate. Decision makers can decide how in-depth they
want to go for the social assessments and depending on the decisions maker, social
assessments are not the most important part of the EIA. EIAs usually assess
environmental and economic impacts of wind energy project in much more detail than
social impacts. Each state has their own set of guidelines and policies that dictate what
impacts must be assessed for wind energy projects. Depending on the priorities of the
state and decision makers, different impacts are analyzed. Often decision makers chose to
only analyze certain impacts that are going to be the biggest concerns because of time
and money constraints.
Multi-criteria decision making or MCDM is another assessment type that
encompasses many different decision-making processes (Gumus, Kucukuar & Tatari,
2016). Two different MCDM analyses are multi-criteria analysis and cost-benefit
analysis. Multi-criteria analysis, or MCA, uses different criteria that address
environmental, economic, and social aspects of projects. MCAs have the goal of
identifying the best alternatives for projects using quantitative and qualitative data (Ness
39
et al., 2007). While implementing MCAs may produce a more holistic wind energy
project that focuses on multiple aspects of the project, there is the concern that this
analysis can be subjective because decision makers pick which criteria to analyze and
could pick criteria that does not address community concerns. Public participation is
important in this instance because the public can voice which criteria is important to them
to have analyzed in a MCA. Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is more economic assessment
tool to use. CBAs allow for effective weighing of costs and benefits of wind energy
projects and alternatives, but monetize the costs and benefits (Ness et al., 2007).
Monetizing certain aspects of wind energy projects can be problematic since
environmental and social impacts are different depending on who is asked.
A way to address some of these missing and problematic parts of MCDM
methods is to add an extra component to the assessments. Using fuzzy set theory in
combination with MCDM methods may produce more holistic sustainability assessments
that address all aspects of the triple bottom line. Fuzzy sets theory addresses the
uncertainties with quantifying certain sustainability measures, such as environmental and
social impacts, by creating ranges for impacts that have slightly fuzzy edges (Gumus,
Kucukuar & Tatari, 2016). Gumus, Kucukuar and Tatari (2016) did find that using fuzzy
sets theory can make it difficult to compare alternatives for wind energy projects though
because the ranges are different, which makes them hard to compare side by side. While
using fuzzy sets can create more holistic projects that address the triple bottom line, more
work needs to be done in order to make comparing alternatives easier for decision makers
and community members involved in the decision making.
40
Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) can also be a useful process to assess wind energy
projects and community concerns. LCAs are a “systemic method for assessing potential
environmental impacts of products and services” (Vaisanen et al., 2016, p. 1332). Wind
energy projects can use LCAs to better understand the total life of these projects. In the
past, LCAs only took into consideration ecological and economic aspects of projects but
now is including social aspects (Assefa & Frostell, 2007). The Renewable Energy
Decision Making Model uses LCA processes to fully assess wind energy projects by
using different assessment tools for each of the three aspects (Barboza, 2015). The
economic aspects get assessed by using after tax analysis, which looks at lifecycle costs
of the entire project and makes it possible to see what the top economic priorities are for
the project. Environmental aspects as assessed using a streamlined LCA instead of the
full length LCA commonly used. Using a streamlined version makes the results more
user friendly and easier to determine if technology is harmful or sustainable. Lastly,
social aspects are assessed using stakeholder analysis so that stakeholders are part of the
decision-making process (Barboza, 2015). This decision-making process address all three
aspects of the triple bottom line and is more participatory with stakeholder engagement.
The last two decision-making processes that can be used to create more
participatory and collaborative decision making are Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)
and Sustainability Solution Space for Decision-Making (SSP). AHP is a “technique for
quantifying subjective preferences expressed in expert judgements concerning entities or
objects” (Vaisanen et al., 2016, p. 1333) and is used primarily for participatory decision
making in the energy sector. It is another method to create more participatory decision
making while also making decisions using expert knowledge. AHP can be incorporated
41
into other assessment tools to create a space for participatory decision making (Vaisanen
et al., 2016). SSP is currently just at a theoretical level right now and has not been put
into practice. There is a participatory approach that “enables ‘affected persons’…to
articulate and discuss their perspectives” (Wiek & Binder, 2005, p. 593) and an expert
approach that is “appropriate if the problem is too complex to be tackled with laypersons
or requires a deeper professional insight” (Wiek & Binder, 2005, p. 593) that work
together to create collaborative decisions for wind energy projects. Both AHP and SSP
are not being used widespread yet but have the potential to be a useful tool that offers
more participatory and collaborative decision making in the future.
All the decision-making processes mentioned have different priorities and criteria
that are used to make a decision. They each assess some or all the environmental,
economic, and social impacts that can come up during wind energy projects. Depending
on the concerns that communities have, different impacts should be assessed. Each wind
energy project will have different impacts and different community concerns that need to
be addressed. Relying on one type of decision-making process can have the potential to
leave out certain impacts that are important to address. Having a deeper understanding
about the many processes that exist can help decision makers use a decision-making
process that encompasses all the impacts and concerns that will come up for wind energy
projects. By using a decision-making process that addresses community concerns and
impacts of the project, the overall wind energy project can be better and include the
community throughout the process.
42
Methodologies Used for Practical Applications
Research methodologies often used for practical applications of decision-making
processes are often case studies in which researchers use specific decision-making
processes and analyze if that process achieved the desired result. Other methodologies
include using survey data to quantify findings and conducting in depth literature reviews
of past decision-making processes and assessments. Using a research methodology in
which I would look at a case study of a wind energy project going through the decisionmaking process is difficult with the time limitation of this study.
CONCLUSION
Theories of justice are important to understand before decision makers determine
what processes or assessments to use for wind energy projects. They can also be used as a
theoretical framework to better understand existing decision-making processes (Gross,
2007). The “‘decide-announce-defend’ approach to siting with minimal public
involvement has been shown to repeatedly antagonize and create public mistrust, concern
and ultimately conflict” (Walker, 1995, p. 57) with wind energy projects. Including social
impacts of projects in decision-making processes can create more effective and
meaningful public involvement (Walker, 1995 & Schweizer-Ries, 2008). Not all
decision-making processes or assessments address environmental, economic, and social
impacts of wind energy projects. Including all these impacts in the decision-making
process is important for creating a better project that fully addresses community
concerns.
When applying decision-making processes and assessments to wind energy
projects, it is very important for decision makers to address key concerns community
43
members have that are unique to that community and use a process that allows for
collaborative approaches (Wolsink, 2007). It is also important to consider whether
procedural justice issues are only an issue with top-down decision making and that with
more collaboration decision making reduces community concerns (Walker, Wiersma &
Bailey, 2014). Decision makers also must note that even with collaborative decision
making there will always be people who are “fundamentally anti-wind” (Wolsink, 2007,
p. 2694) and will not support projects no matter what and “negatively affect collaborative
approaches because such groups are not inclined to cooperate” (Wolsink, 2007, p. 2694).
Understanding prominent community concerns and how these concerns are framed within
theories of justice, especially distributive justice and procedural justice, is extremely
important for decision makers who are deciding which process or assessment to use for
wind energy projects. Collaborative decision making through community involvement
can create wind energy projects that are more meaningful to the community, decision
makers, and beyond.
Throughout all the literature that has been presented in this chapter there is a gap
in really connecting the community concerns that arise during wind energy projects and
the decision-making processes that were used. These topics have been addressed
separately but rarely have they been brought together to get a better understanding for
how the community concerns and decision-making processes are connected. My research
looks at the community concerns that have been brought up during past wind energy
projects in Washington State and if those decision-making processes were collaborative
or not. Another gap throughout the literature is interviewing decision makers who worked
on wind energy projects. I first used qualitative content analysis to find out what
44
prominent concerns have been brought during past wind energy projects and then I
interviewed decision makers to understand what decision-making processes were used.
By using these methodological approaches, I am adding to the literature about
community concerns during wind energy projects and expanding the decision-making
process literature by including the voice of the decision makers.
45
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY
This chapter is comprised of a detailed description of the research methodology
that was conducted. The research question being answered is: what have been prominent
concerns for community members during wind energy projects in Washington State and
how could agencies and public utilities create more collaborative decision making for
future wind energy projects? Qualitative content analysis and semi-structured interviews
were the chosen research methodologies. Qualitative content analysis was chosen
because it allowed a more in-depth look at past wind energy projects in Washington and
what community members were commenting about at that time. The qualitative content
analysis was conducted by looking at Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) from wind
energy projects in Washington. Semi-structured interviews were chosen because they
allowed for decision makers to speak with their own voices about the decision-making
processes being used for wind energy projects and how collaborative those processes are.
The following sections of the chapter go in-depth about the methodologies used,
limitations of these methodologies, and how limitations were addressed for this study.
Wind Energy in Washington State
Washington State was chosen for this study for a few reasons. The first was that it
was local, and I was interested in learning more about how wind energy projects and
decision-making processes work in Washington. The next reason is that there have been
wind energy projects in Washington long enough to find the necessary documents and
decision makers to do this study. There were enough environmental impact statements
(EIS) that it was possible to find ones that could be used for the qualitative content
analysis. Selecting Washington also allowed for there to be people to interview who had
46
past and current experiences working on wind energy projects. The entire state was
selected so that decision making at different levels could be looked at, such as local or
state level decision making. The original study design was for the Pacific Northwest but
due to time constraints the study site was scaled down to Washington.
Wind energy in Washington is concentrated to geographic areas that have higher
wind potential, particularly areas with higher ridges. Wind energy is found primarily east
of the Cascade Mountains and in the southern part of the state (Figure 5). The first utilityscale project was launched in 2001 (AWEA, 2016). For this thesis, some of the larger
wind energy facilities were analyzed for the qualitative content analysis portion of the
study because they often have more public comments than smaller projects that may not
have required public comment periods for implementation. Below is a map showing the
locations of wind energy facilities in Washington, in different phases of development.
The phases of development are “in development,” “under construction,” and
“operational.” “In development” means that the project is still going through the
environmental impact statement (EIS) process and hasn’t been approved yet.
47
48
Figure 5. Map of Washington State wind energy facilities (RNP, 2009)
The following wind energy projects were chosen to be analyzed at for the
qualitative content analysis portion of this research: Wild Horse Wind Power Project,
Desert Claim Wind Power Project, Whistling Ridge Energy Project, Lower Snake River
Wind Energy Project, and Maiden Wind Farm. These five were chosen because an
environmental impact assessment was required and the report with public comments was
available. The purpose of conducting a qualitative content analysis is to answer the first
part of the thesis research question which is: What have been prominent concerns for
community members during wind energy projects in Washington? Public comments
submitted regarding wind energy projects in Washington will be used to answer this
question using qualitative content analysis. Also, wind projects that were in different
counties were looked at. Different counties were chosen because it allowed for a wider
variety of public comments than just focusing on one county. Looking at multiple
counties gave room for more community member concerns, support, and opposition to be
analyzed.
The Wild Horse Wind Power Project is located in Kittitas County, in the center of
Washington State. The first phase was completed in 2006 with 127 turbines and an
energy capacity of 229 MW and the final project consists of 149 turbines and an energy
capacity of 273 MW (EFSEC, 2012). Wild Horse Wind Power Project is on open range
land consisting of about 9,560 acres in Kittitas County (EFSEC, 2012). The purpose of
the project was described as “to construct and operate a new electrical generation
resource using wind energy that would meet a portion of the projected growing regional
demands for electricity” and “to provide low cost renewable electric energy to meet the
growing needs of the Northwest” (Wild Horse FEIS, 2005, p. 1-2). The application for
49
the project was submitted by Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) and Puget Sound
Energy (PSE) to EFSEC for review.
The Desert Claim Wind Power Project is also located in Kittitas County, in the
center of Washington State. The total project will have 95 turbines and a maximum of
190 MW of power produced (EFSEC, 2012). Currently, the project is still not constructed
and there are no immediate plans to begin construction. This project will be located on
5,200 acres that include purchased land, leased land from private landowners, and leased
land from public landowners (EFSEC, 2012). EFSEC is the lead agency for the Desert
Claim Wind Power Project.
The Whistling Ridge Energy Project is located in Skamania County, which is at
the southern edge of Washington State next to the Columbia River. This project will
produce around 75 MW of energy (EFSEC, 2012). Currently, this project is still being
constructed and will soon be completed. The project will be on 1,152 acres of land
(EFSEC, 2012). The purpose of the project is “intended to provide both a new source of
non-polluting renewable energy in the State of Washington, and to provide much-needed
economic development in Skamania County fully compatible with existing land use”
(Whistling Ridge Application, 2009, p. I-1). The energy produced will connect to BPA
transmission lines and the lead agency on the project is EFSEC.
The Lower Snake River Wind Energy Project is located in Garfield County and
Columbia County, which is in the southeast corner of Washington State (Lower Snake
FEIS, 2009). The project has 795 wind turbines, totaling 1,432 MW of energy, which is
built on approximately 124,000 acres (Lower Snake FEIS, 2009). The lead agency is
Garfield County Public Works Department and the applicant for the wind project is PSE.
50
The purpose of building the Lower Snake River Wind Energy Project is to increase the
use of wind power for future generation but also aid in economic growth and supply new
energy contracts as old contracts expire (Lower Snake FEIS, 2009).
The Maiden Wind Farm is located in Benton County and Yakima County, which
is center and south near the Columbia River in Washington State. There are
approximately 594 small turbines creating about 494 MW of energy (Maiden FEIS,
2002). The project is on public and private land in both Benton and Yakima County,
totaling about 251 acres of land being used (Maiden FEIS, 2002). The lead agency is
Benton County and the applicant is BPA.
Qualitative Content Analysis Methodology
The first stage of this thesis research was to conduct a qualitative content analysis
of Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) from past wind energy projects in
Washington. Qualitative content analyses take existing documents and literature but
analyze these works in a way that is different than what has already been done. By taking
a different approach to looking at existing studies and documents, new data and
conclusions can be drawn. For this study, qualitative content analysis was chosen to
gather new data from existing EIS documents, specifically the sections that discuss
decision making and the public comments. The public comments found in the EIS
documents appeared in a few different forms. Comments were in the form of scanned
hard copy letters that were sent to the lead agency, copies of emails of letters sent to the
lead agency, transcriptions of phone calls from people wanting to make public comments,
and transcriptions of public meetings where people were able to verbally comment on the
51
EIS. Some of the public comments were form letters that had the same comments
addressed but different people signed and put their address on those form letters.
Since anybody can comment on EIS reports, a distinction had to be made to
separate out local community members and other people who commented. The different
groups of people who commented on EIS reports were local community members, people
outside the community, and people writing comments on behalf of an agency,
organization, and non-profits. For the purposes of this study, community members were
anyone who lived within a 100-mile radius of the final project. This 100-mile radius was
determined by the addresses people provided on their public comments. Comments that
did not provide the address were not counted as local community members because it
could not be determined that they were local community members. Using Google Maps, I
looked up the addresses provided to determine if they were within the 100-mile radius.
The last section of people commenting on the EIS reports were people writing comments
for the agency, organization, and non-profits they worked for. Since these did not qualify
as community concerns they were not analyzed.
The process of conducting a qualitative content analysis began by finding any
complete EIS reports that included all the public comments. I began with the Wild Horse
Wind Power Project EIS and began reading through the public comments from
community members. I coded the comments based on concerns people brought up and
reasons for supporting or opposing the project. I specifically focused on the language
being used by the community members and created in vivo codes, which are codes “that
come directly from the statements of subjects or are common phrases found in the texts
being examined” (Hay, 2010, p. 283). This was the beginning of my code list, and when
52
new concerns, support reasons, and opposition reasons appeared in other public
comments, those were added to the code list (see below for code list). Once each EIS
public comment section for a wind project was coded, the codes were put in numerical
order by how many times the code was used in order to determine which codes appeared
the most from community members. Then I analyzed the codes and wrote the results for
the qualitative content analysis portion of the methodology. The results will discuss
which codes were the most prominent for each wind project then the most prominent
codes overall. The results will also present comments that local community members
made and the code that that comment fell under.
List of Codes for Qualitative Content Analysis
•
Public Access
•
Recreation Loss
•
Natural Habitat Loss
•
Bird and Bat Habitat and Migration Loss
•
Elk and Deer Habitat and Migration Loss
•
Negative Scenery Changes
•
In Support because Wind Power has Low Impacts
•
In Support because Community Benefits
•
Wind Production Concerns
•
Health and Safety Concerns
•
Historical/Cultural Concerns
53
•
Noise
•
Aircraft Safety
•
Bird and Bat Mortality
•
Fire Hazard Concerns
•
Community Economic Loss
•
Reduced Property Values
•
Concern over Consultation Process
Limitations of Qualitative Content Analysis
There are some limitations with conducting a qualitative content analysis study.
Public comments do not always show the true concerns that community members have
because many people do not comment on EIS reports. There are many reasons why
community members do not comment on an EIS and those can be reasons such as people
do not understand the public participation process, they forget to comment during the
comment period, or they did not even hear about the project. While only a small
percentage of community members comment on an EIS, this study was looking
specifically at those who expressed concerns over the wind energy projects and what
concerns they had at the time.
The limitations were addressed by backing up my findings with past literature and
research dealing with community concerns of wind energy projects. The EIS reports that
were looked at will provide results for what community concerns are present in
Washington, based on the reports used. These results are compared to past research that
uses content analysis and other types of methodologies looking at community concerns
54
for wind energy projects found around the world in a later chapter. I addressed these
limitations by connecting my findings to results other researchers have produced so that
the passive voices are included. Also, by using public comments there is more possibility
to hear other voices. It is easier for different types of people to make comments since
comments can be made verbally through public meetings or sent in as written comments.
Another important limitation and consideration of conducting a qualitative
content analysis study is that coding documents in this style leaves room for how the
researcher perceives and interprets the comments that were analyzed. This perception and
interpretation of public comments can be influenced by past knowledge on the topic of
wind power projects and community concerns. These limitations and considerations need
extra care and attention for the research to be unbiased.
I addressed these limitations and considerations by approaching the EIS
documents with an open mind. I understand that people who sent in public comments or
attended the public meetings had valid feelings and emotions about the wind projects
being proposed in their areas and I tried to respect how people felt. I coded the comments
that are against and for the projects so that I obtained data and results from both sides of
the project. When I had confusion about language used in a comment I read it a few times
to better understand the concerns. I followed the convention about objectivity that is laid
out in Iain Hay’s Qualitative Research Methods in Human Geography book (2010, p.35).
Objectivity means that I had to step back from my personal feelings or opinions about the
public comments when I read and coded them. Since the comments had been made in the
past, it was easier to be objective. Also, analyzing public comments made being objective
possible because there was no social interaction in which my personal opinions may have
55
created bias. By following this convention, I was able to be as objective as possible when
analyzing the public comments. I know that as a researcher, I must step back and make
sure I am being open and mindful to the people who were involved in these wind power
projects.
There were some limitations to conducting the qualitative content analysis portion
of this study that were not foreseen at the beginning of this thesis. A huge limitation was
that it was difficult to find draft or final environmental impact statements that included
the public comments. Many of the wind energy projects in Washington did not have
electronic versions of the public comments and/or I could not get the hard copies. This
made it difficult to find a variety of wind energy project public comments to analyze for
this study. Another limitation was the low number of public comments for some of the
environmental impact statements, such as the Lower Snake River Wind Energy Project
which had only 22 comments submitted and the Maiden Wind Farm which had 35
comments submitted. A larger number of public comments would have given this study
more data to work with.
Semi-Structured Interview Methodology
The second qualitative research methodology that was used is semi-structured
interviews. This research methodology was chosen after careful consideration of
methodology often used to conduct this type of research. Interviews were chosen so that
individual voices of people are heard who are involved in the decision making of wind
energy projects. Other methodologies do not adequately allow for individual voices to be
heard and can often turn individual voices into generic data points.
56
I performed the semi-structured interviews after the submission and approval of a
Human Subjects Review (HSR) application. The interviews occurred between the dates
of 03/09/17 and 9/19/17. A total of five interviews were conducted and varied in length
from 20 minutes to an hour. An audio recorder was used to record all interviews for
digitally storing and transcribing at a later time. I provided a set of previously prepared
questions for the interview subjects to look over before the scheduled interviews, as well
as a consent form. The previously prepared questions were asked but also questions that
spontaneously occurred during the interviews. Questions were mostly open-ended to
allow for the interview subject to answer however they felt they should. I did not
influence or attempt to restrict the responses of interview subjects. Interviews were
confidential so that interview subjects could be honest about wind energy decision
making.
Interview subjects were determined by identifying people who were part of the
decision making of wind energy projects in the past and currently. After contacting
people, I was able to narrow down my list of interview subjects based on certain
information I had received. Many people I contacted declined to be interviewed and
others said they had not been part of wind energy projects because they were new to their
positions. I asked people if they knew anyone who could talk to me and again received
many no’s. The five interview subjects I did interview varied in their location, level of
decision making, and projects that they have worked on. All the interview subjects had
different perspectives to share with me about collaborative decision making with wind
energy projects.
57
Following the types of sample selection laid out by Hay (2010), I used two
different types of sampling. When determining who to choose as interview subjects, I
used criterion sampling with the criterion being someone who had been or is a decision
maker for wind energy projects in Washington State. I was able to narrow down a list of
people to interview and from that list I got one interview and had to move towards
snowball sampling. Snowball sampling allowed me to ask people who did not want to be
interviewed or who did not qualify for an interview to give me names of people who I
could interview. I found 4 out of the 5 interview subjects by using snowball sampling and
1 from criterion sampling. I was able to get a wider variety of interview subjects from
snowball sampling than I would have with criterion sampling because I found people that
did not come up in my initial search. This allowed me to get a wider range of interview
subjects and experience with wind energy decision making. I was able to interview
people at the state level, county level, private developer level, and city level. Each
interview subject had different experiences with decision making which gave a depth of
information that could have been missed. Interview subjects did not have to have been
part of the wind energy projects that were used for the qualitative content analysis study.
One of the interview subjects had worked on one of the qualitative content analysis wind
projects but that was purely coincidental. I did not require the decision makers
interviewed be part of the five wind projects I analyzed because many of the decision
makers who were part of those projects are no longer available to be interviewed. I had to
extend the scope of interview subjects beyond those five wind projects in order to get a
wider range of interview subjects.
58
Once interviews were completed, I transcribed the interviews using Microsoft
Word. After thoroughly going through the transcriptions, I coded the interviews by the
interview questions I had developed earlier (see below). Within each question I was able
to further separate out codes based on the responses given by the interview subjects. The
codes were broad and were often in the form of phrases instead of words. Code phrases
included “processes used for decision making,” “process changes,” “no process changes,”
“processes are collaborative,” “processes are not collaborative,” etc. These code phrases
were then used to develop themes in the interviews.
Interview Questions
1. What is your name and position title?
2. What wind energy projects have you worked on?
3. What part(s) of the decision-making process for the project(s) were you involved
with?
4. Would you please describe the specific decision-making processes that you used
for these projects?
5. How were these processes decided on?
6. Was there anything you would have liked to do differently in regards to the
decision-making processes of the wind energy projects you were part of?
7. Would you say that these decision-making processes were collaborative? To what
extent?
8. If not, then would you recommend that they become more collaborative in the
future? In what ways? How might that be possible?
59
9. And if yes, in what ways were the decision-making processes you used
collaborative?
10. How possible is it to be collaborative on wind energy projects with real world
demands affecting decision making?
11. Are there limits to how collaborative you can be on projects because of real world
demands?
12. Do these limitations exist for a specific reason in the decision-making process?
13. Are there any practical ways to get past these limitations in order to be more
collaborative?
Limitations of Semi-Structured Interviews
Conducting semi-structured interviews as a qualitative research methodology has
a few limitations. One limitation of interviews is that the researcher is limited to the
results from the questions that were asked during the interview. A limited amount of
questions is asked during an interview and depending on the circumstances, more
questions about the research topic cannot be asked at a later time. This means that
researchers must be certain about the questions being asked during an interview and to
ask any related questions during that time. I addressed this limitation by giving my
interview questions to my interview subjects before the interview, so they had time to
think about the questions. This allowed for all questions to be answered in a timely
fashion and this gave me more time to ask other questions that came up from the answers
to the pre-written interview questions.
60
Another limitation of conducting semi-structured interviews is the concern about
the biases a research may have and how data interpretation occurs based on the bias. All
researchers have past experiences that have influenced why they are researching a topic
and these experiences may have created a bias. It is important for researchers to be
reflexive when doing qualitative research and step back occasionally and check for
potential bias. I addressed this limitation by being as aware of my positionality as I
possibly could be. When I talked to interview subjects I asked questions to make sure I
was fully understanding the issues and what the interview subject wanted me to
understand. I took care to hear what the interview subjects were saying about the topic of
wind energy decision making so that I could get many sides of the discussion about
decision making.
Conducting the semi-structured interviews for this thesis also encountered a few
limitations. One of the limitations for the semi-structured interviews was that, during the
time of conducting my research and doing interviews, many decision makers were busy
working on current projects that took up most of their time. When setting up interviews
many people were unavailable during the winter and spring months but were available to
be interviewed during the summer months. Another limitation was in finding the people
who were part of the decision making of past wind projects and/or who were working on
current wind projects. Upon contacting many people, I found out that there had been a lot
of turnover in recent years and that no one currently had experience working with wind
energy projects. This made it difficult to find interview subjects for this study.
61
CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
This chapter consists of the results from the qualitative content analysis and the
semi-structured interviews. The research question being asked is what have been
prominent concerns for community members during wind energy projects in Washington
State and how could agencies and public utilities create more collaborative decision
making for future wind energy projects? This study found that the prominent concerns
community members had were negative scenery changes, natural habitat loss, bird and
bat mortality, bird and bat habitat and migration loss, and noise. It was also found that
community members were in support of wind projects because there would be benefits to
the community. Also, decision makers try to be as collaborative as possible but there are
constraints to being collaborative, such as time and money.
First, there will be a presentation of the qualitative content analysis results,
followed by a discussion. Then there will be a presentation of the semi-structured
interview results, which will also be followed by a discussion. Lastly, the results for both
part of the study are discussed in relation to the literature that has been presented in an
earlier chapter. The results and discussion add to the literature on social acceptance of
wind energy projects by looking at what prominent concerns community members had
about past wind energy projects, comparing those concerns to what has been found in the
literature. Also, the field of public participation and decision making is advanced by this
research because most of the existing literature focuses on how the public feels about
decision-making process. My research asks decision makers instead of the public to get a
better understanding of collaborative decision making from the perspective of the people
making the decisions.
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Prominent Concerns Found in Environmental Impact Statements
The following results and discussion look at five different environmental impact
statements for wind energy projects in the state of Washington. The sections are
separated by the specific wind energy project and conclude with a section on the most
prominent concerns overall. The comments were either emailed, mailed, or from the
public hearing. Not all the comments were analyzed because they were not from
community members. Community members had either one main comment they were
discussing or many comments. Each comment received a code based on what was
discussed (see list of codes in Methodology Chapter). The comments given by
community members were about support for the wind energy project or concerns about
the wind energy project. The following sections are broken up by each wind energy
project analyzed and will include the number of comments received; the number of
comments analyzed; the ratio of individual comments in support of the project compared
to individual comments expressing concerns about the project; the results from the
analysis; and a discussion of the results. Lastly, there is a section looking at the overall
results from all the wind energy projects.
Wild Horse Wind Power Project
A total of 49 comments were received, 27 of which were judged to be from
members of the local community. Out of the 27 comments read and coded, there were 14
codes used. There were 2 codes in support of the Wild Horse Wind Power Project and 12
were concerns about the impacts from the project. Community concerns were centered
around losing access to roads near and on the wind energy site and a variety of negative
environmental impacts. The following table lists the codes that were found in the public
63
comments and how many times each of the codes appeared. The column labeled “# of
Commenters” represents how many individual comments mentioned each of the codes.
Multiple codes were counted per comment but if a commenter discussed a concern
multiple times then it was only counted once.
Table 1. List of Codes Found in the Wild Horse Wind Power Project Public Comments
Qualitative Content Analysis Code
# of Commenters
Public Access
11
Recreation Loss
8
Natural Habitat Loss
7
Bird and Bat Habitat and Migration Loss
6
Elk and Deer Habitat and Migration Loss
5
Bird and Bat Mortality
5
Negative Scenery Changes
5
In Support because Wind has Low Impacts
3
In Support because Community Benefits
2
Wind Production Concerns
2
Health and Safety Concerns
1
Historical/Cultural Concerns
1
Noise
1
Aircraft Safety
1
The code that appeared most often was “public access.” This had to do
specifically with the access to Beacon Ridge Road and the land that the wind energy
project was going to be on. People were concerned that they would lose their access to
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the road and land if the wind project was built. Loss of access also was connected to
“recreation loss” because the areas people feared they would lose access too are
recreation areas. One community member who had always used Beacon Ridge Road
commented saying:
“This looks to many of us like the open access on Beacon is about to be
eliminated.”
Many other comments reiterated this same concern about this road and others that would
be closed temporarily during the construction and permanently after the wind project was
complete.
This also tied into the recreational concerns as well because the roads that would
lose access allowed people to get to their favorite recreation areas. The following
comment lists the recreational activities that would be lost from the wind energy project
being completed:
“There is also great recreational activities that would be lost forever. If this
project continues, these activities include outdoor photography, hiking camping,
wildlife viewing, hunting, listening to utter silence, and viewing miles of scenic
landscape.”
These recreational activities listed came up in other comments as well and showed how
important recreation is to community members. The concern over losing recreational
opportunities made people speak out against building the Wild Horse Wind Power
Project.
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Another concern that community members showed about the Wild Horse Wind
Power Project was about birds and bats. There were concerns over the loss of habitat and
migration routes but also concerns about bird and bat mortality. Many comments talked
about how these concerns were important to community members but that those concerns
were not discussed in the EIS. A community member who had lived in the area since
1941 wrote:
“Loss of Wildlife habitat for birds and bats is not addressed as a major priority.”
While community members cared about impacts to birds and bats, the concern was not
being adequately addressed in the EIS. There were also similar comments that stated elk
and deer habitat and migration was not being taken seriously in the EIS.
Often community members had multiple concerns that tied into each other. One
example of this was the concern over the amount of power actually produced by wind
turbines and if that production was worth the impacts the community faced, such as
negative scenery changes. A resident of Ellensburg, Washington commented about this
by saying:
“The level of generated power listed shows that these monstrosity turbines
generate only a miniscule amount of power. The beauty of a scenic valley is not
worth destroying for so little power generation.”
Some community members did not think that the Wild Horse Wind Power Project had
benefits that outweighed the costs of the project.
There were also comments in support of the Wild Horse Wind Project as well as
comments that brought up concerns. Support of the project came in two different forms
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for the Wild Horse Wind Power Project. There were comments that discussed how wind
energy has lower impacts than other energy sources and that there are added community
benefits with putting in wind energy in the community. One community member brought
up that the project would bring economic benefits that the county really needed. They
commented:
“The whole support of this is the economical benefits to this county through jobs
and tax dollars. We are a county drying up of money, and this will help industrial
money come in that does not drain money out. It creates good paying, familywage jobs.”
Another community member, who is a retired Senior Science Instruction Tech in
Biological Sciences, talked about how moving to wind power is good for the
environment. Their comment was:
“My interest in wind energy is not for personal economic gain. It is a response to
my longstanding concern about the degradation of our environment.”
Overall, there were many concerns about the Wild Horse Wind Power Project but
there were also people in support of the project. Many of the concerns stemmed from
community members not feeling like their concerns were adequately addressed in the EIS
and that certain impacts needed to have more analysis done before the project could be
approved. Other concerns were overlapping and caused community members to worry
about losses that the area may face. Some of these losses were recreation loss, bird and
bat habitat and migration loss, elk and deer habitat and migration loss, and scenery loss.
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Desert Claim Wind Power Project
A total of 82 comments were received, 56 of which were judged to be from
members of the local community. Out of the 56 comments read and coded, there were 16
codes used. There were 2 codes in support of the Desert Claim Wind Power Project and
14 were concerns about the impacts from the project. Community concerns were centered
primarily around impacts that would be personally felt, such as scenery changes, property
value changes, noise, and potential for more fires. There were also a variety of negative
environmental impacts that were seen as concerns to community members. The following
table lists the codes that were found in the public comments and how many times each of
the codes appeared. The column labeled “# of Commenters” represents how many
individual comments mentioned each of the codes. Multiple codes were counted per
comment but if a commenter discussed a concern multiple times then it was only counted
once.
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Table 2. List of Codes Found in the Desert Claim Wind Power Project Public Comments
Qualitative Content Analysis Code
# of Commenters
Negative Scenery Changes
27
Reduced Property Values
19
Noise
16
Fire Hazard Concerns
14
Bird and Bat Mortality
13
Wind Production Concerns
13
Elk and Deer Habitat and Migration Loss
7
Bird and Bat Habitat and Migration Loss
7
Health and Safety Concerns
6
Recreation Loss
5
Natural Habitat Loss
5
Community Economic Loss
5
Aircraft Safety
3
Historical/Cultural Concerns
2
In Support because Community Benefits
2
In Support because Wind has Low Impact
1
Negative scenery change was the most important concern shown in the public
comments for the Desert Claim Wind Power Project. Community members had many
concerns related to scenery change and visual impacts. People did not want their view
taken away by the turbines, but they also were concerned with the lights and shadow
flicker from the turbines. One community member stated:
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“The problem of the location of these wind towers which calls for placement in
front of our beautiful Cascades.”
This person did not want to lose their view of the mountains and preferred the placement
of the turbines to be away from their view. Along with this concern over losing beautiful
views, there was concern for the economic impact of losing those views. This ties into
other concerns such as lowering property values and even health and safety concerns.
During a public hearing, one community member said the following:
“The visual effect is going to ruin the views and it’s gonna lower property
values.”
Looking deeper at the community members concerns you can see that they may be saying
they don’t want to lose their beautiful views, but they are also worried that they may
suffer economic loss.
Another huge concern community members expressed in the public comments
was noise. Noise is an issue when wind moving the turbine blades create vibrations that
cause problems for some people. Noise concerns are also connected to some of the visual
concerns like shadow flicker because these only happen when the blades are moving.
Many community members expressed multiple concerns at once and one example of
multiple concerns is this statement:
“They are noise generating, they have extensive blinking lights & shadow
flickering, & they will kill the birds of prey.”
Community members rarely have one concern about wind energy projects. Health and
safety concerns are often brought up with noise concerns because there are health risks
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from bothersome noises, but also from other potentially harmful aspects of wind turbines
like blade throw, ice throw, and impacts on wildlife. Another community member made
this comment:
“It seems abundantly clear that these things HURT people who are forced to live
near them. How can you even consider approving something so harmful to
humans, let alone animals and birds.”
Fire hazard concern was also a concern many community members had about the
Desert Claim Wind Power Project. This concern also ties into the last few concerns
because it has deeper impacts such as economic loss and health and safety concerns.
Community members had concerns that since the area is already fire prone there might be
more instances of fire with the turbines. This concern was made worse from learning
about the project and reading the EIS. After reading the Draft EIS one community
member said this:
“The Desert Claim DEIS made me afraid my house will burn down from wind
farm created fires.”
A concern like this can create added concerns about the wind project for community
members, such as lowering property values, health and safety concerns, and concerns
about the wildlife that would be impacted by fires.
There were also community members who were in support of the Desert Claim
Wind Power Project. People were in support of the project because they thought wind
energy is a good energy source compared to the other options and that the community
would benefit from the development of wind energy. The people in support of the project
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were looking at long term positive impacts from the project, such as less environmental
degradation, community benefits, and relationship with the developer of the project.
During the public hearing, a community member said:
“We feel the developer is a responsible developer and will add value to the
community in the long run.”
This person believed that the developer of the project was there for the best interest of the
community and that in the long run the community would gain value.
Whistling Ridge Energy Project
A total of 319 comments were received, 103 of which were judged to be from
members of the local community. Out of the 103 comments read and coded, there were
14 codes used. There were 2 codes in support of the Whistling Ridge Energy Project and
12 were concerns about the project. Community concerns were primarily centered around
negative scenery change and the impact on the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic
Area. Other concerns were raised by community members regarding other negative
environmental impacts. There were also community members in support of the project.
The following table lists the codes that were found in the public comments and how
many times each of the codes appeared. The column labeled “# of Commenters”
represents how many individual comments mentioned each of the codes. Multiple codes
were counted per comment but if a commenter discussed a concern multiple times then it
was only counted once.
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Table 3. List of Codes Found in the Whistling Ridge Energy Project Public Comments
Qualitative Content Analysis Code
# of Commenters
Negative Scenery Changes
47
In Support because Community Benefits
22
In Support because Wind has Low Impacts
20
Concern over Consultation Process
17
Natural Habitat Loss
16
Bird and Bat Habitat and Migration Loss
13
Bird and Bat Mortality
12
Elk and Deer Habitat and Migration Loss
11
Wind Production Concerns
8
Noise
8
Community Economic Loss
5
Reduced Property Values
5
Recreation Loss
5
Fire Hazard Concerns
1
The biggest concern community members had for the Whistling Ridge Energy
Project was how close it would be to the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area
and the negative scenery changes that would occur from the project being in that location.
The comments about negative scenery changes appeared 47 times, which is much higher
than the next most prominent code (see table above). One local community member
commented saying:
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“This is not an appropriate site for a large-scale wind project. The 426 foot
turbines will be seen in the center of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic
Area during the day and also at night because of the red blinking lights on the top
of the turbines.”
This type of comment was seen many times throughout the public comments for the
Whistling Ridge Energy Project. People who live around the project area did not want
their landscapes changed by a wind project being put in. There were also other types of
comments about the scenery being changed for the negative and one such comment said:
“What an eyesore! It looks like “War of the Worlds.” Wind energy is great, but
why paint them glaring white? They should be a color that blends with the hills.”
The landscape is important to local community members and even people who are
supportive of wind energy did not want the negative scenery changes that would occur
from the project.
There were also many comments in support of the project because the Whistling
Ridge Energy Project would bring benefits to the local communities. Some of the benefits
that were brought up in the comments were an increase in jobs, funding for the local
schools, and infrastructure improvement projects. Many people in the local communities
commented that they were excited about the wind project and the opportunities that
communities would receive. One person was in support of the project because of the
community benefits wrote:
“I fully support the Whistling Ridge energy project in Skamania County. We need
to have the economic boost to help fund our schools and road department.”
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People provided many comments about the local economies and how the project would
benefit the overall local economy but also personal benefits that would eventually trickle
down to the community. Another community member in support of the project said:
“Not only does it give a alternative source of clean energy, but it also will provide
new jobs and tax revenues to our county which has been devastated with so many
land set asides and regulations that our children have to leave the area in order to
find jobs.”
Along with people being in support of the Whistling Ridge Energy Project
because of the community benefits, people also commented on how they support the
project because wind energy has a lower impact overall than other energy sources. People
who live in the local communities commented about how the project wouldn’t have
significant impacts and that there are worse energy projects that would have significant
impacts. One person commented saying:
“The project has gone through the EIS process and found no significant impacts
to wildlife, the scenic value of the Columbia Gorge Corridor or to other
resources.”
Many people saw the Whistling Ridge Energy Project as a good project because the EIS
found no significant impacts. While many people who commented had opposing views
on the impacts of the project, there was a significant amount of people commenting in
support of the project.
The other concern that appeared in many of the comments was the concern over
the consultation process for the EIS. There were many of the public comments that
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mentioned the DEIS not having an unbiased analysis of the project impacts. Community
members thought that the people who were involved in the EIS process did not consult
the right people or include enough in the document. There were many letters saying:
“I am concerned that the DEIS is fundamentally flawed because it fails to provide
a fair and balanced alternative analysis.”
This concern was found in many of the public comments submitted. Community
members thought that the DEIS needed a better analysis that included more findings
about the impacts that the project could have. Comments also discussed that more
alternatives should have been considered to make sure the DEIS was in fact fair and
balanced.
Lower Snake River Wind Energy Project
A total of 22 comments were received, 16 of which were judged to be from
members of the local community. Out of the 16 comments read and coded, there were 9
codes used. There was 1 code in support of the Lower Snake River Wind Energy Project
and 8 were concerns about the project. Community comments were centered around
being in support of the project but also negative environmental impacts that would occur
from the project. The following table lists the codes that were found in the public
comments and how many times each of the codes appeared. The column labeled “# of
Commenters” represents how many individual comments mentioned each of the codes.
Multiple codes were counted per comment but if a commenter discussed a concern
multiple times then it was only counted once.
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Table 4. List of Codes Found in the Lower Snake River Wind Energy Project Public
Comments
Qualitative Content Analysis Code
# of Commenters
In Support because Community Benefits
7
Negative Scenery Changes
6
Noise
6
Community Economic Loss
5
Concern Over Consultation Process
4
Bird and Bat Habitat and Migration Loss
3
Bird and Bat Mortality
3
Wind Production Concerns
2
Recreation Loss
2
The comment that came up the most for the Lower Snake River Wind Energy
Project was in support of the project. Many people in the local community were in favor
of the project for many reasons but primarily because the project would have benefits to
the community. There were comments that discussed how this project would bring more
employment opportunities to the local towns but also extra income for farmers and
ranchers. One local rancher stated:
“The project will lower property taxes in our counties, create new jobs and bring
new revenue to businesses. Wind power is a new crop option for the family farm.”
Along those same comments, another local community member commented saying:
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“A project such as this will provide immediate and long-term employment for
many people in the area. The families it will support will, in turn, support our
schools and hospitals.”
Extra income is important to local community members and many people see the Lower
Snake River Wind Energy Project as a way to get extra income. Many people saw how
the project would produce community benefits at many levels, such as for landowners but
also to community services like the schools and hospitals.
The concern that appeared in many of the public comments was about negative
scenery changes in the local area. Many community members commented about their
concerns for the views in the area. The comments addressed concerns about how people
who live in the area do not want to lose their views and that turbines will take away the
scenery that people have loved for a long time. In one comment, a community member
addressed many changes that would occur from the wind project being built. They said:
“Visual impacts are important to residents and tourists alike. These towers aren’t
going away anytime soon….plus noise and lights will permeate your
environment. People move here and visit here for open space, open vistas and
peace and quiet.”
Landscape changes were big contributors to community members not wanting wind
projects in their area, based on these public comments. Especially for people who have
lived in that area for most their lives or moved to a specific place for the scenery.
The last quoted public comment also mentioned noise as a concern. Noise is one
of the concerns that gets brought up a lot in relation to wind energy projects. For the
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Lower Snake River Wind Energy Project, noise is one of the top concerns. There were
many comments stating that the noise section of the EIS was not thorough enough. Most
the comments about noise were in relation to the EIS not providing enough studies and
more information. There were also comments that included articles and other
documentation looking at wind energy projects and noise concerns. The quoted comment
in the previous paragraph best sums up what the comments about noise said throughout
the public comment section of the Lower Snake River Wind Energy Project.
There were also many comments that brought up concerns about the consultation
process for this wind project. Such as with the example of noise, many people thought
that certain parts of the EIS were not thorough enough or that there were problems with
the consultation process used for writing the EIS. Many comments had statements such
as:
“The consultants have...returned a woefully inadequate document that is openly
biased in favor of industrial wind development.”
Local community members commented numerous times that the EIS did not have enough
documentation for concerns that were important. There also was concern over bias in the
consultation process because community members had concerns that were not addressed
in the EIS. Community members wrote that the consultation process should have been
expanded so that their concerns were addressed, and the project could have been
presented with less bias.
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Maiden Wind Farm
A total of 35 comments were received, 17 of which were judged to be from
members of the local community. Out of the 17 comments read and coded, there were 9
codes used. There were 2 codes in support of the Maiden Wind Farm and 5 were
concerns about the project. Community concerns were centered around losses that the
community may face from the wind project and whether wind energy was even needed in
the local community. Other important concerns to community members were negative
environmental impacts. The following table lists the codes that were found in the public
comments and how many times each of the codes appeared. The column labeled “# of
Commenters” represents how many individual comments mentioned each of the codes.
Multiple codes were counted per comment but if a commenter discussed a concern
multiple times then it was only counted once.
Table 5. List of Codes Found in the Maiden Wind Farm Public Comments
Qualitative Content Analysis Code
# of Commenters
Community Economic Loss
7
Natural Habitat Loss
6
Wind Production Concerns
5
Negative Scenery Changes
5
Concern Over Consultation Process
4
Bird and Bat Habitat and Migration
2
Bird and Bat Mortality
1
In Support because Wind has Low Impact
1
In Support because Community Benefits
1
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The community concern that came up most often was about community economic
loss from the Maiden Wind Farm. The concerns that people showed were that tax money
was being used for the project and that people did not think it was worth the money.
Many people were worried that the tax money was going to go to the wind project instead
of to projects the community actually needed. One community member wrote about how
the project was wasting tax money and said:
“This project is such a waste of taxpayer money. The tax subsidy of this project is
wrong and causes great harm to the area.”
There were similar comments like this throughout the public comments. People want
projects in their communities that will benefit the community and many people did not
feel like the Maiden Wind Farm would do that.
Another huge concern shown throughout the public comments was about natural
habitat loss in the areas where the wind farm would be located. People talked about how
the area was pristine and rural. A community member who had lived in the area for most
their life said:
“We wish to go on record as being against the Maiden Wind farm project. This
project will cause environmental harm to the area. As you know the land as is
now is pretty much unmolested from development and sprawl.”
People were very concerned that the wind project would damage the natural area but also
create a precedent for allowing other building to occur. There were comments that went
along with that last one on how the area is rural and untouched and that people wanted it
to stay that way.
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Building off the last few concerns about the Maiden Wind Farm, there was also
concern over losing the natural beauty of the area with wind turbines. The turbines would
visually impact the Rattlesnake Mountains and people did not want to lose their views.
Along with being worried about economic loss and natural habitat loss people were
concerned about losing their scenery. One person commented on this concern by saying:
“I have admired Rattlesnake for the nine years we have lived here. I do not want
that profile distorted by an unnecessary project, especially one that will have to
use public funds in order to be built!”
Scenery changes are important to people, especially when people move to a particular
place for the views.
Wind production concerns were also commented on many times. Community
members were concerned that the Maiden Wind Farm was not needed because there are
enough energy sources in Washington. People thought the project was not in the best
interest of the community because community members had the experience that there
were enough energy resources or that energy resources were being shut down around
Washington and in the United States in general. One such comment that brought up this
concern stated:
“We are canceling gas-fired power plants all over the country and all over
Washington and Oregon. So why do we need the windmill power?”
Community members did not see the point of building the Maiden Wind Farm because
they perceived the potential wind power to be unnecessary for the area.
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The last major concern that was commented on many times in the Maiden Wind
Farm EIS was concern over the consultation process for the project. There were many
comments that brought up that certain people or groups were not included in the
consultation. This got community members to think that the project was missing major
components or facts that would have made the EIS more complete. A community
member who had previous experience working on other wind energy projects around the
state addressed this concern by saying:
“I tried my best to interact with the right people but the right people are the ones
that are politically involved and think we want to go with wind and the people
that are involved with the projects certainly want to see this project go. It is a
serious mistake.”
This comment shows how community members who have supported and worked on other
wind projects had problems with the consultation for Maiden Wind Farm.
Most Prominent Concerns Overall
A total of 507 comments were received overall, 219 of which were judged to be
from members of the local community for the wind projects in those areas. There were a
total of 18 codes used throughout the public comments. There were 2 codes in support of
the wind energy projects and 16 codes that were concerns about the projects. The
community concern that appeared the most was negative scenery changes with a total of
90 appearances (see table below). The following table lists the codes that were found in
total for all the public comments and how many times each of those codes appeared. The
column labeled “# of Commenters” represents how many individual comments
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mentioned each of the codes. Multiple codes were counted per comment but if a
commenter discussed a concern multiple times then it was only counted once.
Table 6. List of Codes Found in all the Public Comments
Qualitative Content Analysis Code
Total # of Commenters
Negative Scenery Changes
90
In Support because Community Benefits
34
Natural Habitat Loss
34
Bird and Bat Mortality
33
Bird and Bat Habitat and Migration Loss
31
Noise
30
Wind Production Concerns
30
In Support because Wind has Low Impacts
25
Concern over Consultation Process
25
Reduced Property Values
24
Elk and Deer Habitat and Migration Loss
23
Community Economic Loss
22
Recreation Loss
20
Fire Hazard Concerns
14
Health and Safety Concerns
7
Public Access
6
Aircraft Safety
4
Historical/Cultural Concerns
3
The concern that came up the most in the public comments for all the wind energy
projects analyzed was negative scenery changes. This code appeared in all the
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environmental impact statements public comments. It was the top concern for both the
Whistling Ridge Energy Project and the Desert Claim Wind Power Project. Local
community members are concerned about their scenery being changed, which is a valid
concern when community members are making comments about how they moved to the
area for the visual aspects or that they have lived in that area for their whole lives and do
not want to see the area changed.
The concern over scenery changes, or landscape changes, is one of the biggest
concerns community members have throughout the literature. This often occurs because
areas that are sited for wind energy projects are in locations that have certain landscapes
that are pristine and untouched. People who live in those areas prefer the pristine and
untouched landscapes, which means they often do not want anything disrupting that
landscape (Schweizer-Ries, 2008, Wolsink, 2007). Finding that negative scenery changes
was the most important community concern in Washington was not surprising due to the
fact landscape changes are one of the biggest concern throughout the literature (Baxter et
al, 2013; Bidwell, 2013; Olson-Hazboun et al, 2016; Schweizer-Ries, 2008; Swofford &
Slattery, 2010). The findings from this study add to other research looking at prominent
concerns community members have about wind energy projects and how landscapes are
important to people living near project sites.
The next code that appeared most often was “in support because community
benefits” with a total of 34 times it was used. This code also appeared in all the
environmental impact statements public comments. It was the top code used for the
Lower Snake River Wind Energy Project and was the second most used code in the
Whistling Ridge Energy Project. Throughout the communities that had these wind
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projects, many local people were in favor of the project because there would be benefits
to the community. Some of the benefits that appeared in the public comments were job
creation, tax money going to local schools, and infrastructure development.
As discussed in the Literature Review chapter, community benefits are a way to
gain support for a wind energy project. Community benefits can be seen as bribery and
paying the community off for the negative impacts that occur when building wind energy
projects (Walker, Wiersma & Bailey, 2014; Bakker et al., 2012). This did not appear to
be the case from the results of the qualitative content analysis study. The findings point
out that local community members felt the benefits to the community were going to
benefit the community as a whole. The benefits of job creation were a huge influencing
factor to many people showing support for wind energy projects throughout Washington.
Since people were in support of the wind projects because they believed there to be
community benefits, this finding suggests that the decision makers for the projects were
strategic in how they addressed the project benefits for local communities. This supports
past findings that suggest community benefits do increase support of wind energy
projects overall (Bidwell, 2013; Hall et al., 2013; Mulvaney et al., 2013 (1); Bakker et al.,
2012; Aitken, 2010; Olson-Hazboun et al., 2016)).
Natural habitat loss was another code that appeared throughout the public
comments for wind energy projects in Washington. The code appeared 34 times in total
and one of the top codes that appeared in the Wild Horse Wind Power Project public
comments. Local community members commented that they were concerned about the
habitat of the surrounding areas being damaged or completely lost due to building wind
energy projects. This particular code was often connected with other codes that were
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concerns related to birds, bats, elk, and deer. People in the surrounding communities did
not want to see anything built in these natural habitat areas for many reasons. Some of the
reasons that appeared in the public comments were that the projects would fragment
already fragmented shrub steppe habitat, the projects would take over areas that are used
by different species, and that the project would take away the natural areas people always
had around.
The results that natural habitat loss was a top concern is not uncommon and is
connected to many other concerns. The natural landscapes in the areas where wind
energy projects are sited is usually more rural areas that have less development. Local
community members live in those areas for the natural habitats and are deeply concerned
with any development that may occur in those places. Natural habitat loss appeared less
often in the public comments for wind projects that were sited in areas that had
experienced other industrial development or other energy projects, such as wind projects
that were closer to Portland, Oregon and surrounding cities. This finding does support
past literature looking at support and opposition of wind energy projects and the
relationship between other industrial or development projects (van der Horst, 2007). Van
der Horst (2008) had found that there is less opposition to wind projects when there are
other industrial or energy projects in the area. These findings support that natural habitat
loss was a more prominent concern in those areas with less existing development.
Another important concern local community members had in relation to wind
energy projects were about birds and bats. People were concerned about mortality but
also habitat and migration loss from putting in wind energy projects. The code “bird and
bat mortality” appeared 33 times throughout the public comments and “bird and bat
87
habitat and migration loss” appeared 31 times. While these two codes were separated for
this study, they are connected because people were often concerned about the overall
survival of birds and bats. This overall survival of birds and bats was brought up by
people because there was concern over wind turbines killing birds but also that the
turbines would take away their habitat and migration zones.
Concern over birds and bats is supported by the literature and is a concern that
appears during most wind energy projects. People are concerned about bird and bat
mortality, habitat, and migration, which determines if people support or oppose a wind
energy project. Community members who believe wind turbines are harmful to birds and
bats are likely to oppose wind projects (Mulvaney et al., 2013 (2); Rand & Hoen, 2017;
Slattery et al., 2012). These concerns are valid since there have been studies looking at
bird and bat mortality and wind energy projects. The literature does support that bird and
bat fatalities increase with wind energy development, so this concern is valid for
community members to have (Barclay et al., 2007; Barrios & Rodriguez, 2004; Zerrahn,
2017). Overall, the findings of this study confirm what has been previously researched
about community concerns related to birds and bats.
The last code that will be discussed is “noise.” Noise appeared 30 times
throughout the public comments and was mentioned in all but one of the wind energy
projects (Maiden Wind Farm). It was one of the most important concerns to appear in the
Lower Snake River Wind Energy Project public comments. Local community members
were concerned about the noise that is produced by wind turbines and what impact that
noise would have on people, animals, and the surrounding areas. People commented
about noise in many different ways. There was concern shown over potential health
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impacts from noise, such as insomnia, but also that noise studies were not adequately
completed for the area. Noise was primarily a concern for people living near the wind
energy sites, for people who would be around the turbines for recreational purposes, and
for people concerned over animals that would hear the turbines.
These results are similar to what has been found throughout the literature about
noise and community concerns. People oppose wind energy projects because impacts
from noise, such as annoyance, sleep disruption, and health impacts (Bakker et al., 2012;
Baxter et al., 2013; Groth & Vogt, 2014; Onakpoya et al., 2015; Shepherd et al., 2011).
This study showed that people are concerned about the noise that will be generated from
wind turbines. People are concerned that the noise will keep them from sleeping and
eventually cause health impacts. These findings are the same as what has been found in
the literature.
The codes discussed above were the ones that appeared the most throughout all
the public comments. While the other codes are also important for understanding what
the concerns were for local community members at the time that these wind energy
projects were being proposed and the environmental impact statements were being
released, only the most prominent concerns have been discussed. The most prominent
concerns were negative scenery change, natural habitat loss, bird and bat mortality, bird
and bat habitat and migration loss, and noise. There was also the code “in support
because community benefits” that appeared many times throughout the public comments.
While this is not a concern, it is important to show that not all the public comments from
local community members were concerns about the wind energy projects.
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Collaborative Decision Making for Agencies and Public Utilities
The interview results are broken up in themes based on the findings from the
interviews. A total of five interviews were conducted and the interview subjects varied
between different roles in the decision-making process. All of the interview subjects had
been part of the decision-making process for at least one wind energy project. The range
of roles within the decision-making process were from being on the board that made the
final decision about a project to someone who was part of the public participation as a
local community member. Interview subjects’ responses to the questions were dependent
on the level of government or utilities at which the decisions were being made for wind
energy projects. Levels of government were state or local counties and the utility level
was people who worked within a utility in the state. The important themes that were
found from conducting the semi-structured interviews were collaboration within the
decision-making processes, the impacts of real world demands on collaboration,
limitations to collaboration, and the importance of collaboration.
Collaboration Within the Decision-Making Processes
Throughout the interviews there was a common theme that collaboration was
available in many areas of decision-making processes for wind energy projects. Everyone
interviewed believed there were opportunities for the public to have their voices heard
and be a part of the decision making. No one thought that the processes used to decide on
wind energy projects did not have some component that allowed for collaboration. One
interview subject stated that:
“I think [the process was] collaborative from the standpoint of there [being]
opportunities for the public, tribes, other government agencies, non-government
90
organizations to provide input at multiple times throughout our process. So, I
think in that sense it is very collaborative.”
Another interview subject discussed how they addressed collaboration a little differently
and tried to include agencies early on to get a sense of the issues that would need to be
looked at further during the decision-making process. They said during the interview:
“I did it different than a lot of other jurisdictions. When we did our scoping, I
invited all the agents, all the state agents who used to participate in the scoping
because I wanted to flush out the issues early. The water, and the birds, impacts,
the noise. So then, the issues we developed in the scoping that’s what we did with
our mitigation. We addressed those through our environmental review.”
So, even though all the interview subjects said they thought the decision-making
processes were collaborative, there was a small amount of difference in whether the
decision maker wanted to go beyond the level of collaboration that was required.
Another consensus between all the interview subjects was that collaborative
decision making is a challenge because there are many aspects that need to be addressed
in order for collaboration to work. During one interview, it was brought up that:
“I think that the more complex the projects are, the more collaborative you need
to be.”
They also brought up an example of a wind energy project that they had worked on in
regards to how challenging and complex the project ended up being. About the project
they said:
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“It was really challenging and involved a lot of collaboration because we were
with multiple utilities for the development part of the process and then we had to
work with the for-profit entities who could avail themselves with the production
tax credit. So, it was a really lengthy process that was loaded with collaborative
opportunities. Just working between cooperative electric utilities and public utility
districts was a challenge in and of itself because of different regulations.”
Collaboration is work that must be done during the decision-making process and
depending on the specific wind energy project, the collaboration might be more
challenging. There is no easy way to be collaborative but by using any collaborative
opportunities available to decision makers the overall process can be smoother.
In Washington, the main decision-making process used is the environmental
impact statement (EIS) and there is required public participation that decision makers
must include. These results produce a few different findings. The first is that there is
collaboration within the EIS decision-making process and decision makers do make sure
the public is involved. There is consensus among decision makers that public
participation is important for an EIS to be effective and so that public concerns are
addressed (Glucker et al., 2013). Another key finding is that decision makers do go
beyond the public participation requirements if they can. Decision makers sometimes try
to think outside the box when addressing concerns that will appear throughout the wind
project in order to create a project that minimizes those concerns. This confirms past
literature that looks at the role of public participation in the decision-making process and
that including the public can offer opportunities to create a better wind energy project
(O’Faircheallaigh, 2010).
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The Impact of Practical Considerations and Constraints on Collaboration
The two real-world demands that were discussed the most by interview subjects
were time and cost. Collaboration is often seen as timely and costly because more people
must be included in the wind energy project decision making. Time and project timelines
were mentioned by three interview subjects as important real-world demands to consider
with collaboration. When discussing the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council
(EFSEC), an interview subject discussed how time is a consideration for EFSEC projects:
“We are constantly under pressure to complete our process. Our process usually
takes awhile longer than many folks would like it to take and I think part of that is
because we end up getting the largest of the large projects oftentimes.”
This interview also brought up that because the projects EFSEC works with are larger
there is often more public involvement, either in the form of comments submitted/sent or
comments from public hearings, which causes the overall project to take longer.
Another impact timelines and time have on collaboration is that decision makers
are not always able to include as many collaborative opportunities as they want. When
projects have a timeline that must be followed then the required collaboration
opportunities happen, but other opportunities might have to be left out. When talking
about timelines and collaboration an interview subject responded with:
“So, it’s a fine balance and you are right, sometimes we have timelines where we
don’t have the luxury of getting the most ideal collaboration to get it done in the
most cost-effective way.”
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Cost, or economic concerns, was also an important impact to collaborative
decision making. This concern was mostly brought up in the local decision-making
interviews because projects being completed at the state or utility level have more
funding opportunities. When projects are being decided on locally, there is a different set
of priorities than at larger levels. One interview subject brought up how projects often get
decided on at the local level and said:
“I think when it gets to the local jurisdiction it’s economics. And economics can
be an ugly stepchild to have control of the direction you're going in. It didn’t
come down to (in our area) it didn’t come down to is this the right thing to do?
It’s embarrassing to say that, but it...really didn’t come down to that.”
They later brought up that economics was important for this decision because local
people did get the benefit of having turbines on their property. The interview subject
stated that:
“Yeah it had nothing to do with whether we use the dam or the turbine. It was
‘well I get money outta this.’ I can't say I wouldn’t have done the same thing.”
Economics and costs of projects can have varying degrees of impacts depending on the
level of the project, as was seen for this local wind energy project.
Time and cost of wind energy projects are important considerations for any
decision maker. With a time constraint to finish a project, there often is less opportunity
to include the public in the decision-making process. The comments made by the
interview subjects confirm what has been said in past literature about public participation
processes. Doelle and Sinclair (2006) found that while public participation is important it
94
is often not seen as very effective because the process can be costly and time consuming.
When a wind project is already under a time and money limit, adding extra collaborative
opportunities can be a challenge for decision makers. Based on these results, decision
makers are trying to add as much public participation and collaboration as they can while
also having to meet time and cost restrictions.
Limitations to Collaboration
Overall, interview subjects did not really think there were many limitations to
collaboration. Most people believe that the decision-making processes were collaborative
and that there was nothing preventing collaboration from happening. During one
interview it was brought up that collaboration with the public can’t happen in every part
of the decision-making process because it is a hindrance to actually completing the
project. This interview subject said:
“I don’t think there's really any other opportunities where the public [can
participate], unless they come into every part of what we do and are involved.
Which is not practical. I mean we have to do our work... We have opportunities to
consider what their concerns are and then we sort of go back and put that into the
blender of whatever we are doing and consider it but we can't, we can't
continually every step of the way of the process be seeking input from the public
to be collaborative if you will.”
With this statement, the interview subject was reinforcing that there are ample
opportunities for public input and collaboration during the decision-making process and
to add more opportunities would not be practical.
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Another interview subject brought up that the only limitation they could see
would be a legal limitation to adding more collaborative opportunities. This person stated
that:
“The limits would be maybe legally constricting but...you just have to be openminded and try to see how to make it work. And sometimes it can’t.”
They believe that each wind energy project is unique in collaborative opportunities and
limitations but that by having an open mind, projects can have more collaborative
opportunities. During this interview it was also brought up that having more people on
your team increases collaboration and the ability to have more open-minded people that
have new or better ideas for project collaboration. Overall, it did not appear that decision
makers thought there were limitations to collaboration for wind energy projects.
Everyone believed there were plenty of opportunities for public participation and
collaboration in the processes that were being used.
Importance of Collaboration
Everyone I interviewed sincerely believed that collaboration for wind energy
projects is important and needs to be part of the decision-making process. One person
brought up that collaboration and public input is required by law, but that collaboration is
important beyond that. They said that:
“I think it's important you know the rules are designed, I think in this state, I think
it's important to get public input to the State Environmental Policy Act and you
know the enabling statute even talks about that you know as far as the public
comment meetings, the scoping meetings. The purpose being to seek input from
96
the public and other interested entities to sort of define the scope of the
environmental analysis. That’s real important. Because the agencies often, if there
is a lead agency, EFSEC is a lead agency for the projects that fall under our
jurisdiction. But we don’t know it all. We rely on the input from the tribes,
nongovernmental organizations, other state agencies, state and federal and local
agencies as well as the public. You know we sort of want their input and need
their input to help us get through the environmental analysis that we are required
to do.”
While collaboration is required legally, it is important because there is no way to know
everything necessary for a project. This is especially true when wind projects are being
implemented in different areas that have different populations, needs, resources, etc.
It was also mentioned by multiple people that collaboration is necessary when
doing projects that are the size of wind energy projects. One person said:
“I think they need to have a lot of community involvement if they are just going
to start putting things in communities.”
Similarly, another person said:
“And that is where the collaboration is so important because you definitely don’t
want to put something of this magnitude someplace it isn’t wanted.”
Interview subjects made it very clear that they would not want to implement a wind
energy project in a community that absolutely did not want it or where the community
was not in any way part of the process. Public input and collaboration were seen as
97
extremely important parts of the decision-making process to all the people who were
interviewed.
These findings support the literature that looks at the importance of including the
public in the decision-making process. Interview subjects really do believe that the public
have important concerns and ideas for wind projects. The findings presented here support
what Shepherd and Bowler (1997) looked at, which was the four basic reasons to include
the public in the decision-making process. Interview subjects confirmed that including
the public is important because it is the right thing to do (legally and morally), it allows
for community concerns to be addressed, the project is more legitimate and has less
overall hostility, and the final project is better when local knowledge is used. Decision
makers do see the value of including the public in the decision-making process in
Washington.
Recommendations for Future Collaborative Decision Making
Everyone I spoke with had suggestions and recommendations for collaboration
that should happen presently and in the future. Along with saying that collaboration needs
to be a part of the decision-making process, many decision makers believe that there is
opportunity to increase collaboration. During one interview, it was brought up that a good
way to increase collaboration is to add to your decision-making team. They said that:
“A catch phrase you will probably hear it every single meeting, which is ‘Expand
the Team,’ which just means be collaborative.”
98
They discussed further that expanding the team is important because collaboration needs
to happen within the agency or utility that is in charge of the project in order for
collaboration to happen with the public. They explained this by saying:
“So that’s when [name removed] said “expand the team” so we try not to work in
a vacuum. Once we have something laid out we then vet it through all these other
departments and they, in their two cents, work for us. But when we have big
steering committee meetings where representatives from even senior
management, even the CEO, are present, they want to make sure we’ve done our
homework. That again there's a large collaboration even within [name removed]
for every project.”
It was important for this person to make sure it is understood that for collaboration to be
successful there needs to be collaboration at multiple levels. Collaboration with the
public is easier when the team responsible for the project has already been collaborative
and used all the resources they have available.
Another topic that was brought up by interview subjects was that if any decision
maker is unsure how to be more collaborative on any energy project that there are
resources available to people.
“If they don’t have obvious resources, to go to their local economic development
group and have some sort of public discussion about the project and they will find
collaboration.”
This resource is extremely important so that projects can be discussed and if similar
projects are being proposed then there can be collaboration between agencies and
99
utilities. Developing coping mechanisms is another resource utilization that was brought
up. Having a coping mechanism at the ready for collaboration issues that come up helps
encourage more collaboration during the decision-making process. One person said:
“A utopia does not exist so they better be prepared for what they can realistically
anticipate. You will never get 100% buy-in because people just don’t always take
the time to, no matter how hard you try to educate them about a particular venture
they have their own preconceived biases and they will oppose you tooth and nail.
So you have to make sure, like mentioned earlier, a built-in coping mechanism or
an independent power agency or anyone trying to develop power. If the local
government will not allow them to go forward, they can go to EFSEC and then
trump that. That has happened in the past.”
There are many options for decision makers to include more collaboration in decision
making and by using resources available, or preparing resources so that, if something
goes wrong, collaboration does not have to be limited.
The last recommendation made by many of the interview subjects was that the
public should be part of the decision-making process no matter how complicated that
makes the wind energy projects. One comment from an interview that really summed up
how a decision maker felt about including the public was:
“You know, you can't just make an administrative decision with staff then live
with it. It has to be that way. It has to be collaborative. It has to go public. You
have to have the letters to the editors. The ugly crying and battles in public
hearings.”
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Along with this comment, they also discussed how important it is to have the decisions
made at the local level with local people. They said:
“I wrote down two or three comments. And they all came down to don’t take the
local decision making out of the local officials. There's no practical ways to get
past being collaborative. There's no way to do it. We have to go through that
process. I know it would be easier if the state said “Columbia County you're going
to do 400 turbines this year.” And then we’ll decide where they are going to be.
Now that would save a lot of time and effort for us. But it is a democracy and it is
a bottom up approach supposedly. So, I felt like no, there's no ways to get past it.
It’s the way we’ve gotta do it.”
Collaboration is extremely important at the local level because ultimately the decision
made is going to be the decision local people will live with.
Public participation and collaboration are constantly changing and evolving.
There is always room to improve upon public participation and decision makers are
looking for ways to continue to include the public. The literature offers suggestions for
improving public participation in ways such as institutionalizing the public participation
process so that decision makers have to include the public in more parts of the decisionmaking process (De Santo, 2016 & Reed, 2008) and/or adding an independent review
panel that reviews the public participation process used for wind energy projects (Doelle
& Sinclair, 2006). While these suggestions may be something to look at in the future,
current decision makers in Washington are actively looking for ways to increase public
participation for current and future projects.
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Connecting Community Concerns with Decision-Making Processes
Communities that are faced with wind energy projects will always have concerns
about the projects. While concerns will always be raised by community members,
decision makers are addressing these concerns by continuing to create more public
participation and collaboration opportunities during the EIS process. The most prominent
concerns that were raised for wind energy projects in Washington were negative scenery
changes, natural habitat loss, bird and bat mortality, bird and bat habitat and migration
loss, and noise. But, there was also a majority of the public comments in support of the
wind projects because there would be community benefits from those projects. These
results were supported by past literature looking at what concerns community members
have about wind energy projects. Decision makers are aware of the concerns that most
often appear when working on a wind energy project EIS. The decision-making processes
used for wind energy projects in Washington do allow for public participation and
collaboration so that decision makers can address community concerns throughout the
process. After completing the interviews, it is apparent that decision makers do believe
public participation and collaboration is an important part of the decision-making process
and there is room for improvement for future projects.
Throughout the study many themes appeared. One of the themes was that decision
makers do seek community involvement and collaboration because they see the
importance in getting input from community members. Decision makers seek out
community involvement so that community concerns can be addressed early on. This is
important for a few reasons. Decision makers realize that these wind energy projects are
going into communities and that local community members should want those projects in
102
their communities. Many of the interview subjects touched on this and made comments
about how they do try to make the projects work for the community that will have the
project. But, community involvement still usually begins after a project design has been
decided on, such as a wind energy project instead of a solar project. While decision
makers do try to include the public in the decision-making process it is often later in the
process. With continued effort put in to address concerns early, decision makers can get
more information about concerns and put adequate findings of significance in the EIS. By
looking at the public comments on past EIS reports and hearing what decision makers
had to say, it was apparent that community concerns are taken seriously for Washington
wind energy projects, but they are not addressed early enough in the decision-making
process.
Connecting with the previous theme, it was also found that while decision makers
value public input there is room to address the important community concerns a bit
earlier in the decision-making process. By addressing concerns a few steps earlier in the
decision-making process more concerns could get adequate attention and there could be
more work done to mitigate or completely avoid the impacts that are prominent concerns.
Decision makers get public input at multiple stages of the project but often the project
design has already been decided on and the public can comment on what is in the EIS.
Getting public input before the project design could completely change what concerns are
raised by local community members about the project. One interview subject even made
the comment that:
“What they should do is give the communities a choice of what types of
renewable they want to deal with.”
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Sometimes the decision makers want to put in a wind energy project, but the community
would prefer a different renewable energy project, such as solar. If the wind project has
already been designed, then there is no opportunity to see if the community would prefer
a different energy project altogether.
The last major theme found in this study was wind projects that include a lot of
collaboration are more just overall. Projects that did address community concerns early
on in the decision-making process had more comments in support of the project because
people felt like the project design did address their issues. The comments that were about
concerns fell into two main justice sections, distributive justice and procedural justice.
People had concerns about where the project would be and how the impacts would affect
people in the community (distributive justice) and how the EIS process happened for the
individual projects (procedural justice). The most prominent concerns were centered
around negative environmental impacts and how close the project was to local
community members’ properties.
The distribution of impacts was a huge concern for many people because they
were worried about the scenery changes, noise, and even how the economic benefits
would be distributed to the community. Wind projects that did not fully address these
concerns did get a lot of opposition because people did not feel like the impacts of the
project were just. One public comment in the Desert Claim Wind Power Project said:
“I think it could have been done in a cooperative and collaborative manner.”
For this project, there wasn’t enough collaboration and local community members did
show concern that they could have been in support of the project if only there was more
opportunity for people to be involved. In this instance the process for the EIS could have
104
been more inclusive and that would have given more opportunity for the distribution of
impacts to be addressed by local community members.
Past wind energy projects in Washington have had a lot of community concerns
because there will always be concerns raised over any new energy project. Decision
makers include public participation and collaboration in the decision-making process so
that they can address community concerns. Public participation and collaboration are
constantly changing and growing with each new wind energy project. Currently, decision
makers are including public participation wherever possible and looking to find new
ways to include the public in the decision-making process. Collaboration will continue to
be important for wind energy projects and decision makers are making sure collaboration
is incorporated into every wind energy project.
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CHAPTER 5: FUTURE RESEARCH AND CONCLUSION
This chapter focuses on bringing together the previous chapters and concluding
this study. The chapter is broken up into three sections and those sections look at future
research opportunities for collaborative decision making, the importance of collaborative
decision making for wind energy projects, and the broader implications of collaborative
decision making for energy projects in general. The research question that has been the
focus of this study is: “what have been prominent concerns for community members
during wind energy projects in Washington State and how could agencies and public
utilities create more collaborative decision making for future wind energy projects?”
This study found that the most prominent concerns for community members in
Washington were negative scenery changes, natural habitat loss, bird and bat mortality,
bird and bat habitat and migration loss, and noise. But it was also found that community
members were in support of wind projects because of community benefits the project
would provide. It was also found that decision makers are trying to be as collaborative as
possible for wind energy projects but that there are constraints to being collaborative,
such as time and money. Decision makers address concerns from community members
and give opportunities for public involvement during the environmental impact statement
(EIS) process. There is a consensus among decision makers that collaboration is
important for the success of wind energy projects in Washington. The following sections
will address the broader scope of collaborative decision making for wind projects and
beyond.
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Future Research in Decision-Making Processes
This study focused on past community concerns for wind energy project in
Washington State, how collaborative the decision-making processes were, and if
decision-making processes can be more collaborative in the future. Future research in this
field could take this study and add on to it. Some future research ideas could expand how
many decision makers were interviewed as well as include more environmental impact
statement public comment. A larger sample size could expand the findings from this
study. Also, expanding the scope of the research location to include more wind energy
projects and states to get a better understanding of overall community concerns.
Another future research idea would be to look at a case study of a wind energy
project, or another type of renewable energy project, that is currently going through the
decision-making process. This would allow for a better analysis of community concerns
for the project and how those concerns relate to the decision-making process being used.
Looking at a project as it is being decided on would give researchers a better idea about
how collaborative decision-making processes are and what steps decision makers take to
ensure there is collaboration. A case study would also allow for more information to be
gathered about community concerns because researchers could talk to people in the
community as the project is happening.
Importance of Collaborative Decision Making for Wind Energy Projects
As this study shows, collaborative decision making is important for wind energy
projects in Washington State. Local community members feel that projects are fair and
just when public participation processes are included at multiple points of the EIS process
so that concerns can be addressed. Wind projects that do not include enough public input
107
have more push back because community members feel like decision makers are not
looking out for the public interest when deciding project design. During interviews,
decision makers did discuss how collaboration is important to them and that they prefer
projects that include local community members because projects end up being better
overall.
Wind projects create a lot of controversy in local communities because people
have concerns that are important, such as not wanting to lose their scenery. When
decision makers address concerns like these early in the EIS process then project design
can be changed to address certain concerns. Not all concerns can be fully address because
then wind energy projects would never be built. Getting community input early on though
can give decision makers more information about what matters to local people so that
projects can be designed to be the best for that community. Adding more collaboration to
wind projects gives community members and decision makers more information to work
with in designing a wind project.
It is also important to incorporate collaboration throughout the decision-making
process for wind energy projects because each community will have different concerns
about the project and by including the public early and often the project can be better
tailored to that individual community. Creating a wind energy project that is tailored to
individual communities allows for community needs to be addressed. Since each
community has unique concerns about wind energy projects, it is important for decision
makers to not use concerns and project designs from existing wind energy projects that
are different from the one being designed. Each project is unique because the
communities around the project are unique. While the results of this study showed certain
108
concerns are consistent around Washington, there were unique concerns that only
occurred with certain projects. This did show that local communities around Washington
have different concerns about projects. Collaboration is important so that these unique
concerns are addressed.
Broader Implications of Collaborative Decision Making
Collaboration is important for any decision making, but especially with energy
projects that will be in people’s communities. As discussed in the previous sections, local
community members will have concerns about projects being built in their communities
and each community will have different concerns. Energy projects must have
collaboration so that the best possible projects are being built in communities. Input from
people is important so that the needs of the community are considered. This is especially
true with renewable energy projects since not all energy forms work in all communities.
Throughout this study people did show concern over wind energy in particular and would
have liked to be part of the decision-making process earlier so that a different form of
renewable energy could have been discussed. Collaboration allows for the right projects
to be built in communities.
Another reason collaboration is important in decision-making processes is that it
can empower people who participate. This empowerment can lead to people participating
in other democratic processes, such as local government decisions and even federal
government decisions. When people participate in decision-making processes, the overall
decisions end up being better because there is more input for projects. People who feel
empowered and like they can make a difference in their communities is important for
society. A more participatory society means decisions being made will actually reflect
109
what people want in their communities. With more people participating the democratic
process will be better overall in Washington and even the whole United States.
Collaborative decision-making processes can create opportunities for more people
to be part of the process and create renewable energy projects that better their
communities and the world. With more renewable energy projects that include public
participation and collaborative decision-making, there will be more renewable energy
projects getting developed around the world. Increasing renewable energy development
in the long run will help reduce the impacts of nonrenewable energy sources for the entire
world. By switching to more renewable energy sources and away from nonrenewable
energy sources, the overall impacts of climate change can begin to be reduced.
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