Lawsuit filed against federal government alleging illegal approval of wind project
June 20, 2012 (Ocotillo) –A fourth lawsuit seeking to halt the Ocotillo Express wind facility has been filed in federal court. The plaintiff in this case, Community Advocates for Renewable Energy Stewardship, filed suit yesterday against Pattern Energy, the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management and top government officials.
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First, it alleges that the BLM illegally amended the California Desert Conservation Area Plan to allow wind energy development in an ineligible area that lacks the required wind resources. Pattern claimed during the approval process that it’s facility would power 125,000 homes – a figure that was mysteriously reduced to 94,500 by the BLM after approval. Using BLM figures, plaintiffs contend “this is only enough annual power for roughly 10,800 to 13,500 households—a far cry from the 125,000 households Pattern repeatedly claimed while seeking project approvals.”
Pattern has claimed wind speeds of 13.89 mph at the heights turbines would be built; that equates to only a Class 2 “fair” to “marginal” wind resource area--substandard by the BLM’s own standards. In fact, the BLM previously excluded areas with less than Class 3 wind speeds from eligibility for a land use amendment and further, authorized no plan amendments for any area in California, per the BLM’s Wind Energy Development Progrommatic EIS.
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Moreover, a federal executive order issued in 1994 prohibits discrimination against low income communities on federally funded projects, when those projects substantially affect human health and the environment. “Pattern willfully limited its analysis of financial and environmental impacts to shield NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] on the Project’s disproportionate impact upon low-income communities, in violation of Executive Order 12898,” the suit states.
http://www.eastcountymagazine.org/node/10107
I want to know who the hell approved giving taxpayer money to this project, which clearly failed to meet the minimum wind speeds that the Dept. of Energy lists on its website as required to be considered a viable wind project. This is a boondoggle of the worst sort, destructive on so many levels and not even producing a fraction of the energy Pattern claimed initially. A look at the wind speeds shows why. We should demand return of this money from Pattern and a halt to this boondoggle of a project.
