Save the Palouse Responds to Harvest Hills Information Session

For months, the developers behind the Harvest Hills wind project have insisted they are listening to the community. On Tuesday, they flew in wind industry-funded experts to prove it—except they weren’t listening. They were talking. Carefully.

At their moderated event at WSU, Harvest Hills struck an amicable tone, one that might have sounded reasonable if you hadn’t been following their maneuvers over the past four years. But it was clear from the start that the real audience wasn’t the residents of Whitman County. It was the county commissioners standing between them and the rubber stamp they so desperately need.

The real audience wasn’t the residents of Whitman County. It was the county commissioners standing between them and the rubber stamp they so desperately need.

The moderator’s inability to even pronounce “Palouse” correctly is a perfect symbol of what this event truly was—a performance staged by outsiders who neither understand nor respect this place.

Developer Shane Roche and his panel of hand-picked consultants presented a polished, curated version of their project, one that conveniently dodged the most pressing concerns of landowners and residents. Their answers were full of carefully crafted qualifiers, selective omissions, and outright evasions.

Take, for instance, the economic impact of turning the Palouse into an industrial wind farm. We were told that tourism—a major draw to the region—was merely a “niche loss.” Never mind that the sweeping, unspoiled vistas of the Palouse are internationally renowned. Never mind the thousands of photographers, artists, and visitors who come here each year. The destruction of that landscape? Just an insignificant footnote.

When questioned about fire risks, attendees were told that the standard approach to wind turbine fires is to ‘let them burn.’ No meaningful plan, no detailed mitigation strategy—just a vague assurance that local emergency services have been “trained” for the possibility. And when pressed on liability? The answer was just as slippery. “My understanding is it’s the wind project owner.” Reassuring.

Visual impact concerns were similarly waved away with more misleading simulations. Non-participating landowners were left out of their renderings, and when questioned about accuracy, the response was a shrug: “We only need to demonstrate degrees of impact.” In other words, as long as they meet the lowest possible threshold of “concern”, the reality of what residents will see out their windows doesn’t really matter.

But perhaps the most telling moment came when Harvest Hills casually mentioned the possibility of tearing up untouched, endangered Palouse prairie west of Kamiak Butte—one of the last remaining remnants of this rare ecosystem. Their solution? Relocate individual plants to local land trusts. (Palouse Land Trust – are you really onboard with this?) As if the destruction of an irreplaceable landscape can be mitigated by transplanting a few flowers.

Harvest Hills casually mentioned the possibility of tearing up untouched, endangered Palouse prairie west of Kamiak Butte

The environmental impact was hand-waved away as “minimal” with the kind of corporate optimism that only works in rooms full of people who stand to profit. Their environmental expert—brought in to reassure the public—had the audacity to suggest that for every bird the turbines kill, they “hope to replace it with two more.” As if conservation is a numbers game, and as if ecosystems function like a corporate ledger where losses can simply be offset with theoretical gains. The brutal reality is that industrial-scale wind developments decimate bird populations, particularly raptors and migratory species that the Palouse has historically protected. But instead of addressing the irreversible damage, they offered vague, feel-good assurances that do nothing to change the fact that once these species are gone, they aren’t coming back.

Throughout the evening, we were repeatedly assured that “the published literature” shows no significant impact on home values. This phrase was wielded like a shield—never mind that the specific study they leaned on has serious methodological flaws and possible bias, nor that they conveniently ignored other studies showing clear declines in property values near large-scale wind farms.

Then there was the matter of aviation safety, a concern dismissed with the same careful obfuscation that defined the rest of the evening. Harvest Hills brought in an East Coast aviation expert, whose previous research was funded by a renewable energy company—a detail that went curiously unmentioned in his introduction. His analysis focused exclusively on wake turbulence, a narrow slice of wind turbine-related risks, while conveniently sidestepping the more pressing concerns of obstacle clearance and collision risks near public airports.

When discussing National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reports, he carefully worded his response to say that his search of the NTSB database only included wind turbine wake turbulence accidents. Left unsaid? The fact that many of the open safety recommendations from the NTSB warn against placing turbines and meteorological towers near airports due to direct collision hazards. He even cited the fact that 40% of turbines in the U.S. are near airports—but conspicuously omitted that most of these are not near publicly owned, large-runway airports like that in Colfax, which require far stricter safety considerations.

Harvest Hills failed to present a proactive aviation safety plan, but instead insisted on a carefully tailored defense, designed to give county officials just enough plausible deniability to look the other way.

And yet, for all their talking, they never quite got around to addressing the biggest questions. Why did they ignore tribal consultation beyond passing along contact information? Why are local farmers suddenly facing insurance risks and policy cancellations? Why does their FAA permitting process remain vague and undefined, contrary to FAA guidance?

The real giveaway came when someone managed to slip an unapproved question past the Harvest Hills filter: Would they buy a house that they plan to surround with wind turbines? For a split second, the corporate polish cracked. Shane Roche, caught off guard, let out a quick, unfiltered “Nope!” before moving on as if the question had never been asked. It was the most honest answer of the night.

Shane Roche, caught off guard, let out a quick, unfiltered “Nope!” before moving on as if the question had never been asked. It was the most honest answer of the night.

Despite the mostly smooth delivery, the message behind Tuesday’s performance was clear: Harvest Hills does not see the residents of Whitman County as stakeholders. They see them as obstacles. Their concern is not the community. It is the commissioners and the landowners willing to lease their property for profit.

There is, of course, a certain irony in the way Harvest Hills presents itself. This is a project marketed as green energy, the moral imperative of our time. But the reality, as always, is more complicated. The developers seem to believe that if they say the right words and frame the right studies, they can convince themselves—as much as anyone else—that this is a noble pursuit. That tearing up rare, undisturbed prairie is an unfortunate but necessary step. That dismissing local opposition is just part of the process. That scripting experts to downplay concerns is simply how things are done.

What is “green” about any of this? The truth is, they aren’t saving the environment—they’re industrializing it. They aren’t listening to the community—they’re managing it. They aren’t weighing the costs of their project—they’re justifying them after the fact.

But the people of Whitman County are paying attention. The six-month moratorium is not the victory Harvest Hills hoped for—it is a sign that their backroom negotiations and misleading public relations campaign are failing. And no amount of industry-funded spin is going to change that.

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1. Raptor Species Sensitivity to Wind Energy Development
   • Diffendorfer, J.E., Stanton, J.C., Beston, J.A., Thogmartin, W.E., Loss, S.R., Katzner, T.E., Johnson, D.H., Erickson, R.A., Merrill, M.D., & Corum, M.D. (2021). Demographic and potential biological removal models identify raptor species sensitive to current and future wind energy. Ecosphere, 12(6).
   • Read the full study
2. Wind Turbines and Property Values
   • Brunner, E.J., Hoen, B., Rand, J., & Schwegman, D. (2024). Commercial wind turbines and residential home values: New evidence from the universe of land-based wind projects in the United States. Energy Policy, 185, 113837.
   • Read the full study