Silence is easy. It doesn’t raise questions, it doesn’t make enemies, and it doesn’t slow down billion-dollar industrial projects. It’s comfortable for commissioners, convenient for corporations, and fatal for communities.
Right now, silence is the most powerful tool in Harvest Hills’ arsenal—and they’re counting on it. Count on landowners signing contracts quietly. Count on county commissioners nodding along to half-truths. Count on locals looking at their neighbors’ farms and thinking, “It won’t happen to me.”
But it will. And when it does, the Palouse won’t look like the Palouse anymore.
What’s at Stake
Start with Kamiak Butte—one of Washington’s only National Natural Landmarks. Its ancient basalt ridges, pristine trails, and sweeping views have made it a destination for photographers, hikers, and families for generations. Kamiak Butte is not just a place; it is the cornerstone of the Palouse’s identity. But put 45-story wind turbines on the surrounding ridges, and those unspoiled vistas disappear.
Drive a little farther and you’ll find Steptoe Butte, another Palouse icon. Photographers from all over the world climb to its summit for the chance to capture the region’s patchwork hills in soft morning light. It’s a view that’s been immortalized on postcards, calendars, and screensavers. These images could soon be memorials to a permanently lost landscape, the rolling expanse of Palouse replaced by industrial towers across the horizon.
The turbines don’t just alter the views. They change the way the land itself feels. The Palouse is a place of quiet: of wind in the wheat, the hum of a distant combine, the calls of meadowlarks and magpies at dusk. Turn it into a wind farm, and you trade that quiet for blade noise, blinking lights, and mechanical hums that carry for miles.
And it’s not just the buttes. Farms, homes, and livelihoods are at stake. Wind projects sell themselves as an easy paycheck, but landowners in other counties are telling a different story. Oil oozes and carbon fiber fills the nearby soil. Lease agreements can strip away control of your land for decades. Neighbors lose property value. Communities divide over noise complaints and broken promises.
The Real Cost of Silence
None of this happens overnight. It happens in meetings where commissioners mutter words like “outdated codes” and “limited options.” It happens when landowners are told to sign now or lose everything, a lie that works because nobody calls it out. It happens when the public isn’t paying attention—until it’s too late.
The Palouse doesn’t get a second chance. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.
But the cost of silence isn’t just measured in landscapes or property values. It’s measured in trust. When officials ignore their constituents and favor corporations working behind closed doors, it sends a clear message: you don’t matter.
If you care about the Palouse, now is the time to speak. Not next month. Not next year. Now. Raise your voice. Call your commissioners. Spread the word. Because silence may be easy, but it’s never free—and the Palouse is far too valuable to lose.
Thank you for your thoughtful work and conscientious time.
As a fungible commodity, power is not something for which we can shop as discerning consumers.
While I do not disagree with your focus on preserving our renowned Palouse landscape, I do not believe it is enough to simply say “no.”
As consumers of power, we are all culpable for the collateral damage left by our lifestyles. More power for more electronics, more EVs, more air conditioning as the planet warms, more population growth. And, no doubt, sponsors of wind projects are capitalists eager to exploit our collective lust for growth (I used to work in mining).
So if not wind, then what? Hw do we increase power supply for new and increasing demand? Nuclear? Fossil fuels? More hydropower? All of these have severe problems of their own.
I would love to join a movement that acknowledges “yes to more power, but not this way.” For example, why do businesses keeps lights on 24/7? Why do I sometimes drive by Martin Stadium with its mighty lights blazing when no one is there? Why don’t we take the same action with heat pumps as we have with low-water toilets?
It’s not enough to just say no. The stakes are too high.
Thank you for such a thoughtful and well-considered comment.
Our nonprofit includes people with diverse views on political and energy policy, and we agree with much of what you’ve said about the need for smarter energy solutions. However, the threat to Kamiak Butte and the Palouse is so urgent and imminent that we must remain singularly focused on opposing the siting of the Harvest Hills project.
Until we work together to defeat this industrial development, there simply isn’t time to work out our broader differences on energy policy. We hope you understand and that you’ll join us in protecting this unique landscape—there’s too much at stake to allow this project to move forward.