WA state biologist: wind project could pose risk

A proposed wind farm on a forested ridge in eastern Skamania County could harm bats, raptors and other wildlife, a state wildlife biologist says.

In formal comments to the state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, biologist Michael Ritter with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife said surveys have found that high numbers of bats, raptors and other birds have been recorded at the site about seven miles northwest of White Salmon near the Columbia River Gorge.

Ritter said the Whistling Ridge Wind project would be the first in a Western Washington conifer forest, the Columbian newspaper reported. The state supports additional surveys of the area for bats, northern goshawks and owls.

SDS Lumber Co., of Bingen, has applied to the state to build a 75-megwatt wind project on the 1,152-acre site.

In its application to the council, the company reported that overall use of the project site by raptors was "very low." But a company wildlife consultant predicted there would be some collision between turbine blades and small birds and bats.

A telephone call to SDS Lumber by The Associated Press seeking comment Monday was not immediately returned.

Ritter, a wind mitigation biologist based in Pasco, said the survey data on bats was "extremely interesting and alarming."

One survey found an average of 138 bat passes per night at each of three locations within the project site, more than three times as high as any other wind project site in the country, he said.

Bats are killed when they collide with wind turbine blades. But they also die from internal hemorrhaging when they encounter changes in barometric air pressure around blades, an effect known as "barotrauma," Ritter said.

"The air pressure changes around those big blades and the bats drop out of the air," he told The Columbian.

In his comments to the council, Ritter urged caution.

He said there's no data indicating how birds and bats that use commercial forests in Western Washington would fare if they came in contact with a string of wind turbines. Projects built in the region have been on arid, open shrub-steppe or agricultural land east of the Cascades.