Idaho Sen. Jim Risch (R) is continuing to push back against a proposed wind farm northeast of Twin Falls.
Risch’s latest bill would halt the Lava Ridge project until the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office analyzed its effects on the nearby Minidoka National Historic Site.
The site commemorates the 13,000 Japanese Americans interned there during World War II.
“This is so wrong on so many levels for anybody who has even the slightest concern and love for public lands,” said Risch during a congressional hearing Wednesday. “This thing ought to be off the table.”
Local county commissioners, state lawmakers and other elected officials have all opposed the project.
Risch, along with the other three members of Idaho’s congressional delegation, backed a bill last October that would have automatically halted any solar or wind energy project on public lands if disapproved by that state’s legislature.
In June, the Bureau of Land Management issued its final environmental review for the Lava Ridge proposal.
The preferred option would slash the project’s footprint in half to about 104,000 acres and decrease the number of turbines from 400 to 241.
The closest cluster of turbines would also be more than nine miles away from the Minidoka site, though the environmental review noted they would still be visible from certain vantage points.
Sen. Joe Manchin, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, promised to consider Risch’s proposal during a hearing in September.
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