Opalco urges county to update land-use rules so local renewable generation can be sited

Opalco representatives told the San Juan County Council on Feb. 11 that San Juan County’s land-use designations and permitting process are preventing necessary local renewable generation and storage and risk future outages and higher costs.

The utility said its members rely on undersea transmission cables with limited capacity and that anticipated demand growth — driven by population and electrification of vehicles and heat — will strain supply. Foster, speaking for Opalco, said the utility needs permitting certainty and asked the county to treat electric utilities as an essential public facility to reduce delays and the potential for months-long approval processes for projects that cross multiple jurisdictions.

Opalco’s presentation tied the permitting problem to the comprehensive plan’s current land-use categories, which the utility said still treat generation as “old-fashioned” noisy fossil-fuel facilities rather than quieter solar or storage installations. Foster said the county’s present rules effectively prohibit solar generation or passive renewable infrastructure on large swaths of rural farm and forest (RR) zoned land and leave much new generation limited to conditional-use areas, which require lengthy public review.

Why it matters: Opalco told the council it needs roughly 540 acres of siting across the islands to meet projected load growth (a small fraction of the utility’s roughly 75,000-acre service territory). Without room for local generation and storage, the utility warned, the county is more exposed to price spikes and outages and could become dependent on far more expensive imports.

Supporting details and options discussed included: - Essential public facility designation: Foster said designating the utility as an essential public facility under the Growth Management Act (GMA) would preserve local environmental safeguards while preventing local rules from functioning as a blanket prohibition. He said no Washington county has yet completed the designation and that the process is rigorous and would require regional and state coordination. - Docket requests and comp-plan changes: Opalco representatives asked the council to prioritize four docket items that would modernize land-use designations to allow utility-scale solar and storage in a narrow set of non-sensitive areas and reduce reliance on conditional-use permitting. - Project examples: Foster referenced Baylor Hill (a project Opalco has sought to permit for years) and said with the current rules about 65% of the county’s land area would be off-limits for the type of solar projects the utility needs. He described agrivoltaic (agrivoltaics) arrangements with farmers as financially attractive for some farms and noted interest from at least small-scale local farmers in dual-use arrangements. - Alternative resources and storage: Opalco staff described tidal (tidal) energy as promising for nighttime capacity but said it remains under study and funding; they also stressed battery storage is expensive and that tidal generation could reduce required battery capacity substantially. - Safeguards and siting constraints: Opalco emphasized it was not seeking siting in conservation, natural or shoreline-protected areas. Foster showed a map indicating a small “sliver” of buildable acreage (the roughly 540 acres) that he said would meet reliability needs while leaving protected areas untouched. - Funding and partnerships: Opalco raised the possibility of a nonprofit vehicle or land-donation approach (similar to preservation trusts) to secure land for generation and said it is pursuing conversations with agricultural landowners about revenue that could make farms financially viable. - Decatur site: Opalco and county staff reported ongoing talks about a possible boundary-line modification or long-term lease/sale of about 3 acres of Public Works land on Decatur (Public Works yard) to host a small, low-income solar component of Opalco’s Baylor Hill plans. County staff said Public Works believes it can continue operations on a reduced footprint and that the matter would return to council for formal approval.

Council response and next steps: Council members acknowledged the presentation and expressed support for moving the four docket requests higher in staff’s priority list as part of the comp-plan update. Foster urged the council to expedite the docket work so siting rules are resolved before reliability worsens. County manager Hudson and other staff said they would coordinate the docket prioritization and continue work on the Decatur site option with Opalco; council members signaled willingness to reconvene Opalco for follow-up as the comp-plan process advances.

Not included: No formal action, ordinance or vote occurred on any zoning change or essential facility designation during the meeting. Council asked staff to bring docket-related material back for future consideration.