If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.
Leaders of the Oklahoma House of Representatives channeled the wisdom of Billy Joe Shaver today, running a revised version of a stringent wind farm setback bill in the Utilities Committee one day after an even more industryprohibitive version failed to pass in the Energy Committee.
Wind company lobbyists were aghast with the decision, working overnight in hopes that House Bill 2751 would find a similar fate to House Bill 1989, which failed 5-7 on Wednesday. Ultimately, they were unsuccessful, with HB 2751 advancing 8-3. Revealed publicly about 90 minutes before Thursday’s meeting, the new bill proposes only quarter-mile property setbacks as opposed to half-mile restrictions, adjusted height prohibitions, and a faster opportunity for a county vote to exempt specific projects from the wind farm setback requirements.
“It’s like déjà vu,” Rep. Brad Boles (R-Marlow) quipped to Rep. Tim Turner before Thursday’s meeting of the Utilities Committee began.
Turner (R-Kinta) had carried HB 1989 to its failed fate the day prior.
“What I was trying to accomplish is to protect the quality of life and economic life that we have in eastern Oklahoma,” Turner told NonDoc on Wednesday. “Oklahoma’s in [a budget] deficit this year, and we talk about putting 720-foot tall windmills across three counties that stretch right across Lake Eufaula. We’ve got to think about tourism, recreation that we have with Eufaula, Grand (Lake) and (Lake) Tenkiller, which are our three big revenue boosters in the summer that help generate sales tax revenue and different revenue for Oklahomans. If wind was good east of I-35, it would have been there for the last 30 years like it has been out in western Oklahoma. But what we’re doing is we’re seeing these companies out-of-state — out-ofcountry — companies that are coming in, putting turbines and setting up wind projects, 720 foot tall, that are living off federal government subsidies.”
Turner, who was elected to a first term representing House District 15 last year, said his goal has been to “protect the citizens in eastern Oklahoma who have spoken out not wanting industrial wind.”
“Property rights are more than just the surface ground that you have,” he said. “Property rights goes to what affects you just as much as what your neighbor wants. And again, we have to protect our property rights, but we also have to protect our neighbors, and we have to be good neighbors and good stewards of Oklahoma money.”
‘All politics are local’ Turner was among the eight House members who voted in favor of HB 2751’s revised proposal Thursday, as was House Speaker Kyle Hilbert (R-Bristow) who used his special authority to join the committees and vote in favor of both Wednesday’s bill that failed and Thursday’s bill that advanced.
“I’m going to ask questions on the topic and not about the process,” Hilbert said during Thursday’s Utilities Committee meeting, asking House Appropriations and Budget Committee Chairman Trey Caldwell (RLawton) about what he called “the unreliability” of wind energy for the electric grid.
Hilbert’s remarks came after House Minority Leader Cyndi Munson (D-OKC) questioned the appropriateness of Hilbert’s decision to “Move bills around when we don’t get the results we want.”
“I do think the process is important,” Munson said. “We have a committee process. We have elected members who sat and determined in a place — like [Chairman Caldwell] said — where there is expertise on particular issues, and that decision was made yesterday.”
Owing to the unusual nature of the week’s weather-affected schedule and the vote at hand, Hilbert temporarily placed Munson on the House Utilities Committee for the HB 2751 vote in the place of Rep. Annie Menz (DNorman) who faced a scheduling conflict for Thursday’s meeting.
Caldwell, who has historically supported the wind energy industry and the economic impact it has had around his southwest Oklahoma district, argued that people in eastern Oklahoma have legitimate concerns about wind farms now in development.
“I would say that all politics are local, and to those people that are right next to Lake Eufaula — a place that’s been in their family’s [history] and those views and that recreational asset the state owns and has — I think it is an important thing,” Caldwell said. “Now, I live in western Oklahoma where we’ve had wind going on 20 years, and we don’t have an issue with it. We’ve had some growing pains when it comes to [property tax] reimbursement. We’ve had some growing pains with sightings and stuff like that, but by and large those problems have been worked out over the last few decades in western Oklahoma. The needs and concerns of our fellow citizens in eastern Oklahoma should not be discounted. I think it is a crisis for someone.”
Caldwell reminded committee members that “every county would still have the ability that they have today to change” the prohibition included in HB 2751.
“I take abridgment in the fact this committee — the Utilities Committee that I’ve chaired so many times and I’ve been on this committee for many years — to think that you do not have the ability and the equal standing to talk about complicated policy, I do take abridgment of that,” Caldwell said. “What this bill does is it establishes a baseline that tries to walk the fine balancing line of two competing property owner rights and gives direction to our county commissioners and our people in our state while protecting both interests of property rights.” Mark Yates, executive director of the Oklahoma Power Alliance, said ahead of Thursday’s vote that lawmakers need to recognize the importance of wind energy in the state.
“Oklahoma is the epicenter of ‘all of the above’ energy production. Because of our abundant and diverse mix of Godgiven energy resources, the state has the ability to contribute to our nation’s energy independence, and to compete at the highest level as we diversify and grow our economy. Our nation’s future will demand abundant and low cost energy, and we need every resource contributing to that goal. Oklahoma will continue to expand its resource capacity with additional natural gas, wind, solar, and energy storage solutions,” Yates said. “Oklahoma will fail in this mission if it enacts draconian policies pushed by a small contingent of misinformed and antigrowth [Not In My Back Yard] activists. The same crowd that has always been opposed to oil and gas development, animal agriculture, and other aspects of our economy are trying to dictate their radical anti- landowner agenda to the Legislature. Rural Oklahoma and its rich resources drive our economic engine, and they stand to kill it.”
Hilbert, however, said during a press availability Thursday afternoon that Oklahomans have significant concerns about wind farms — even beyond the setback requirements proposed in the bills. He also defended his decision to reveal and advance a revised version of the proposal.
“Traditionally, if you have a bill that leadership wants to pass, you just throw it through (the House) Rules (Committee), and you get it out of Rules, and it goes to the House floor. We did not do that,” Hilbert said. “We had a deliberative process, and absolutely no one can argue with a straight face that the legislation passed today in the Utilities Committee is not utilities-related. It’s absolutely related to utilities.”
Hilbert said he and Caldwell know the proposal in HB 2751 will continue to see “changes” and “improvement” as it advances to the House floor and beyond.
“The process worked,” Hilbert said. “The Energy Committee had some concerns with the legislation that Rep. Turner had heard in the committee yesterday, and what you saw in the legislation that the Utilities Committee considered today is that it addressed each of the concerns of members of the Energy Committee and incorporated that into the bill. So you’re seeing the process work.”
Rep. Dick Lowe voted against HB 1989 as a member of the Energy Committee on Wednesday. Afterward, he said he worried the proposal would “jerk the rug” from under companies currently working to develop already planned and announced wind farms.
“We are a workforce state. We’re trying to get our workforce [expanded]. When would that happen to another industry coming in and say, ‘Hey, y’all come here, do all the work and everything, spend all this money looking at it, going to put a project in,’ and (then) we go, Oh, we’re gonna change the law and you can’t come in.’ That’s not really workforce for anybody,” Lowe (R-Amber) said Wednesday. “Hard votes are just part of this game, and I don’t have trouble with hard votes. This is a hard vote. I think some people had a problem with it, but I did not. I think it if you look at our area. I have a lot of wind energy in our area, and you know, I want to be positive about that aspect, not towards the energy company or anybody. But hey, hard votes are hard votes. I go and take them and don’t worry about them.”
A similar wind farm setback bill — Senate Bill 2 — advanced from the Senate Energy Committee on a 6-5 vote Feb. 13. That proposal includes only the quartermile setback requirements and not the other regulations and components of HB 2751.
Other bills carried by Caldwell that advanced from the House Utilities Committee on Thursday were:
• HB 2747 to require Oklahoma Corporation Commission regulation of electric transmission lines instead of a federal agency and allow greater competition for the construction of such lines. The bill also would prohibit retail electric suppliers from offering ratepayer-funded incentives, rebates or inducements to promote customers switching fuel sources from natural gas to electricity;
• HB 2752 to prohibit the use of eminent domain for the construction of a renewable energy facility on private property; and
• HB 2756 to require the Oklahoma Corporation Commission to establish a new permitting process for the construction of high-voltage transmission lines.
Tres Savage
Tres Savage (William W. Savage III) has served as editor in chief of Non-Doc since the publication launched in 2015. He holds a journalism degree from the University of Oklahoma and worked in health care for six years before returning to the media industry. He is a nationally certified Mental Health First Aid instructor and serves on the board of the Oklahoma Media Center.
