Group challenges Native Americans’ wind power project

A large tribal wind power project near the Mexican border has been challenged by a group that claims it will harm birds and other wildlife.

In May, the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs published its decision approving a land lease between the Campo Band of Diegueño Mission Indians and Terra-Gen Development Company LLC. The 25- to 38-year lease would have the company build 60 turbines, each 586 feet tall, on tribal land about 70 miles east of San Diego.

"The project is a dangerous and completely unnecessary industrialization of high quality wildlife habitat in an area with an extremely high wildfire risk and frequent low-flying military, commercial and private aircraft," according to the complaint filed by Berkeley-based attorney Stephan C. Volker and his associates. "The project poses grave threats to birds and other wildlife, to aviation safety, to human health."

The complaint went on to state the turbines' "230-foot long, 40-ton, 200-mph spinning blades kill birds and bats much like a giant vacuum in the sky."

The tribe has about 350 people living on a sparsely populated 16,512 acre reservation. Tribal Chairman Ralph Goff did not return a call seeking comment on the lawsuit, Backcountry Against Dumps v. United States Bureau of Indian Affairs, 2:20-cv-01380-KJM-DB (E.D. Cal., filed July 8, 2020).

Two other tribes already operate wind farms nearby. The tribe has been working for more than a decade to get approval for the wind facility. It hopes it will offset revenues from its Golden Acorn Casino & Travel Center, which saw a slump during the last recession and more recently has been closed because of the coronavirus.

--Malcolm Maclachlan