OLYMPIA — The Nisqually Tribe has a very limited amount of land in Thurston County. Covering an area of less than three square miles along the Nisqually River and surrounded by a military base, Wayne Lloyd said the tribe really needs to protect what little it has.
Lloyd, the tribe’s Building Department director, has been on a mission since he started four years ago to make the tribe more energy efficient so it can reduce what it spends on gas and electricity every year.
As a result, he’s well on his way to making the reservation completely free of its energy bills, thanks to a partnership with Puget Sound Energy (PSE).
Already the tribe is saving up to $150,000 over the next 10 years after PSE crews upgraded and retrofitted the reservation’s lighting with nearly 700 new LED lights. The lighting retrofits, combined with solar energy panels on the reservation, are saving the tribe more than $100,000 every year.
And there are more projects like it to come.
“It’s showing our mission statement to the world that, ‘Hey, we’re responsible and we’re taking care of the land here,’” Lloyd said. “It has felt like a natural fit for us here to go down that path.”
Gerald Tracy with PSE said the utility company’s outreach manager Tommy Winslow was giving a presentation on solar energy to the tribe at the Nisqually Youth Center in March when he noticed how outdated the indoor lights were. The center had just been outfitted with solar panels.
Winslow asked Lloyd about the tribe’s interest in having the lighting improved, and he learned that the Nisqually Tribe is working to establish itself as the leading tribe in Washington for clean energy sustainability. Since then, that effort has skyrocketed.
Tribal officials learned PSE has an Existing Building Commissioning program that allows them to partner with businesses and jurisdictions, and they’ll foot the bill for energy-efficiency upgrades. The Youth Center and Elders Center have received those upgrades, and there are more to come.
Winslow said the money to pay for the program comes from its customers; a small percentage of people’s energy bills go toward an energy-efficiency pool for the public to directly benefit from.
“It comes full circle and pours back in because it’s cheaper and more efficient that way than to go out and build more power sources,” Winslow said.
Winslow said it’s important to him to be able to give back to his community in a meaningful way, and making sure the public has access to these funds and programs is the best way for him to do that.
“Really making it all about the communities and how we can best help them where they’re at, and better it for everybody,” Winslow said.
A solar future
The tribe has partnered with PSE for a number of solar panel projects, with many more to come. Lloyd said he has a goal of making the reservation free of its electric and propane bills in 10 years. That sounds nearly impossible when you think of the Red Wind Casino, which alone has a $2 million electricity bill each year, along with a yearly $1 million bill for gas.
But Lloyd has a plan.
He said the tribe is evaluating putting canopies over the parking lot at the casino and outfitting the roofs with solar panels. Tie that energy source with PSE’s hydrogen/natural gas blend, if the program makes it out of the pilot stage, and the reservation could be off the grid in 10 years. Lloyd said it’s such new technology that the tribe hasn’t fully committed yet, but they’re doing a lot of research alongside PSE.
“It’s a big investment, but in 10 years it will completely pay for itself and we won’t have utility bills for electric or propane,” Lloyd said.
Right now, Lloyd said solar panels and EV charging stations are the top priority on the reservation. Employees of the Nisqually Tribe can charge their EVs for free. A nearby Nisqually government office building and the C-Store gas station both are outfitted with solar panels. The new elders’ homes are powered by solar energy, too.
And all of these resources store energy for times when the sun isn’t shining, and for other buildings that don’t yet have their own solar systems. Lloyd’s own house is outfitted with solar panels, and he’s proud to say he doesn’t think he’ll ever have an energy bill to pay again.
“It’s kind of been a constant new thing we’re doing out here, and after a little bit of time it adds up,” Lloyd said.
But these bigger systems do come with some upfront costs.
The reservation needs a new facilities and transportation building to house several departments. Lloyd said the goal is to outfit the new building, along with the neighboring wastewater plant, with EV charging stations and solar panels. But a new energy system alone will cost more than $8 million, along with $11 million for the building itself.
The tribe has had luck with smaller grants to help pay for feasibility studies and for solar panels on the Elders Center and C-Store, and they’re holding out for more assistance before starting another project.
“It’s a lot of money,” Lloyd said. “But if it saves us $150,000 to $200,000 a year, it might be worth it.”
Lloyd and communications director Debbie Preston said the Nisqually tribe is the leading Western Washington tribe, if not in all of Washington, in terms of the number of buildings outfitted with solar and energy-efficient lighting. Preston said the Lummi Nation also has been successful in its endeavors to use clean energy, as well as the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe with its goal to become carbon neutral in 10 years, too.
Willie Frank III, chairman of the Nisqually Tribe, said the Nisqually people are always thinking of the next seven generations.
“Tribal members have told us for a long time to make sure we invest in green energy to do our part to save resources to protect our planet and our way of life,” he said. “We will continue to plan green energy into our future growth. It’s good for us as a tribe and doing the right thing as global citizens.”
