A Klickitat County renewable energy megaproject planned for a site sacred to the Yakama Nation inched closer to reality late last month, Washington Department of Ecology documents show.
The Goldendale Energy Storage Project won an appeal against a trio of environmental groups and the Yakama Nation to secure a water-quality certification. The permit, which was first reported by the Capital Press, is a crucial step because it’s needed before federal regulators can rule on the $2 billion project.
Opponents of the project say the proposal stands to repeat the region’s history of putting electricity generation above the lives and treaty rights of Native nations, as well as species including salmon.
What is pumped-water storage?
The project would be built on 680 acres overlooking the Columbia River, a few miles east of Maryhill. It would generate power by releasing water stored in an upper reservoir downward about 2,000 feet to spin power-generating turbines.
But Elaine Harvey — an environmental policy manager and member of the Yakama Nation’s Kamiltpa/Rock Creek Band, which is from the project area — wonders why Native people and salmon must be the ones to bear the consequences of a regional energy transition, again.
“It’s like losing Celilo Falls again,” she said, referring to when The Dalles Dam drowned the region’s preeminent Native fishing site.
“The salmon and the Indigenous people are still carrying the burden of all the hydro(power) systems that are on the Columbia and the tributaries,” Harvey continued. “Now, we’re in this new energy transition time, and it’s like tribes have to carry the burden.”
The site — known as Pushpum or “Mother of all roots” — has been a tribal food and medicine gathering area and seed bank since time immemorial, Harvey said. The location also is an important Yakama site because of its role in ceremonies and fishing, along with being the site of a historic village.
The energy-storage site lies on the Yakama Nation’s traditional land that is part of about 12 million acres ceded in an 1855 treaty made with the federal government before Washington became a state.
Article 3 of that treaty promised the nation “the right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed places … together with the privilege of hunting, gathering roots and berries, and pasturing their horses and cattle upon open and unclaimed land.”
“If they’re going to be permitted and construct this pump storage project at our sacred site, they’re going to drill a 30-foot-diameter tunnel into our sacred mountain, and to us, that’s a total desecration,” Harvey said. “It could never be replaced.”
In late 2022, a state environmental and tribal impacts review for the project found it would cause “significant and unavoidable adverse impacts to Traditional Cultural Properties, archaeological sites, culturally important plants and other tribal resources.”
Harvey said many of the important species there cannot be found elsewhere.
Rye Development did not respond to questions about the environmental impacts on the Yakama sites.
In a statement, project spokeswoman Becky Brun of Weinstein PR said the project owner, Denmark-based renewable energy giant Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, has committed $10 million to cleaning the contaminated “former brownfield” site before the new megaproject’s construction.
Columbia Gorge Aluminum Smelter operated at the site from 1971 to 2003.
Brun also highlighted the fact that the project would be in a wind-power project area and would use existing roads and transmission lines, an advantage over many energy projects around the country that face significant battles to secure transmission infrastructure.
Future of the site
The project will need more than two dozen permits before it can move forward.
Rye Development said it expects a decision from the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on crucial federal approvals by the end of the year.
Project leaders plan to start construction in 2027 and be operational by 2032.
But opponents including Simone Anter, an attorney with Columbia Riverkeeper who worked with the Yakama Nation to fight the most recent permit, have no plans to give up the fight.
“When we’re looking at a project of this magnitude, with this level of cultural resource destruction and environmental issues to boot, we are looking to stop the build of the project,” she said. “It’s just a project that should not have been proposed here and should not be built here — full stop.”
