Full Tilt at Windmills : Residents Prepare to Fight the Sowing of Turbines on the Hills of Gorman Where Wildflowers Bloom

A plan to harvest energy by building Los Angeles County’s first wind farm on 270 acres of hilly ranchland near Gorman has drawn strong opposition from residents and environmentalists who claim it will bring visual blight to the scenic, pristine area.

Opponents say the proposed 458 windmills, many as tall as 150 feet, will lower property values, destroy a wildflower area that attracts many sightseers in the spring and will endanger birds that might fly into the whirling turbines.

They also maintain that the project’s overall effect will be of “a forest of steel wind towers” that will be visible not only to homeowners but to motorists on heavily traveled Interstate 5 and California 138.

“They’ll dominate everything there,” said resident Susan Hulsizer, a member of the Save the Mountain Committee, a group formed to stop the project.

But the developer, Tehachapi-based Zond Systems, the state’s largest producer of wind energy, claims the company is just as environmentally conscious as its opponents. Zond President James Dehlsen said the wind farm will reduce pollution in the entire region, while producing a much-needed alternative energy source.

The proposed $100-million wind farm would be the first wind-powered electrical generation system in the county, according to Southern California Edison Co., which has contracted to buy Zond’s electricity. Zond also operates 1,900 turbines on wind farms in Tehachapi, Palm Springs and in the Altamont Pass area near San Francisco.

In 1985, Zond proposed a wind farm near Lancaster, but abandoned it over strong opposition by Antelope Valley residents who feared the turbines would spoil their view, Dehlsen said.

The Gorman proposal is slated for 270 acres of a 3,000-acre ranch leased from the pioneering Ralphs family, which raised cattle there for more than a century. Only a few head of cattle now graze on the ranch, about 25 miles north of the Santa Clarita Valley, east of I-5 and north of California 138.

Winds are so powerful here that Ron Ralphs, the ranch’s owner, recalled in a 1986 interview that glider pilots, including Charles Lindbergh, used to launch their craft from one of the hills on his grandfather’s property.

Zond’s turbines would resemble gigantic airplane propellers. The three giant rotor blades on each turbine would span 82 feet. They would pivot toward the wind while perched atop towers of latticework ranging from 90 to 150 feet high. The windmills would be constructed in rows in a southwest-northeast alignment perpendicular to prevailing winds from the northwest, Dehlsen said.

Zond has been testing the relentless winds in the Gorman area for about five years, Dehlsen said. The company found that winds average 17 m.p.h. year-round, ideal for a wind farm, he said.

The turbines would generate 200 million kilowatt hours of power a year--enough to supply 40,000 homes, Dehlsen said.

“That’s the equivalent of a medium-sized city,” said Paul Gipe of the Kern Wind Energy Assn., an organization of wind energy producers in Kern County.

Although Zond filed an application for the project about three years ago, opposition just surfaced in September when the company held a meeting to inform the community of its plans.

Since then, members of the Save the Mountain Committee have held their own community meetings and obtained more than 1,000 signatures on petitions opposing the project. A gathering held Jan. 14 attracted 170 people, many from the Santa Clarita, San Fernando and Antelope valleys, organizers said.

“They all come up here to see the wildflowers,” Hulsizer said.

She noted that some of the windmills will be almost as tall as 12-story buildings. “Now, that is really high,” Hulsizer said. “I think we have to make a stand now to preserve our open areas. Quite a lot of land already has been disturbed.”

Mary Carlson, committee chairman, said that most people in the area are concerned about the project because of its effect on the wildflowers.

Impact on Nature

“Wildflowers are a regional resource,” she said. “Everybody goes up there in the springtime.”

Many people also are concerned that birds such as the rare California condor and red-tailed hawks will fly into the whirling blades and be killed. Although condors are rare, they are native to the area. The red-tailed hawk and other wild birds are common.

Dehlsen said that although the wind turbines would destroy some plants, they will not be built where wildflowers are the most prolific. The wildflowers would be destroyed because of the huge amount of space that would have to be cleared to build the turbines and the graded access roads needed to maintain them.

The project would not infringe upon a nearby wildflower preserve that would abut the wind farm. The area has been designated a “significant ecological area” by Los Angeles County and as such is protected from development, he said.

Several other areas in the Santa Monica and Santa Susanna mountains also have been designated as being ecologically significant.

Dehlsen said there is no case on record in which a condor has flown into wind turbines. However, critics of the wind farm point out the the state Department of Fish and Game has released a list of other birds that have been killed by the whirling blades.

“Sure, they’re staying out of the protected area,” Carlson said. “But there are wildflowers that grow where the turbines will be. You will be able to see the turbines from I-5 and especially along 138.”

The management of the giant 200,000-acre Tejon Ranch is supporting the citizens committee, charging that a wind farm will lower property values. The ranch, which is nearby and exerts strong influence over the area, has united with the community to protest other projects, including toxic dumps, oil pipelines and state prisons.

“We think it’s bad for the community,” said Tejon Ranch spokeswoman Alleen Zanger of the wind farm. “It will create a forest of wind towers. We feel this would be the beginning of more negative uses of the land. People have gone into this area to get away from things like wind farms.

“Locally, many of the individuals are concerned about the impact on property values, as are we at the ranch” she said.

Tejon Ranch once considered developing wind farms but discarded the idea, Zanger said. “The ranch, after carefully evaluating the idea, decided a wind farm was not a proper use for the ranch or for this entire area.”

Dehlsen continues to maintain that the project will help, not harm, the environment.

“The project not only is environmentally benign but it will help the environment,” he said. “It’s a project that deserves to be done. I had thought it would be a welcome project.”

Dehlsen said that a “really important consequence” of allowing the wind farm to be built would be the reduction in fuel oil burned to generate electricity. It would reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide into the air by 600,000 pounds a year and sulfur dioxide by 300,000 pounds a year, he said.

Over a 30-year period, power generated by the wind farm would save 10 million barrels of oil, he said. The effect, he added, would be cleaner air.

Only 5% of the windmills would be visible from I-5, Dehlsen added. However, opponents claim that motorists also would be able to see the tops of other windmills from the highway.

With the project, Zond is trying to buck a downturn in the development of wind farms. In the early 1980s, thousands of wind turbines sprang up in California when the harnessing of renewable energy from sources such as the sun, wind, water and heat deep in the Earth was encouraged by federal and state tax credits.

The state and federal governments encouraged alternative energy sources as a way to clean up the polluted air.

The tax credits, which were canceled in 1985, allowed investors in wind farm projects to deduct as much as 25% of a project’s cost from their taxes. That enticed many speculators and, because some companies manufacturing wind turbines were new to the field, roughly half of them failed, Gipe said.

1% of Annual Use

Today, wind energy accounts for 1% of the state’s electricity supply of 1.8 billion kilowatt hours a year. That small percentage is enough for 300,000 homes, Gipe said.

Zond signed the contract with Edison before the tax credits were canceled. The company must have the project approved by the county and operating early next year to take advantage of the credits, Dehlsen said.

The county is reviewing an environmental impact report prepared for the project. Once the company makes changes required by the county, the public will have a chance to study the report before public hearings on the project are held, said Frank Kuo, county environmental compliance coordinator. The hearings probably will be scheduled within three to four months, he said.

Zond has offered to set up a foundation that would receive $30 a month per wind turbine if the project is built. The foundation money would be used to finance community needs.

That proposal has been rejected by the committee.

Offer Criticized

“If Zond thinks it can waltz into this community and silence opposition to the wind farm by offering local folks some money, Zond is making a big mistake,” Carlson said.

In addition, Zond has faced financial difficulties in recent years, she said. Court documents filed in 1987 show that Zond has four years to repay creditors about $10 million.

Dehlsen confirmed that the company has financial difficulties to overcome.

“We’re afraid if Zond went bankrupt, the company would not have the funds to remove the windmills,” Hulsizer said.

If the project is allowed to go forward, she said, the county should stipulate in the company’s permit that the turbines be removed should the project fail.