Trump Admin Rescinds Biden Approval for Idaho Wind Farm Project
Secretary Doug Burgum on Lava Ridge Wind Project: “This decisive action defends the American taxpayer, safeguards our land, and averts what would have been one of the largest, most irresponsible wind projects in the nation.”
Immediately upon taking office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that halts all new and renewed approvals, permits, leases, and loans for both onshore and offshore wind projects.
At that time, the move halted continuation of the Lava Ridge Wind Energy Project, which would have turned a stretch of southern Idaho into a sea of ugly wind turbines. This move has brought joy to the people of the state. Local communities completely opposed the project, and the Biden green grift team doubled down on the development.
Now the Department of the Interior has completely rescinded that approval.
The Trump administration on Wednesday canceled a major wind farm development in Idaho, a project approved late in former President Joe Biden’s term that had drawn criticism for its proximity to a historic site where Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II.
The Bureau of Land Management in December signed off on a scaled-down plan for the Lava Ridge Wind Project northeast of Twin Falls, with 241 wind turbines instead of 400. But the development had been on hold since the first day of President Donald Trump’s second term, when he issued an executive order halting the permitting of wind power projects across the country and telling the Interior Department to review the Lava Ridge decision.
“By reversing the Biden administration’s thoughtless approval of the Lava Ridge Wind Project, we are protecting tens of thousands of acres from harmful wind policy while shielding the interests of rural Idaho communities,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement. “This decisive action defends the American taxpayer, safeguards our land, and averts what would have been one of the largest, most irresponsible wind projects in the nation.”
It must be remembered that Biden’s officials completely ignored the outrage from Americans in the surrounding communities as they proceeded to plan the large wind farm.
The project, five years in the works, faced opposition from local residents concerned about the height of the turbines — up to 660 feet (201 meters), or more than twice the height of the Statue of Liberty. It also drew concerns it would spoil views from the Minidoka National Historic Site, where thousands of Japanese Americans were imprisoned during World War II.
Under the plan, the closest turbine to the historic site would have been 9 miles (14 kilometers) away.
Robyn Achilles, executive director of the nonprofit Friends of Minidoka, said in a text message her organization was reviewing the announcement.
“We must protect Minidoka from future development, so we continue to seek long term protections for the BLM land in Minidoka’s cultural viewshed,” Achilles wrote.
Hopefully, approvals will soon be pulled for Wyoming’s Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind Project, before more eagles and other wildlife populations are harmed irrevocably.
Biologists like Mike Lockhart, who worked for the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) for more than 30 years, claim that these large wind farms are more than just an eyesore and will negatively affect wildlife in Wyoming. Raptors, eagles, passerines, bats and various migrating birds frequently collide with the blades, which typically span 165 feet.
“Most of the [Wyoming wind energy] development is just going off like a rocket right now, and we already have eagles that are getting killed by wind turbines — a hell of a lot more than people really understand,” warns Lockhart, a highly respected expert on golden eagles.
…Places with consistent winds, as Lockhart explains, also happen to be prime wildlife habitats and most of the big wind farms in Wyoming are being built before we know enough about what their impact could be on bird populations.
In February 2024, FWS updated its permitting process under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, hoping it would help offset some of wind energy’s effects on eagles. The new rules, however, will still allow eagles to die. The new permits for wind turbines won’t even specify the number of eagles allowed to be killed and companies won’t, in fact, be out of compliance even if their wind turbines are responsible for injuring or killing significant numbers of them.
I suspect locals in Wyoming were also ignored.
Meanwhile, the good people of Idaho can celebrate a win.
I have yet to talk to one Magic Valley resident who supported the out-of-touch Lava Ridge Wind Project.
The people of the Magic Valley are grateful for President Trump's executive order to kill this project. My FY26 @HouseAppropsGOP language puts the nail in the coffin. pic.twitter.com/2IGdLMHs9e
— Congressman Mike Simpson (@CongMikeSimpson) August 6, 2025
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good
any private business that believes they can harness wind solar cow farts or whatever and make it into a productive tool …do it
then sell it to us at the price you think you can get ,,the whole while in competition with other sources of fuel and unencumbered by political winds
Yay. Put the money into fossil fuel electric power generation. Much better investment. Also, this will help the environment by reducing the bird kill.
I was at Edwards AFB last week. I hadn’t been in that part of California in years, so I had never seen the Alta Wind Energy Center before. Holy Moly, it’s bad. It has absolutely destroyed once pristine vistas (yes, the desert can be beautiful, IMO). I’m not sure how many are there. But, it looks like a thousand or more. What’s going to happen to these things once they reach the end of their life expectancy? Who’s going to pay to remove them? Anyone?
To answer your penultimate question: the taxpayers of course. I am cynical enough to believe that the owners of those wind towers have got things buried in such a deep paper trail that nobody will be able to find who ultimately owned them. That, and by the time those systems were out those shell corporations will magically have disappeared.
I believe you answered his ultimate question.
An easy way to find out who owns them will be to start removing them and see who squeals.
.
Probably not the owners. They will use the front groups they own. Ones like the Sierra Club and whatever new, trendy stop-oil types there are.
In most states, if you want to open a gas station, the state will require a demonstration of financial responsibility for the removal of the underground storage tanks at the end of their projected useful life. That is usually accomplished with some kind of surety bond submission per the permitting process. If you read the many articles that have been written about problematic wind farm ‘decomissioning’ in the US, it doesn’t seem like a similar demonstration of financial responsiblity is being placed on the wind farm operators. To make matters worse, carbon fiber and fiberglass (the primary material for the blades and pedastals) are effectively impossible to recycle (it’s technologically difficult and prohibitvely expensive). This all means the farms will be eyesores for centuries (or longer) unless Uncle Sugar picks up the tab, as Gentle Grizzly says above.
Same thing with off shore wind farms…X 10.
Who’s going to remove them AND their bases when their 20 year life expectancy is over?
Ans: No one.
Let’s not forget that the bases of these things used tremendous amounts of cement and steel buried in the ground. Cement is one of the largest contributors of greenhouse gasses. Maybe those should also be dug up and recycled at their end of life, but we know that won’t happen. I am not opposed to alternative energy sources, even wind, but I don’t like the wind farms. So much of our energy use could be part of the construction of new building, whether solar and even wind. New windmills have been developed without blades, and could be built o the a small scale that could be part of a buildings construction, but that wouldn’t benefit energy companies.
Because, of course, wind energy is magical, so things like material lifecycles don’t apply. They will magically go up and live forever, providing utopia.
Just a thought experiment… I wonder if the fiberglas and carbon fiber stuff could be shredded and blended into some sort of mix to pave roads? A variation what is done with old tires.
The desolation of the desert speaks to my soul.
“It’s a sad comment that so many people in modern America can’t imagine a place like this, where you can gaze into infinity without fences, power poles, or houses to mar the view. Sadder still, few have any idea why it even matters.”
-Bill Graves, Trailer Life;
author of “On The Back Roads: Discovering Small Towns Of America”
I tried to fight a local windmill farm, but they confiscated my lance, euthanized my beloved Rocinante, sentenced me to twenty years in quad, and set my sidekick, Sancho, up in a five-star welfare motel with an EBT card.
At least you can’t be criticized for employee abuse.
Not mentioned anywhere above: Wind farms kill an estimated 400,000 birds each year.
Worse, for larger birds that are often endangered species, these wind farms have obliterated entire populations of multiple species in entire regions of the US – driving some of them to the brink of extinction.
If D’s cared at all about saving endangered species, they would be tearing these windmills down.
Legally, our environmental laws can be used to prevent all new construction – and sanction the companies that own existing windmills for the deaths of each and every bird killed that is an endangered species.
Oil companies have been prosecuted for this, but wind farm companies have gotten a free pass – despite vastly larger numbers of bird kills. The numbers are insanely lopsided: 28 dead birds and you get prosecuted and face six months in prison and a $15,000 fine per dead bird vs wind farms that, collectively, kill >400,000 birds with not a single prosecution filed anywhere.
Somewhere, those who paid off Congressmen and Biden admin officials are lamenting this reversal. Makes me smile.
Well done! Wind turbines are environmentally unsound, whether they are upright or laying on the ground. They were not thoroughly vetted before put into use and now we and the environment pay the price.
Speaking of “laying on the ground”, go to some wind farm that is more than about five years old. Look not at the windmills but at the surrounding grounds. Cast-off prop blades, broken machinery, the burnt remains of generators or their reduction gears scattered about like what it is: trash.
And, the tangential problem is that Trump can stop it. Then a Dem can re-approve. Then a Republican can stop it again. Inverse of the Keystone Pipeline. The law needs to be changed so that these sorts of approvals aren’t jerking the chain of the producers.
Now, I don’t think these things should be approved and sucking up money we don’t have. But the issue there is the subsidy. If we stop subsidizing boondoggles and we streamline and make near permanent the approval process, things would improve measurably.
BINGO !
agree
It’s the same thing I’ve been. saying for years regarding electric cars and hybrids. Take away the incentives and subsidies and see how they stand in the free market.
How many Priuses would Toyota have sold had there been no tax credits and no carpool-lane exemptions? I doubt more than a handful.
Full disclosure: my present car is a Honday CR-V hybrid. Why? Because, having owned several hybrids, I just like how they drive. Yes, I was in energy conservation and management before I retired but am not a self-righteous asshole about it.
Ditto for my Rav hybrid.
Of course, Tennessee charges me an annual surcharge to compensate for the reduced gas tax revenue, but as Heinlein popularized, TANSTAAFL: “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”