The county permitting process has snared some residents who have tried for months to take advantage of renewable energy options at home. Rob Abrew wants to install a 1.8-megawatt wind turbine that would help increase the irrigation flow to crops
The county permitting process has snared some residents who have tried for months to take advantage of renewable energy options at home.
Rob Abrew wants to install a 1.8-megawatt wind turbine that would help increase the irrigation flow to crops on his Wailua Homesteads property.
Bill Cowern hopes to operate a saw mill with a 125-kilowatt hydro system that would capture energy from water running through Koloa Ditch.
Kaua‘i Island Utility Cooperative has signed off on both plans, but the county Planning Department says these proposed projects and similar inquiries constitute private utilities.
When categorized this way, Senior County Planner Bryan Mamaclay said yesterday, it triggers a requirement for the owners to obtain use permits.
However, the county has not required a use permit for residents using solar energy to power their homes — creating confusion in some community members’ eyes.
The county building division’s solar permit policy, according to County Spokeswoman Mary Daubert, requires building, electrical and plumbing permits.
Paul Lucas, of Kalaheo, said he did not need a use permit for the roof-top photovoltaic panels that power his home.
Steve Rimshaw, KIUC’s staff engineer in charge of renewable energy, is familiar with the county web residents from Kilauea to Kalaheo have said they are stuck in.
“KIUC is investigating this as well to see how we can assist these people in installing these systems,” he said. “We’re coming up with a list of problems people are having.”
Rimshaw said he is considering going through the county permitting process to see first-hand the challenges residents say they are experiencing.
Some community members speculated that the problem could lie in the county’s inexperience in permitting a residential wind energy system, noting that none exist on Kaua‘i.
But the county planner said it’s more about a windmill’s potential impact on neighbors.
“On this island, people are sensitive about visual ambiance,” Mamaclay said. “If it’s in your backyard, it ruffles people’s feathers.”
Neighbors to the proposed projects have voiced concerns about the noise nuisance a wind turbine could create and the obstruction to the view plane, he said.
“I think we’re getting to the stage where we need to be energy efficient, but we need to have good sound judgment in our decisions,” Mamaclay said.
The planner noted that he could foresee windmills going up on agricultural land in remote areas, but the county needs to first test the visual impact.
“The higher you go, the greater the controversy,” Mamaclay said, noting for comparison the unobtrusive nature of solar panels on roofs.
County law allows approved structures up to 50 feet tall in agricultural districts.
The windmill Abrew wants to install is 41 feet high and would be placed 50 feet from his property line.
To obtain a use permit, Mamaclay said, owners have to show the project is compatible and address any harm or impact to adjacent landowners, including noise and visual.
In Abrew’s Sept. 5 application for a Class I zoning permit, he classifies the wind turbine as an accessory structure for the purpose of managing the natural resources on the property — an acceptable use of agricultural land.
The Skystream windmill would help offset the cost of irrigating the land, he said yesterday, adding that the turbine is not a utility.
But a Sept. 27 county memorandum says the planning department staff determined Abrew’s proposed project would require a Class IV use permit.
County planner Ricky Tsuchiya also addresses in the document Abrew’s claim that he should be granted automatic approval for the project because the county zoning ordinance contains a provision for such if the department does not take action within 21 days of a completed application.
Tsuchiya says in the memorandum that on Sept. 26 Abrew was “informed in writing of pending issues relating to owner verification and verbally about issues pertaining to private utility/facility provisions.”
Abrew provided The Garden Island a hand-written planning department note signed by Tsuchiya that indicates incomplete aspects of his application for a zoning permit.
Cowern said he has experienced similar frustrations in trying the past five months to obtain a permit for his hydro project.
“There’s no reasonable process,” he said. “It’s staggering. We’re talking about renewable energy here.”
The state has mandated counties to produce 20 percent of their total energy use from renewable resources by 2020.
Cowern said he has had to needlessly defend why his project should not require an environmental assessment and fend off other county requests while supplying additional information.
“The issue consistently in the background is whether it’s a public utility,” he said. “The law is crystal clear.”
The county defines “public utility” in accordance with the state definition in Hawai‘i Revised Statutes 269-1.
The county does not have a definition of private utility, according to Daubert, who noted that in Hawai‘i utilities are regulated by the state.
Cowern and Abrew said they fall under exemptions in the state’s definition, which they added should in turn exempt them from the county’s use permit requirement for utilities.
State law excludes from its public utility category “any person who controls, operates or manages plants or facilities for the production, transmission or furnishing of power primarily or entirely from non-fossil fuel sources and provides, sells or transmits all of that power, except such power as is used in its own internal operations, directly to a public utility for transmission to the public.”
Rimshaw said KIUC encourages residents to take advantage of its net metering system, which allows residents using solar, wind and hydro power to plug into the local grid.
The net metering system measures imported and exported power. For a wind turbine, for instance, the local electric utility would supply power when the wind fails to blow and let residents sell excess energy back when conditions are ripe.
A state law passed this year could put pressure on the county to expedite the process, according to Cowern.
A bill signed into law in June as Act 205 requires all agencies to “provide priority handling and processing for all county permits required for renewable energy projects.”
The county has received “a few inquiries” about home wind energy systems, Mamaclay said, but no applications are pending action.
He added that the planning department needs to make a decision soon on how it plans to address the emerging residential renewable energy projects.
• Nathan Eagle, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 224) or neagle@kauaipubco.com.
