BENTON COUNTY — For four generations, the Robert family ranch has been in the business of raising cattle or sheep.
The family’s livestock grazes on the hillside during summer, before settling on the flats of the valley in the winter.
Decades ago, water in the area was so plentiful for growing hay and wheat that it would bubble up or even shoot into the sky from wells. But over the decades, the water line has fallen by hundreds of feet in this Central Washington landscape.
Growing enough hay has been a challenge.
Now a new crop will take center stage at the Roberts’ ranch: the sunlight itself.
The Robert family and a neighboring private landowner have agreed to lease nearly 6,000 acres of land to Innergex, a renewable-energy company that plans to install a sea of glittering solar panels with 400 megawatts of capacity, enough to power 70,000 homes. It would be one of Washington’s largest solar farms.
As the state rushes to clean up the grid and phase out fossil fuel electricity generation, the Robert family represents one way farmers and ranchers can find new paths forward on their land strained by drought or economic forces.
Not only does this project provide a financial boon to the ranchers but also much-needed renewable energy to an ever-hungry electrical grid.
To replace electricity generated by coal and methane gas, the state will need 22 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2035, according to estimates from nonprofit Clean Energy Transition Institute. The Wautoma project would represent just a drop in the bucket — less than 2% of that total. But as more companies seek to develop solar across Washington, the Robert family shows one way for projects to find footing.
Brothers David and Robin Robert are private about their finances and declined to say how much the lease to Innergex is worth. But they say it will make “over twice” the amount of money than in their best years of farming. (Innergex also declined to say how much it was spending on the lease or the potential revenue of the project.)
The project also illustrates ongoing opposition from rural counties about where to site these renewable energy projects, and the long timelines even relatively uncontroversial projects can take to get toward a finish line.
The Robert brothers say they don’t understand how the solar farm on their land would hurt anyone. Their ranch is isolated, located next to the Hanford nuclear reservation, 30 miles from Kennewick and 20 miles north of the irrigation districts and belt of green circles in Sunnyside where farmers plant thirstier crops like cherries, grapes and apples.
“This solar, it’s going to be a saving grace for us and I think for a lot of farmers, they feel that way,” David Robert said.
Water troubles
It was the golden age of sheep when his grandfather, Emile Robert, first came to Washington in the 1910s, said Robin Robert.
Emile Robert joined the hundreds of other white settlers who raised their hands when the government started giving out plots of land to homesteaders. Wool, which kept soldiers warm and was spun into suits, was in fierce demand.
Emile, who had emigrated from France, lambed sheep in February on the ridge and herded them all the way to Leavenworth in the summer. At the ranch, water flowed from five springs, Robin Robert said.
As neighboring families left, Emile Robert bought their land, eventually expanding the ranch to the whole valley. Wells were drilled to grow wheat to sell and hay to feed the livestock. The family also raised cattle.
Visiting another farm around 6 miles north, Robin Robert remembers his father unscrewing a valve in the late 1950s and the water shooting 20 feet into the sky. Today, water in the region is no longer as plentiful.
In the past 50 years, the Roberts’ water level has fallen from 100 feet to 400 feet, and the pressure has been more than halved. Last year, a portion of well had to be replaced after its pipe kept sucking up air, said David Robert.
According to a Department of Ecology report, groundwater levels are declining across Central Washington. The Yakima River Basin, where the ranch is located, has also experienced 14 major droughts since 1941, half of which have occurred since 2000.
“We used to produce dairy-quality hay, which you could get the best price for,” Robin Robert said. “Can’t do that anymore, because we can’t get the water on it.”
As a result, the ranchers have had to cut down how much alfalfa they grow; the protein-rich crop commands a high price but requires seven months of irrigation, Robin Robert said.
These headwinds, along with the rising cost of fuel and equipment and the flat prices of wheat, have made farming tougher. The five brothers are all entering their 60s or 70s, and the hard work and lack of benefits of running a cattle ranch haven’t been attractive to any of their children or nieces and nephews, David Robert said.
So when Innergex came knocking about five years ago, the deal seemed like a no-brainer.
“This solar would be steady income, and we can keep the ranch in the family,” David Robert said.
David and Robin Robert said they don’t intend to sell the land and want to use the money to upgrade their equipment and raise cattle.
After the solar farm lease is up in 25 years, the family hopes the aquifer will have recharged.
Benton County protests
Benton County has opposed Innergex’s plans for the Robert ranch.
In 2021, county commissioners instituted a ban on solar and wind projects on agricultural land, which makes up about 60%, or around 650,000 acres, of the county.
Benton County Commissioner Jerome Delvin voted in favor of the ordinance and expressed concern that Central Washington would become “the dumping ground for Western Washington.” He viewed the ordinance as a “moratorium” that could be changed in the future.
During hearings, director of community development Greg Wendt mentioned that the county had an obligation to protect agricultural land, “conserve critical areas, protect visual resources and protect rural character.”
Members of the Robert family testified against the ordinance, arguing that the agricultural value of their land was decreasing because of declining water access, and asked the county to consider projects on a case-by-case basis instead. David Robert invited the commissioners to come see how remote the ranch is. Energy companies including Innergex argued they would be creating millions in tax revenue for the county.
Overshadowing this debate was a pitch for an even larger wind and solar farm near the Tri-Cities. A few months earlier, an energy developer had proposed the Horse Heaven wind farm, including 222 wind turbines across 24 miles and three solar arrays covering up to 5,447 acres.
The project has drawn opposition, including pushback from a group of local retirees who have argued the new turbines would sit too close to the community, scarring their scenic views and lowering property values. Concerns that the turbines would disrupt the nests of an endangered hawk became a major sticking point.
While Horse Heaven has resulted in a tortured back and forth between then-Gov. Jay Inslee and the state’s energy siting council, solar on the Roberts ranch sailed through. The state’s energy siting council voted last year to recommend “preemption,” or overriding the county’s ordinance for the solar project, which Inslee approved in January. Benton County unsuccessfully appealed the decision.
Two more solar projects in Benton County are also still seeking approval from the state’s council.
Wendt said in an interview that cumulative loss of agricultural land due to these installations “raises a lot of eyebrows” in relation to the Growth Management Act and county regulations. Wendt said he doesn’t appreciate the state overriding the work local planners have done.
“It’s a very frustrating process for a lot of local people at the local level in dealing with the agency and the decisions they’ve made,” he said.
Washington’s renewable future
The state’s 2019 Clean Energy Transformation Act requires utilities to phase out coal by the end of this year and only use renewable sources for electricity generation by 2045.
And demand for power is only expected to increase. According to a recent forecast, the Northwest will need 4,000 megawatts of additional generation — about 20% of the region’s current output — just to keep pace with demand over the next five years
The Wautoma solar project shows just how long building out renewable projects can take. Introduced in 2021, the project isn’t at the finish line yet. The company is waiting for approval to connect to the nearby federal transmission line. If that works out, construction could begin in 2028 or 2029, according to Innergex.
Benton County isn’t unique in its codified opposition to solar and wind. Yakima, Skagit and Klickitat counties all have ordinances limiting wind and solar, and local and state level restrictions exist all across the United States, according to Matthew Eisenson, a senior fellow with Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.
Part of the opposition has been raised due to the dramatic increase in solar as its manufacturing costs have fallen, he said. There is debate around how much solar is needed to achieve net-zero emissions in the United States, but even by the conservative estimates, the current rate must increase, according to Eisenson.
Part of the solution between developers and localities, he said, must be through what are known as “community benefits agreements,” when energy developers offer tangible benefits, like wildfire prevention or road repairs, to mitigate concerns from the community.
Gazing out from their family’s homestead, David and Robin Robert envision the future of the ranch, one that harks back to their parents’ and grandparents’ past. The Roberts say they are interested in bringing sheep back to the ranch to graze under the panels, which would keep the grasses low and help to stave off the threat of wildfire. The last of the sheep herd was sold nearly four decades ago.
If the solar money comes in, the brothers say it will be easier to attract their children and grandchildren to keep the day-to-day of the farm running “in a management role.” The next generation could be “weekend farmers,” people who hold full-time jobs elsewhere but devote some time toward farming for additional income, they said.
If the Innergex plan were to fall through, that would be another story.
“We’re going to have to look at leasing the land. I don’t know what we’re going to do,” said David Robert. “That’s something we’re going to have to sit down and start talking about.”
