Published 1:30 am Monday, October 12, 2026
By Darrell Kirk Staff reporter
Darrell Kirk photo
Through the fence—solar panels on Decatur.
An aerial view of Decatur’s solar panels.
Wendy Heister, an OPALCO board member, Bill Hurley, a retired engineer on Decatur Island, and Eva Schulte, executive director of Friends of the San Juans, are in agreement that a successful rollout of solar across the San Juan Islands must include a solar siting group, as well as community and other stakeholder engagement. Hurley believes the County itself should lead the siting group, and Heister describes a team the County is putting together, while Schulte says that Friends of the San Juans has been that group with OPALCO for four years and wants to extend it.
According to a May 2025 working draft prepared by Friends of the San Juans, OPALCO and Friends both submitted docket requests in the spring of 2024 asking the County to consider new land use designations and updated code that addresses commercial renewable energy. The draft also states that such proposed changes would more than double the amount of land available for solar projects. And while OPALCO pushes forward with utility-scale solar to meet requirements to avoid “Tier 2” power generated from coal, which is very expensive, Heister, Hurley and Schulte agree that smaller community solar and microgrid projects should be prioritized to move forward.
Zoning is the roadblock
Heister said the County’s land use tables are blocking sites that could otherwise work. She described two sites where willing landowners can’t build. A University of Washington laboratory on San Juan Island wanted a solar array that would double as a fire break, but the property is designated conservation land. Camp Orkila on Orcas Island has a large field once used for grazing horses that would suit solar, but it is zoned rural farm and forest.
“Working through this issue of the zoning and the land use tables is really the key to being able to move forward,” Heister said.
She said OPALCO members have made clear they don’t want trees cut for solar, and that surveys, including one by the County, show nearly 80% of residents want solar. The siting team’s job, she said, is to find open fields in blocks of property large enough that they are not in anybody’s direct view.
A group already at work
Schulte said Friends has been working with OPALCO as a siting group for four years and has put in “hundreds and hundreds of hours” over the last three. She said the group has a plan that “actually ensures that codes in San Juan County and permits are aligned with the placement of solar arrays.”
She wants to widen the circle. “Friends has been that group with OPALCO for four years now, and we would love to extend that group so we have greater effectiveness in being heard by OPALCO,” Schulte said.
Tina Whitman, Friends’ senior science director, and John Pierre van Dongen, Friends’ board president, sit on the committee along with OPALCO representatives, Schulte said. She sees no reason to wait. “We should build on what we already have done and move from there,” she said.
The County takes the lead
Hurley wrote to the County’s Department of Community Development on Sept. 25, urging it to take charge. “I suggest that the County take the lead and take responsibility in a proactive role,” he wrote. He called the County’s new site selection committee “a positive step” and said he trusts environmental protection will be a strongly weighted criterion in choosing sites.
Heister said the County has a big role to play. “We have to figure out where we are going in the county in order to solve this problem,” she said. “And the county itself needs to play a big part in this whole thing.”
Angela Broderick, climate and sustainability coordinator for San Juan County, said in an email reply to a question on the topic, “Currently there is no task force for solar siting, but we are working towards something along those lines.”
What guides the group
In April 2025, Friends proposed a set of policy preferences for the siting group based on the American Farmland Trust’s Smart Solar principles. The first is siting on the built environment, existing impervious surfaces or already cleared lands. Others include safeguarding agricultural resource land for future farming, using agri-solar on lands suited to agriculture, and inclusive stakeholder and farmer engagement on agri-solar projects.
OPALCO responded to the first preference in an April 30, 2025, letter, saying rooftop and small-scale solar cannot meet the scale of energy needed. Friends replied that the preference is not a required permit condition and is not meant only for rooftops. It calls for commercial-scale projects to use parcels with existing impervious surfaces or cleared land where feasible, instead of removing acres of forest.
As OPALCO plans more utility-scale solar projects across the San Juan Islands, a siting group with county involvement and real community input is a step that Hurley, Heister and Schulte are each calling for.

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