Partly cloudy skies during the morning hours will give way to cloudy skies and rain in the afternoon. High 48F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%..
Tonight
Cloudy with occasional light rain. Low 38F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%.
GOLDENDALE — At their March 3 meeting, Klickitat County Commissioners extended a moratorium on battery energy storage systems for another six months and approved hiring a deputy prosecutor to replace Rebecca Cranston.
At that the battery storage moratorium hearing, Planning Director Scott Edelman reviewed the history of the measure. It was originally passed in September 2024 so that the county had enough time to develop standards and an ordinance. After adding a solar ordinance to the list, an advisory committee began meeting in January 2025.
By the first deadline that May, committee work was still ongoing, so commissioners extended the moratorium another six months. Come July, a recommendation was provided to the Klickitat County Planning Commission, but they were not finished by September, so the county authorized another extension to March 2026. In December, the planning commission was comfortable with a draft, but they had concerns about some of the legal aspects and asked for a review by the prosecuting attorney. Then, former PA David Quesnel resigned, and in that changeover, the office has not had time to provide feedback.
Edelman said he had been talking to new PA, Rebecca Cranston, and it looked as if the office would be able to make the review in a month or two.
“I don’t anticipate another extension,” he told commissioners, then backtracked a bit. “I can’t promise that, but I do expect that once we get the legal opinion, we should be able to get it to the board fairly quickly.”
He said it would take only one meeting of the Planning Commission to make any changes coming out of the legal opinion.
In a brief appearance, Cranston received approval to advertise for a deputy prosecutor to fill the position she emptied when she stepped into the PA role. This did not violate the hiring freeze previously reported by Columbia Gorge News, since it didn’t affect the budget.
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More from this meeting: Read “Bad news from Olympia, good news from airport manager at Klickitat County Commissioners meeting” online only at www.columbiagorgenews.com.
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