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 passe in September 2024 to give the county time to establish standards and an ordinance. The original 6-month moratorium was passed in September 2024 to give the county time to establish standards. It was later combined with a solar ordinance. An advisory committee began meeting in January 2025.
They had not finished by May, the end of the original moratorium, so it was extended another six months to September 2025. The committee finished by July and sent their recommendations to the planning commission and the advisory committee met to give a recommendation to the planning commission. During that time in March, the board met and extended the public hearing. They actually extended six more months so that it could be a full year to September 2025 to give the committee time to work. The committee finished their work and made a recommendation in July 2025. The Planning Commission then took it up and they were not finished by September, so the moratorium was extended again 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 the Prosecuting Attorney to review the draft. Then the prosecuting attorney (PA) resigned, and in that changeover, the office has not had time to do the legal review.
Edelman said he had 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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