Joint Statement: Yakama Nation and Cypress Creek Energy Reach Agreement

Yakama Nation and Cypress Creek have reached an amicable resolution of Yakama Nation’s legal challenge to the Carriger Solar Project. Cypress Creek has made significant commitments to meaningfully minimize and mitigate the Project’s negative impacts to Yakama Nation by not only modifying the Project itself, but also addressing cumulative impacts of the Project. These commitments include actions to support preservation of Treaty-reserved Resources on adjacent public lands.

This settlement is a result of respectful and solution-oriented communications that can happen during the permitting process and should be initiated by community-focused project developers. Moving forward, it is important for Washington State agencies, including the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council and Department of Natural Resources, to help facilitate these types of creative and solution-oriented conversations early in the permitting process.

Both parties urge all Washington agencies involved in permitting new energy development in the State to do so in a way that meaningfully addresses the impacts of new development on impacted Tribes and does not perpetuate the State’s history of championing new energy development at the expense of Yakama Nation’s lands, water, wildlife, and sacred places. Future generations depend upon these resources.