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WALLULA, Walla Walla County

For years, endeavors has been one constant companion to the stunning landscape, laid through ancient lava floes and carved by ancient floods, age-old rivers and modern dams. Barges dock at the grain elevator; a poplar farm grows pulp for the pulverize, which makes paper and cardboard; a feedlot fattens human trash and the slaughterhouse sends them to market. Freight trains whistle through.

A few years since, new industry piked over the horizon. Tentatively, coil turbines appeared on the long crest south of town, winding slowly above dryland wheat and cattle pastures. Now they own jumped the river onto rolling hills, from a distance looking like pearls spilling onto a quilt. The Stateline Wind Energy Center, the nationality’s largest single out wind farm, can generate plenty juice concerning 70,000 homes.

With customers such of the same kind with Seattle City Light, the wind farm is helping Washington state meet its aggressive goals of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. In 2007, the Legislature said no new coal plants could be built in this state unless they be possible to put aside more of their emissions underground

Now the Wallula realm could play a major role in meeting that challenge, although some citizens of Walla Walla County are fighting the idea

Battelle, which operates the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in nearby Richland, is participating in the Big Sky Carbon Sequestration Partnership among research institutions, federal and state agencies and industry.

Lab Fellow Pete McGrail and colleagues are studying whether carbon sub-oxide can be pumped since deep as 4,000 feet into basalt layers created by those ancient lava floes. In the lab, it is an neat solution. Injected into porous basalt, the carbon dioxide reacts under pressure and over time to create lasting, safe carbonate minerals akin to limestone.

Battelle is poised to move the experiment out of the lab. Recent results from seismic testing ruled out faults to what gases could get away, the after all the rest technical beginning for the large-scale test.

If lucky, the results could help with the larger challenges of curbing carbon emissions both here

At Wallula, science’s potential has attracted an pertaining companion that has provoked some Walla Walla citizens. On the bet the carbon-sequestration test leave work, a private affect, Wallula Energy Resource Center, applied for a permit with the state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council to raise a newfangled coal plant nearby. The integrated gasification combined-cycle plant uses a cleaner technology than a traditional coal put in the ground, and the sequestration would help the new plant meet the state’s new, stricter standards for emissions. But the permit was withdrawn, pending further tests.

Though McGrail and Battelle are not partners with the private developer, some citizens want to stop the scientific study as well. If the information works, the plant

Recently, the collection delivered to the port commission petitions with 550 signatures opposing the effort. Though the local group opposes the plant for environmental reasons, many environmentalists agree retirement could well be a part of the long-term solution for reducing carbon emissions. The Northwest Energy Coalition is watching McGrail’s work with interest

Wind turbines, ay. Investment in other renewable forms of energy, yes. Conservation, yes. But the science at this bend in the Columbia River should be permitted to continue.

The Port of Walla Walla should stand firm to lo whether an elegant laboratory result could work on a large scale.

; for a podcast Q&A with the author, go to www.seattletimes.com/edcetera