Moratoriums, and the Limits on Public Land

Writing the code in lessons 2 through 7 takes months. Applications do not wait. A county with no energy standards that receives a 300 MW application next week will review it under whatever its code says today, which is often nothing useful. Idaho lets boards pause. This lesson covers both, then turns to the land where county power is weakest.

Two kinds of moratorium

	Emergency (Idaho Code 67-6523)	Interim (Idaho Code 67-6524)
When available	Board finds an "imminent peril to the public health, safety, or welfare"	A plan, plan component or plan amendment is being prepared
Finding required	Written statement of reasons	Written finding that an imminent peril to public health, safety or welfare requires the moratorium
Procedure	Board may act without a commission recommendation, with whatever abbreviated notice it finds practical	Notice and hearing under 67-6509 (15-day published notice, hearing)
Maximum length	182 days	One calendar year, stated in the ordinance
Repeat limits	No consecutive periods; at least one year before the same restrictions return	Must adopt a regular ordinance to continue
Best use	An application is imminent and the code has nothing	The county is actively amending its plan's energy policy

The emergency route is fast but short and cannot be renewed back to back. To keep restrictions past 182 days, the board must adopt an interim or regular ordinance using 67-6509 procedures. The interim route takes a hearing to adopt but buys up to a year, and its legal hook is the plan amendment. That is one more reason to start with the plan.

The same two statutes are what an Idaho county would reach for to pause a data center application. Elsewhere the pause has gone statewide: Maine's Legislature passed LD 307, a moratorium on data centers over 20 MW through November 2027, and Gov. Janet Mills vetoed it on April 24, 2026 over a missing exemption for one local project. The data center planning lesson The Checklist, and the Case For and Against Hosting covers that fight and the federal moratorium bill.

The findings carry the weight. The Attorney General's takings guidelines, discussed in the appeals and takings lesson, warn that moratoriums need written findings to hold up. Write specific ones: the application or inquiry, the gap in the code, the resources at risk, the timeline to fix it. And keep the pause limited to the uses that need it. A moratorium on all building permits is far easier to attack than one on commercial energy facilities over a stated size.

Federal land: influence, not control

A county cannot zone BLM land. What it gets is written into the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. Under 43 U.S.C. 1712(c)(9), the Secretary must coordinate BLM's land use inventory, planning and management with local governments, stay informed of local plans, give consideration to them, help resolve inconsistencies, let local officials advise on plans and decisions, and keep BLM plans consistent with state and local plans to the maximum extent the Secretary finds consistent with federal law and the act's purposes.

The Supreme Court drew a related line in California Coastal Commission v. Granite Rock Co. (1987). The Court said land use planning "chooses particular uses for the land," while environmental regulation sets limits on damage without dictating uses, and it held that a state's environmental permit requirement on a federal mining claim was not preempted on its face. Applied here: a county cannot tell BLM that a wind farm is a forbidden use of federal land, but county rules that are true environmental or safety standards may sometimes reach a federal project. That line is contested and fact-specific.

Lava Ridge shows both the reach and the limits. BLM approved a scaled-down layout in December 2024, cut from a proposal of up to 400 turbines to roughly 240 (BLM's approval said up to 241; Interior's 2025 cancellation notice says up to 231), with turbines capped at 660 feet. County commissions in the area had passed resolutions opposing it in 2022, before the draft environmental review. Federal approval came anyway. The project was halted on the first day of the new administration in January 2025, and the Interior Department announced it was canceling the approval on August 6, 2025, citing legal deficiencies. The Legislature's HCR 32 later recited its earlier opposition to Lava Ridge. Counties shaped the record and the politics. They did not decide.

The stakes are wider than one project. BLM's Western Solar Plan, reported as finalized in January 2025, added Idaho and four other states and identified more than 31 million acres of public land across 11 western states as available for utility-scale solar applications, according to Western Ag Network's January 2025 report. Whether the current administration keeps, revises or withdraws that plan is worth checking before you cite it.

What a county can do on federal land, then: put clear, mapped energy policy for adjacent and federal areas in its comprehensive plan so BLM has a local plan to be consistent with; request cooperating agency status in environmental reviews; comment on every scoping notice and draft; and regulate the private parcels a federal project needs, such as substations, laydown yards and access roads.

State endowment land: county rules apply

Endowment land is different. The Idaho Constitution, Article IX, Section 8, directs that these lands be managed to "secure the maximum long term financial return" to their beneficiaries. That creates a strong pull toward energy leases. In October 2024, the Land Board voted 3 to 1 to lease 11,160 acres near Arco for wind and solar, a 49-year, six-month lease that staff expected to pay $1.5 million to $2 million a year at full production, roughly $200 to $300 an acre against about 59 cents an acre from grazing.

But Idaho Code 67-6528 says state agencies "shall comply with all plans and ordinances" adopted under LLUPA unless another law provides otherwise. The Arco project went through county review: Bingham County issued a conditional use permit for the wind portion. So a county's energy chapter applies to endowment land within its unincorporated area. Draft with that in mind, and send the Department of Lands notice of every hearing.

Transmission

Idaho Code 67-6508(p) asks counties, after notice from the PUC, to analyze existing and possible routes of high-voltage lines of 115 kV or more on structures 40 feet or taller, including federally designated corridors. Section 67-6528 voids a local action that conflicts with a PUC order directing a utility, where the local government had a chance to be heard by the PUC first. The practical rule: get into the PUC case early when a utility line is proposed, and put corridor preferences (follow existing lines, avoid irrigated ground and towns) in the plan before a route is drawn.

The federal steps, in order. A right-of-way application on BLM land is filed on Standard Form 299 (43 CFR 2804.12). The project has to conform to the approved resource management plan (43 CFR 1610.5-3). NEPA has no acreage trigger: an EIS is required when an action has a "reasonably foreseeable significant effect" (42 U.S.C. 4336); otherwise BLM can use an environmental assessment. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act protects 1,093 species on the 2020 list. Pierson's Imagine a Tarp Over the Desert walks one square mile of structure through these steps.