This bill amends existing law (RCW 80.50.090 and RCW 80.50.110) to change procedures for Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (council) reviews and related SEPA and hearing processes. It requires the council to hold an informational public hearing in the county of a proposed site as soon as practicable and no later than 60 days after receiving an application, with the hearing location as close as practical to the site, and to hold a later public hearing on whether the proposal is consistent with local or regional land use plans or zoning in effect on the application date. Before issuing a SEPA threshold determination of significance the director must notify the applicant of the basis for the anticipated determination and offer the applicant the option to withdraw and revise the application and environmental checklist; the director must base the threshold determination on any revised proposal and provide an opportunity for public comment on projects that are withdrawn, revised, and later receive a DNS or MDNS. The director’s pre-determination notice is not an official determination and cannot be appealed under chapter 43.21C RCW. The bill also requires that, before the council issues its recommendation to the governor, a public hearing be held as an adjudicative proceeding under the Administrative Procedure Act (chapter 34.05 RCW). At that hearing persons may be heard on specific issues only if those issues were raised in writing with specificity during the application review or prior public comment period. If environmental impacts are not significant or can be mitigated to nonsignificance, the council may limit the adjudicative hearing to whether inconsistent land use plans or zoning should be preempted, but a land use plan or zoning ordinance that forbids siting an electricity storage facility in a “critical area” (as defined in RCW 36.70A.030) may not be preempted. After expedited processing under RCW 80.50.075, the council must hold a public meeting to take comments before making its recommendation. RCW 80.50.110 is amended to clarify that the state preempts regulation and certification of the listed energy facilities except as provided in RCW 80.50.090. This is a procedural and preemption-limiting change to existing statutes; it does not create new crimes or change criminal penalties in the provided text. The affected entities include the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, the director referenced in the statute, project applicants, the governor, and local governments and the public. The extracted text does not identify which office the “director” represents, does not define “electricity storage facility,” and does not include the full text of the other cited RCW sections referenced for details, so those specific definitions and related procedural details are unclear from the provided information.

If enacted, the bill would force the state energy siting council to bring hearings quickly to the county near any proposed electricity storage site (within 60 days) and to give applicants a written warning before issuing a SEPA significance finding so they can withdraw and revise their application; the council must also hold a formal adjudicative hearing before recommending approval to the governor, but that hearing will generally only consider issues that were raised in writing earlier. In practice this means project applicants will face more front-loaded, local public scrutiny and a formal chance to fix applications before a significance finding is made, which could reduce later SEPA disputes but will likely increase applicants’ time and costs to respond to early comments and to attend additional hearings. Local governments and nearby residents are also affected: they must raise concerns in writing during the review period if they want those specific issues considered at the adjudicative hearing, which shifts the burden to earlier participation, but local rules that ban siting in designated critical areas cannot be overridden by the state. The bill does not specify funding changes, does not define who the “director” or “electricity storage facility” refers to in this text, and relies on other RCW sections for details, so some implementation details and operational costs remain unclear.