Today's Lansing State Journal has an update on the wind turbine issue in Clinton County:
Clinton County wind turbine project awaits decision
ST. JOHNS — In a few days, another year will end without approval or rejection of a Chicago company’s proposal to erect 40 towering, utility-grade turbines to convert the winds of Clinton County to power for households, farms, industry and business.
And while 2013 is likely to see a decision on the $123 million project that dates to 2008, approval by the Planning Commission and Board of Commissioners still would not initiate construction.
Years of litigation might be a more accurate forecast.
“We’ve put forward a project that meets the requirements of the (county’s) zoning ordinance,” Tim Brown, managing member of Forest Hill Energy-Fowler Farms LLC, said in a telephone interview from his Chicago office. “We hope the county’s ready to make a decision. It’s been quite some time.”
Planning Commission action was expected Dec. 13. Brown and about 150 other people, mostly landowners opposed to the project, gathered at the Clinton County Courthouse to hear whether Forest Hill’s application for a special-land-use permit would be endorsed or denied.
They departed quickly after only three of seven planning commission members showed up and the meeting was canceled.
The next meeting is scheduled for Jan. 10.
If approved, the permit request would advance to the Board of Commissioners, probably in February.
Brown said he does not have a problem with the county’s “very deliberate” review process.
Ordinances passed by the Dallas, Essex and Bengal township boards requiring towers to be shorter than the 427-foot-tall structures planned by Forest Hill and allowed by county zoning are of greater concern.
The township ordinances limit the height to 400 feet in Bengal, and 380 feet in Dallas and Essex. The townships also have stricter rules for noise and require greater setbacks than the county.
To read the rest of the article go here:
Clinton County wind turbine project awaits decision
They also published an article on the issue yesterday:
Turbine opponents criticize federal subsidies for wind energy
"ST. JOHNS — Ken Wieber, 49, grew up on the mixed-use dairy and cash-crop farm he operates on 540 acres in Clinton County, a few miles north and west of Forest Hill Energy-Fowler Farms proposed wind-turbine project.
An active leader of the opposition, Wieber said he focused on the health, safety and property rights of residents living near the proposed project after the county “failed miserably” to do so in the recent revision of its zoning ordinance.
Wieber said the project’s opponents compromised on the zoning ordinance because “we realize we can’t stop these things (wind-turbine developments).”
“We understood early on that if we propose something that is entirely restrictive and unrealistic then we’re not going to get anywhere,” he said. “We have to allow wiggle room. We have to have a compromise in there somewhere.”
One of the biggest compromises, he said, was a zoning provision that allows neighboring landowners to waive the setback requirements that otherwise would prohibit erection of a tower on land leased to Forest Hill Energy.
If Forest Hill then had “to go out and get more waivers from the neighboring people and if that costs them more money, so be it,” Wieber said.
Apart from noise, tower heights and setbacks from property lines, Wieber questions the fundamental economics of industrial-grade wind-turbine farms.
“They always talk about this as ‘harvesting the wind’ or one more crop that they can harvest. The only thing being harvested here is the federal incentives. That’s what’s being harvested and that’s being done by Forest Hill Energy,” he said.
“Do we really want as a county or state or nation to base our future economy on an industry that provides an expensive, intermittent and inefficient product and is entirely depending on government subsidies for its existence?”
In floor remarks delivered to his U.S. Senate colleagues on Dec. 14, Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, echoed Wieber by criticizing the federal government and “the brazenness of those who have been receiving this giveaway money.”
To read the rest of the article go here:
Turbine opponents criticize federal subsidies for wind energy
