After five-hour public hearing Round 2 of wind farm conditional use meeting set for Thursday
Note: The Abilene Reflector-Chronicle has no bias one way or the other regarding a proposed wind farm in Dickinson County. Any advertisements or other materials do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the newspaper or its employees.
As farmers in the southeast part of Dickinson County harvest their soybeans and get the wheat planted, they can only wonder what those fields will look like two years from now.
Some farmers hope they'll be harvesting around wind turbines that could ensure the financial security of their family farms. All the while some of their neighbors fear the turbines proposed for the Hope Ridge Wind Farm will affect their quality of life.
Those for and against the wind energy project spoke out during a public hearing Oct. 10 in Herington.
After five hours of hearing from the public, the Dickinson County Planning and Zoning Commission extended the hearing to 4 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 17.
The public hearing is part of the process required by law following the submission of the conditional use permit application by Enel Green Power, for the construction of a 54,000-acre wind farm. Enel has hundreds of leases signed by landowners who own about 10 percent of the county's acreage.
Commission members and the public also heard from Jon Beck, development manager for Enel, who addressed some of the concerns he was hearing from the public.
One of the concerns people brought up was about property being taken under eminent domain for transmission towers, he said.
"That is not an option for generators, developers like myself, to get projects online," he said.
Additionally, the transmission lines the project needs are already in place.
Beck said some people questioned the relationship between the Hope Ridge project and the Grain Belt Express, which is a transmission line that will connect Southwest Kansas with the power grid.
The line runs from Ford County, northeast to Washington County and along the Kansas Nebraska border, through Missouri and Illinois, coming to an end in Sullivan County, Indiana.
The Hope Ridge project has nothing to do with the Grain Belt Express and are not related in any way.
Another concern he addressed was what happens to the turbines if the project comes to an end.
"We have money, in the form of bonding, for decommissioning, road maintenance — those protections are there for the county," he said. "We're reassessed every five years to the decommissioning portion just to make sure that the money is there to cover anything. I want to assure people that there's money there for that kind of stuff and it won't just be left standing and rotting and nothing's going to be don't about it."
With another public hearing coming up, Beck said he wants to try and answer the questions and concerns people have about the project.
After that it is up to the planning commission to determine if the proposal meets the county regulations for a wind project.
"We've presented that information to them, and I just want to discuss any questions that they would have based on that," he said.
"They did have some great questions last week on a lot of land use questions and on the process for either construction or commissioning. I want to thank the commission for sticking this thing out. These things are never fun and they have a tough job to do, so I really appreciate them following the process and giving everyone an opportunity to speak and voice their opinions on this.
