An ordinance for regulating wind energy conversion systems will be presented at Tuesday evening’s Henderson City-County Planning Commission meeting.
The planning commission meets 6 p.m. Tuesday in the third-floor assembly room of the Municipal Center.
The proposed ordinance, which has been created by the planning commission staff, includes the staff recommendations that have been presented in three previous public hearings that are a part of seven scheduled to ultimately create and recommend a WECS ordinance.
Once the planning commission approves a recommended WECS ordinance, it will be sent to the Henderson Fiscal Court, and that body can give final approval or make changes to the recommendation as it sees fit.
According to planning commission Executive Director Brian Bishop, some of the regulations included in the proposed ordinance are:
- A 200-foot ground to tip of the blade height limit
- Zoned in heavy industrial as a conditional use
- A 35-decibel sound limit measured at nonparticipating residences
- One mile distance from nonparticipating occupied structures and a wind turbine
Bishop said there is additional regulations that cover wildlife hazard mitigation in the proposed ordinance he will present Tuesday night.
He called the proposal, which is 58 pages long, a “robust document.”
He said the ordinance also includes a variance process that allows an applicant, for example, to apply for a height variation. That involves the extra steps of going before the county’s Board of Zoning Adjustments, getting a site plan approval from the planning commission and obtaining approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, Bishop said.
The executive director said that planning commission staff has collected 155 different WECS ordinances from around the country as research to create this proposal. Bishop said the ordinance used as a starting point came from Sweetwater County, Wyoming.
After Tuesday’s presentation of the proposed ordinance, the proposal will be uploaded to the Dropbox account that the planning commission staff has used to store documents that have been entered into the public record. Hard copies will also be kept at the planning commission’s Barret Boulevard office, where residents can pick one up, Bishop said.
He expects that on Tuesday night the planning commission will vote to amend the series of scheduled public hearings and moving the currently scheduled meeting #7, which is titled “Post draft ordinance public engagement and transparency” and set for March 2027. He said that meeting is scheduled as a wrap-up public input meeting, and Bishop said the planning commission may vote to go ahead and move it to 6 p.m. on Sept 16.
That would give the public more than a month to review the proposed ordinance before offering feedback at the Sept. 16 meeting. If that’s the case, there could be a vote on the recommended ordinance at that meeting, Bishop said.
