Niagara residents concerned with a proposed wind farm have compiled a petition that asks local government officials to halt any permitting processes for Cordelio Power.
They are worried that wind turbines would scar the land where they grew up and lived most of their lives and detract from their heritage.
“There’s heritage here,” said Lisa Meyer, who is the main organizer of the group.
“There’s history here,” said Sherri Alderson, a resident who has lived in Niagara all her life.
Meyer has also handed out about 300 yard signs opposing the wind farm and said it’s not just Niagara residents who are taking them. People from Hebbardsville, Zion and Baskett are also concerned about the effects of a wind farm, she said.
In a Monday morning interview with the Hendersonian, Meyer, Alderson and Lisa Lovell laid out their concerns.
They say they are worried about several potential negative aspects of a wind turbine project, among them environmental impacts, property values, health effects, fires and appearance.
Alderson and Lovell said the amount of oil needed to keep the giant gears lubed could leak into the land and watershed.
Lovell said she believes that wind turbines plus the transmission lines needed to move the electricity will lead to lower property values.
“My property value will plummet,” said Lovell about the land she bought 18 years ago.
Meyer and Lovell said they were concerned about health effects tied to the rotation of the turbine’s blades.
They also say there is a worry about fires that could break out on one of the 700-foot-tall machines. Meyer said no local fire department is equipped to deal with that.
Beyond all those reasons, there’s probably the most concerning—appearance.
“They’re just massive,” Meyer said.
The petition to the Henderson County Fiscal Court and the Henderson-Henderson County Planning Commission asks the local governments to halt any approvals, permits or zoning changes associated with wind turbine or solar farm projects of Cordelio Power, Rock Bluff Energy, Tenaska or “other entities leading land for industrial renewable energy development.”
It also asks that an ordinance be enacted that provides full public disclosure of renewable energy development projects and includes a minimum 1-mile setback between any wind turbine or industrial solar panel and the nearest property line of any home, school, church or public area and a maximum height set at 200 feet.
The petition also asks for a mandatory public hearing and majority Fiscal Court vote for all future utility-scale energy products and a temporary moratorium on new wind turbines or solar arrays until the rules are established and enforced.
Local officials say the process of bringing—of not bringing—a wind farm to the county allow for many public hearings. In a recent Hendersonian article, the tedious steps of the process were laid out and included steps in which there would be public hearings and a majority Fiscal Court vote.
Additionally, the Fiscal Court in February approved a moratorium on any new solar projects. But the moratorium focused only on solar and did not include any work stoppage of companies attempting to bring wind turbines to the county.
Meyer said petitions will be left at the Niagara Store, the North-South truck stop in Robards and Rockhouse Pizza in Robards for people to sign. A person would need to include a name, address, district, phone number, email and a signature. Meyer said she also will include a line for driver’s license number. She said this is an extra step so that elected officials know that all the signatures gathered are legitimate.
Judge-Executive Brad Schneider said after Tuesday’s fiscal court meeting that the group is perfectly in its rights to gather signatures on a petition and that the fiscal court will in turn consider the information as “we wrestle with” the issue.
Schneider added that the fiscal court has three options: do nothing, create an ordinance that considers the community’s concerns and regulate wind turbines as much as possible or ban wind turbines.
He said doing nothing would allow wind turbines to come to the county under state regulations, which have very “meager” regulations, and banning wind turbines in the county could bring lawsuits because they are currently allowed under state law.
Meanwhile, officials with Cordelio Power said they aren’t currently ready to address any resident concerns but plan to set up public meetings once more definitive information about the project has been gathered. They say that conducting public meetings without more precise information, such as locations where the turbines will be located, leads to unproductive meetings and waiting to acquire better information before holding public meetings leads to better understanding from residents.
Tim Vought, the vice president for development for Cordelio Power, said he expects that an ordinance can eventually be passed that balances the needs of the community with the interest of the developer. He said landowners who have signed agreements have done so voluntarily and should be able to use their land as they see fit.
That take didn’t square with Meyer who said that she believes that people who’ve just moved to the area are signing agreements, not those who have been in Niagara for generations, like her family has.
“They don’t have the loyalty or love of the land that we do,” she said.
Lovell said that landowners are already under a book of laws of what they can and cannot do with their land, and setting regulations to ban wind turbines is an option local lawmakers have.
“Our local officials can say no,” she said.
Another positive for those who sign the agreement is that they would still be able to farm the land because a wind turbine takes up about one acre of land, Vought said.
Furthermore, there’s a lot of money in it for landowners, if they decide to sign an agreement, though Vought didn’t give specifics, only saying it was “significant.”
The three Niagara residents though think that wind turbines could change the basic character of the land they grew up with or have fallen in love with.
Alderson said there’s history in Niagara that’s going to be impacted “that maybe doesn’t mean anything for those who come from the city but I’m not one of them.”
“I wouldn’t sign for $100 million,” Meyer said.
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Meyer will host a meeting regarding wind turbines on Monday, June 30, for anyone who wants to attend. It will be at 5:30 p.m. at 15766 Ky. 136-East.
