Wind turbines causing turmoil among Marathon County residents

Local residents expressed their concerns over a recent influx of interest in farmland to be used for harvesting wind energy in both Marathon and Clark counties.

The opposition to the turbines is being led by a group called “Farmland First” who hosted a town hall discussion on the topic on Tuesday night at Country Aire in rural Stratford.

Nearly 300 concerned residents of the county met to discuss what concerns lie with the turbines and the companies that are attempting to bring them to the region.

Representing Invenergy were senior analystof renewabledevelopment,Dylan Lennie and senior project manager Cooper Johnson. Invenergy is a privately held developer of wind energy which has 110 projects total in their “queue.” The company has already signed on an estimated 65 residents, encompassing 13,000 acres of land, in Marathon County to be a part of the wind turbine project.

Lennie started the dialogue by explaining where Invenergy was at in terms of the timeline of the project and some of the benefits of the project.

Lennie said Invenergy currently pays $7.9 million to land owners annually through the use of land easement and other property agreements.

The rest of Lennie’s presentation highlighted the amount of revenue not only the individual landowners would receive, but also the amount of tax revenue Invenergy would contribute to towns, villages, counties, the state or other governmental entities through tax payments made on improved sites. Lennie estimated the company would be giving $36 million to families who agreed to be a part of the project in annual rental payments over the course of the 67-year lease agreement.

Lennie showed why the company has chosen to pursue a turbine project in Marathon County. He said the wind resource is the main reason. He also said the interconnection of running power to a main power line near Hwy. 29 helps ensure the energy is harvested without having to run lines through more acres of land than necessary. He said the company plans to install anywhere from 25 to 35 turbines in the county but that number has not been solidified as of yet. He said he expected the project to take up less than 100 acres of total land from the different sites involved.

Lennie estimated that the construction phase of the project would begin in 2026 with the operational phase of the project lasting two 30-year periods.

A project that was consistently compared to the proposed project in Marathon County was the Forward Wind Project which is located in Dodge and Fond du Lac counties in eastern Wisconsin. Invenergy was instrumental in building the wind farm located on 4,000 acres but the company sold the turbines to Wisconsin utility companies Wisconsin Public Service, Wisconsin Power and Light and Madison Gas and Electric prior to 2019.

Lennie admitted that the technology for wind energy has been constantly changing so his information about the size and capacity of the turbines might not be accurate come construction in 2026.

Lennie said the wind turbines are not yet a done deal as the company will need to apply for a permit through the state of Wisconsin after plans have been inspected to ensure Invenergy is adhering to state regulations.

To close out his presentation, Lennie answered a list of 12 questions that were asked of him prior to the meeting. However, Lennie could not answer whether or not the project had enough land currently to move forward with the project.

Concerns The argument against the wind turbines was headed by members of Farmland First, an activist group that is composed of volunteers that have invested time and money into educating the public on the pitfalls of signing contracts with wind energy companies.

Jon Beran, a resident of the Town of Johnson which is located between Athens and Dorchester and is a heavily targeted area for Invenergy, spoke and laid out the reasons Farmland First was trying to educate landowners on the perils of the turbines.

Beran said on top of the eyesore that the turbines will add to the community, there are a number of health and safety concerns that range from the shadow the turbines cast on homes, roads or land to the sound and pressure concerns the turbine’s blades can cause to residences that are near the structures.

Beran also brought up the fact that the turbines can cause harm to wildlife in the area, especially bats and birds. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates tens to hundreds of thousands of bats are found dead around wind turbines each year.

Beran dove into aspects of the contract which showed the turbines were required to be 1,250 feet away from any home of a non-participating resident. However, the turbines can be placed 1.1 times the distance away from a participating landowner’s residence, according to Beran.

Clark County Supervisor, Fred Schindler, spoke on the governmental side of the debate. He said the Wisconsin Public Service Commission’s state statutes were outdated and not applicable to today’s wind energy standards. Clark county submitted a resolution to the state, asking if the PSC would revise its wind turbine laws to meet today’s standards. Schindler told the crowd that as a business owner, he needs to be bonded to ensure that unforeseen circumstances could be covered in a financial aspect. He called for the county to be able to be bonded in the event that the turbines break or are old and need to be decommissioned. He said current state laws prohibit the county from being bonded in this instance.

He said the best thing people can do other than not signing the contracts with Invenergy is to contact state officials to ensure that the PSC statutes are updated in a timely manner.

Audible groans could be heard when Johnson was pressed to give a yes or no answer to multiple questions about the project including if the company had enough land to begin construction on the project.

Johnson eventually said the company could go ahead with the project with the land that is currently under contract but studies would have to be done to confirm that.

Attorney Martin Machtan was the final speaker of the night. He said, “The job I gave myself tonight is to basically expose this project as a sham.”

“If you listen to Dylan and Cooper talk, I don’t think they answered anything that is really important out of our questions,” Machtan said.

He said the major issue with the project has been how the project has been conducted in secrecy. He said the company has come in and talked to individual landowners without a bulk of the community knowing this was coming.

“The whole sales process has been incredibly deceptive,” Machtan said.

Heated debate

Although Johnson and Lennie were professional and respectful the entirety of the night, emotional debate from those opposing the “big city” company riddled the latter part of the meeting. Attendees chastised Johnson and Lennie for not being able to provide answers to specific questions about the project. Ryan Lasee, another instrumental member of Farmland First, pressed Johnson on how many lawyers Invenergy had on staff. Johnson initially said he didn’t know but then said they had approximately 12 lawyers on staff at their Chicago office alone. Lasee made the point that if Invenergy truly cared about the money they were helping rural townships and counties make, they would not be spending millions of dollars on lawyers.

Throughout the night, the two Invenergy spokespeople said the project is still in the development phase. They said they had to conduct years and years of studies to ensure the area will be viable for the project. One crowd member questioned why the company would be making payments to landowners if they didn’t know if a wind project was guaranteed to work. Johnson reiterated that the landowners were signed up because the company believes the project will go ahead as planned but the company needed to study the logistics of how much wind could be harvested and what facilities it would take to do so.

The meeting wrapped up as a resident pressed Johnson over the ability of landowners to get out of the agreement. The resident wanted a straight, yes or no answer as to whether the landowner could get out of a signed agreement if they got cold feet and no longer wanted to be a part of the project. Johnson said the company would take a look at the circumstance and try to work with the landowner to come to a resolution. The crowd groaned as they wanted a yes or no answer. Johnson said, “Maybe,” to which a member of Farmland First said, “So is that a yes?” Johnson responded with, “Maybe yes.” No other clarity was provided but what was clear was Invenergy was unwilling to commit themselves to saying they would allow landowners to get out of their 67-year contracts if they so chose.

The next Farmland First meeting will be held on March 27 at 7:30 p.m. at the Curtiss Fire Hall. RWE Renewables will be hosting its own open house that night at 7 p.m. at the Abbotsford City Hall.