Planning staff researching wind farms
Washington County Planning Director Juliet Richey says she has recently received inquiries concerning wind farms.
“We’ve had a couple people approach us about wind farms,” Richey told the Planning Board Thursday.
While nothing firm has been proposed to go before the Washington County Planning Board & Zoning Board of Adjustments, Richey talked about the need to research wind farms and come up with some guidelines for them.
“We’re looking into some research on this,” she said.
There are things to be concerned about with wind farms, she said, including some issues with noise created by generators, as well as the “whooshing”noise created by the blades of the wind turbines.
Wind power converts wind energy to electricity using wind turbines. Big wind farms can be connected to electrical grids, while individual turbines are used for isolated areas or personal use.
Other issues Richey mentioned about wind farms are maintenance and future abandonment.
The process of allowing them would be a conditional-use permit request.
Richey says she is a little bit surprised that wind farms are already an issue in this area, which she believes is marginal for wind.
Going where the wind is in the area could create some problems with neighbors if a request were ever made.
“You’ve got to go where the wind is,” said Randy Laney, chairman of the Planning Board.
Richey said the wind farms would create a lot of the same issues that other high-impact projects, such as quarries, create — including having enough land.
She said there need to be some parameters established before a conditional-use permit for a wind farm comes to the Board.
“I think it’s complex enough of a use,” she said.
Courtney McNair, planner in the office, has been doing some research on wind farms.
She mentioned how the height involved makes wind farms similar to cellular phone towers in that “fall zones”are considered.
“If a big 400-foot tower falls over, where’s it going to go,” she said, adding that there need to be assurances that nothing is in the fall zone.
Another factor, she said, is making sure that wind farms can sync up with utilities in place.
Construction of a proposed wind farm in west Benton County is being discussed.
TradeWind Energy of Lenexa, Kan., is leasing land for the 26, 000-acre development it has named the Honey Creek Wind Project. It is planned for north of Maysville between Gravette and Jay, Okla. Most of the project will be in Arkansas.
Plans for the farm hinge on several factors, including data collected by the company from a meteorological tower in Sulphur Springs.
“We’re had a couple of preliminar y discussions with TradeWind,” said Nick Brown, executive assistant for sustainability at the University of Arkansas.
He said data collected for the company includes that obtained from anemometry — an anemometer is a wind speed measuring device. It determines wind energy availability at a site, Brown said.
Other data involves location of transmission lines, power substations and other infrastructure, Brown said, as well as looking at land owner presence and the availability of easements.
The company develops financing and supervises construction of wind farms; it owns the wind farm and takes risks, Brown said. Power is the made available for sale to utility companies and others.
He said the University is likely to have a continuing dialogue with the company.
Looking at wind power, he said, is one of several things the UA is doing to try to neutralize its carbon footprint.
“We’ll be developing a strategy this academic year to move toward carbon neutrality,” he said.
That will involve, among other things, energy conservation measures on campus — many of which already are in place. He said the purchase of green electrical energy is another way to achieve carbon neutrality, looking at wind, solar and biomass (biological material that can be used as fuel ).
The actual footprint of a wind farm machine, he said, is “relatively small.”
Talking about the quality of wind in this area, he said Benton County is on the Springfield Plateau, and should be higher than Washington County in elevation, with fewer peaks and valleys.
“There’s probably a more constant wind of a higher wind speed,” he said.
In Washington County, he said, there is likely to be a half-dozen or a couple dozen Boston Mountain crests potentially commercially viable,” but not the size and frequency you’ll probably see in Benton County.”
He said a wind farm developed here on a commercial scale has the potential to “really reduce”dependence on fossil fuels.
By Trish Hollenbeck
4 October 2008
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