May 21, 2011
Illinois

Woodford Co. sets wind farm ordinance

By Jerry McDowell, www.pantagraph.com 20 May 2011

EUREKA – A new county-wide wind farm ordinance includes much of the language in the Minonk Wind Farm agreement.

It does not, however, address “shadow flicker,” or requiring the surface area under new meteorological towers to be free of vegetation or planted in vegetation different from that surrounding the tower.

After minor tweaking earlier this week, the Woodford County Board unanimously approved the proposal after a series of nine hearings held by the Conservation, Planning and Zoning Committee.

Committee members previously explained that the vegetation requirements were directed at the wind farm companies, not landowners.

“Basically, you are giving that landowner the right, through ordinance to farm property that he has leased to somebody else,” said committee member Duane Kingdon. “And you can’t do that. You cannot give, by ordinance, the right for me to farm my neighbor’s farm on the other side of the fence. That is leased property. That belongs to the wind company. This ordinance for vegetation is directed at the wind company, not the land owner. They have signed that land away on that lease.”

The committee raised from 20 hours to 30 hours the amount of “shadow flicker” allowed on non-participating inhabited dwellings and/or buildings whose main use is for livestock.

Kingdon said the limit was raised because the committee was trying to “bring the county back together and get rid of this civil war that we’ve been having.”


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/05/21/woodford-co-sets-wind-farm-ordinance/