July 6, 2011
Indiana

More changes come for Tippecanoe wind farms

Tiffanie Dismore, WLFI, www.wlfi.com 5 July 2011

More changes to Tippecanoe County’s wind ordinance are being made to accommodate potential wind farms.

The commissioners unanimously passed an amendment to a wind ordinance that allows more time for wind companies to get the turbines built. Commissioners’ president David Byers said originally, the ordinance stated wind companies have one year after being approved to get the turbines operational. The amendment to the ordinance now gives those companies 18 months.

No one spoke is opposition of the amendment. Two people spoke in favor of it to the commissioners.

Invenergy, which is hoping to build a wind farm in southern Tippecanoe County, had a representative at the meeting who said the company is happy with the 18-month time span.

“It’ll give us time to get through the construction period and the construction permit process. Typically, those two processes along can take somewhere between 14 to 22 months. This is right in that window to go through development,” said Invenergy representative Greg Leuchtmann.

Byers said it has been about a year since Invenergy came to the county proposing a wind farm.

“They’ve asked for a longer term mainly because they were dealing with so many different turbines. This allows them to pinpoint exactly where the turbines are going to go, exactly how the wind turbines are going to be happening. It just gives them a little bit longer time period to get up and going,” Byers said. “Getting everything nailed down to where for those companies, they know exactly what we as a county are asking for and vice versa.”

Byers said all the county’s wind energy ordinance seem to be heading in the right direction. He said wind companies now know what the county expects from them.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/07/06/more-changes-come-for-tippecanoe-wind-farms/