January 19, 2012
Illinois

Official: Wind company not drafting rules

BY DAVID GIULIANI, www.saukvalley.com 18 January 2012

DIXON – Lee County State’s Attorney Henry Dixon said Tuesday that he normally sees all of the documents that will be presented at meetings of the committee that is drafting a new wind energy ordinance.

In recent weeks, some have contended that a wind energy company is drafting the rules.

Dixon said that was not the case.

He attends nearly all of the meetings of the county’s Zoning Board of Appeals, although he doesn’t often speak during the sessions. The committee has been meeting regularly for 6 months drafting the rules.

The next meeting is Friday night, which is an unusual time for the board to meet. Over the last 6 months, the committee has met on Thursday evenings.

But member Mike Pratt is out of state, so the board delayed the meeting by a day to make sure Pratt could attend.

On Friday, the board is expected to decide whether to keep the existing setback of 1,400 feet, which is the required distance between wind turbines and homes.

At the Jan. 5 meeting, the Zoning Board approved noise regulations for wind farms. Some believed that Mainstream Renewable Power, which is planning a three-county wind farm, had disproportionate influence over those rules.

Only Mainstream had a copy of the proposed rules during the meeting. Some said this gave Mainstream an advantage over residents.

At a December meeting, the Zoning Board approved Mainstream’s proposal for the decommissioning of turbines word for word. The company said it incorporated input from a variety of sources, including those calling for greater regulations of wind farms.

To attend

The Lee County Zoning Board of Appeals will meet at 7 p.m. Friday in the County Board meeting room on the third floor of the Old County Courthouse, 112 E. Second St., in Dixon.

The board is expected to discuss what it should establish as the legal distance between turbines and homes.

For more information, go to www.countyoflee.org or call the zoning office at 815-288-3643.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/01/19/official-wind-company-not-drafting-rules/