December 12, 2017
Indiana

Wind farms still banned in Fulton County

By Niko Burton, WSBT 22 Reporter | wsbt.com

Monday, the Fulton County zoning board voted five to five, leading to no action on an amendment to ban wind farms.

This means that the wind farms are still banned and the commission’s amendment would be in effect 45 days later.

The Fulton County zoning board met Monday to discuss a major wind farm proposal.

The commissioners voted down the commercial project two to zero last month.

While they took no action on this, they did approve other resolutions. There were four items the board voted on including townships and cities asking for more guidelines against wind farms.

While majority of the crowd was confident that the board would vote with the commissioners, it ended in a stale mate.

Fulton County Commission President Bryan Lewis wasn’t sure how many people would come to Monday’s meeting.

Slowly but surely dozens of people showed up to listen to the boards decisions.

The county’s zoning board took no action on the commissions two to zero vote to reject commercial wind farms. The board was split five to five.

They did approve however the city of Rochester’s amendments to the wind farms nine to one. They also approved the town of Kewanna and the town of Fulton’s amendments, eight to two.

“Regardless of what the zoning board does, it comes back to the commissioners and I can’t see anything changing because it would be commissioner Ransted and myself who will be voting on this and I know my mind has not changed. So my vote will be the same as last month,” said Lewis.

“We were thrilled with getting basically a ban on industrial wind turbines in Fulton County. We hope that success carries on to Cass and Miami counties because we are now helping them as well,” said Lynn Plummer–Studebaker, of the Fulton County Property Rights Group.

The proposal from Renewable Energy Systems, or RES, planned to build 133 industrial turbines in the county.

This was part of a 300 turbine deal between Fulton, Cass and Miami counties.

People from both Cass and Miami counties are looking to fight the proposed plans to build turbines on their land.

A representative from RES said Monday that this move could lose the county a lot of money.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2017/12/12/wind-farms-still-banned-in-fulton-county/