June 11, 2019
Illinois, Letters

Property lines should be guide for wind plan

Journal-Courier | June 11, 2019 | www.myjournalcourier.com

When I pay my property taxes to the county, in this case Morgan County, it has been calculated over my property in its entirety, not just my home that sits on the very front of it. My acreage happens to be very long and narrow. If my neighbors at the far end of my property line decide to lease their land to allow 600-foot industrial wind turbines to be built right next to my property line – which would still allow for the required 1,500-foot setback as per Morgan County [proposed] ordinance – it would make most of my property unusable for safety reasons and the rest of it due to interfering nuisance reasons.

Now, as I understand it, “Real estate ownership carries with it a complex set of rights, and the ‘bundle of rights’ concept has traditionally been the way in which those rights are described and summarized: The right of possession; the right of control; the right of exclusion; the right of enjoyment; the right of disposition.

… In the legal sense, owning real property involves the bundle of rights transferred from seller to buyer upon the sale of a property. These rights typically dictate the use, transfer and/or sale of real properties.”

Since I am not selling or transferring my property or any part of it to my neighbor or the industrial wind turbine company, how is it possible that with the building of those wind turbines where they will be allowed to build them, that I as a non-participating citizen of Morgan County will lose most of the above mentioned rights?

The concept of the bundle of rights is taught in many real estate and first-year law classes. No one on the participating and decision-making side of this wind turbine project seems to have ever heard of it or comprehend the meaning of the concept, to which, in my honest opinion, every American property owner has a constitutional right.

If I am paying property taxes on every inch of my property, I also want those rights extended to every last inch of my property line. Not just to the foundation of the building I happen to live in. So if the commissioners, in all their wisdom, decide to grace us with the minimum allowable distance of 1,500 feet, let it be from the property line, so I can still use my entire property, on which I pay taxes, as I see fit.

Maria Levine

New Berlin

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2019/06/11/property-lines-should-be-guide-for-wind-plan/