December 21, 2019
Illinois, Letters

Wind farm pitch changes nothing

The Pantagraph | www.pantagraph.com

The DeWitt County wind farm proposal is still the same thing in the same place, within the ‘mitigation zone’ of NWS Doppler radar. Why not call it “The White Tornado”? Revising this, 92 out of 118 non-participants will have increased shadow flicker.

David Loomis, their “expert,” likes all of the benefits of importing wind energy. This will create GDP somewhere. For Denmark, China, and many places, this offers tremendous opportunity. Their study does not analyze net jobs. It analyzes the gross jobs that the new wind farm development supports.

As far as benefiting our local economy, I disagree with the sales pitch. I guess industry “experts on wind energy” don’t talk about cash value. The bottom line is this. It’s about 43 cents on the dollar.

Their sales pitch, “$22 million in revenue for Clinton schools,” has a ‘cash value’ of around $10 million. Similarly, $4.6 million for the county is worth around $2 million.

The ‘cash value’ for each tower in this scheme is about $158,000.

Landowner will, of course, receive 30,000 tons of concrete they’ll get to keep. That’s fine. Irreversibly alter the value and character of their land for a present value of $158,000.

No thanks. Sorry, gentlemen, I will need to offer additional commentary on your financial analysis as this will affect a critically important land use decision that affects my county.

See you in January.

Brad Barnes, Clinton


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2019/12/21/wind-farm-pitch-changes-nothing/