July 14, 2020
Illinois, Letters

Stop selling off DeWitt County

The Pantagraph | July 14, 2020 | www.pantagraph.com

First, do no harm.

The citizens of DeWitt County, who are unlucky enough to be in the footprint of the proposed wind farm, are asked to suffer and sacrifice so Chairman of the County Board, Dave Newberg, and his group of YES votes, will have another stream of income. None of these County Board members voting YES have homes placed near wind towers.

And these are no ordinary wind turbines. Some of them are 599 feet high, only 31 feet less than the height of the St. Louis Arch, and there are lots of them. We only have one St. Louis Arch, and it does not make noise, vibrate, or send giant moving shadow flickers across the countryside.

It is just plain wrong to approve the Special Use Permit on July 14 without a mutually agreed upon decommissioning plan in place before the vote.

We have precedence for selling out DeWitt County: Years ago, the Board sold the landfill and lost control of that. The landfill, now operated by the Waste Management Corporation, is located over the Mahomet aquifer, and has risen to the heights of “Mount Clinton.”

We need to stop selling our county off to the highest bidder.

Every time we look at these turbines built in the western part of DeWitt County, we need to remember Newberg’s Folly, and the legacy of grabbing the money instead of protecting our friends and neighbors in the footprint of this foreign-owned wind farm.

Mary Pat Killian, Clinton


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2020/07/14/stop-selling-off-dewitt-county/