March 10, 2022
Iowa, Missouri

Wind turbine project discussion continues in Page County

Julie Davis, CherryRoad Media | The Hamburg Reporter | March 10, 2022 | www.hamburgreporter.com

Discussion on a proposed Invenergy wind turbine farm in Page and Fremont counties continued March 1 during an evening Page County Board of Supervisors meeting.

About 20 residents of southwest Iowa and northwest Missouri spoke during the two-hour-long comment period in the meeting. Board members said they had also received about 14 comments from constituents opposing the project, with one or two comments in favor of turbine construction.

“The constant whoosh kinda gets on your nerves, to be honest,” said chiropractor and functional neurologist Kevan Evans, who came to the meeting “to impart the experience” he’s had with turbines to the board.

Evans said three wind turbines were within a halfmile of his acreage northwest of Maryville, Mo., and he noted that the flicker from the sun reflecting off the turbine blades was irritating enough to give his mother a migraine when his parents came to visit. “I don’t know what they’ve [Invenergy] promised

“I don’t know what they’ve [Invenergy] promised you,” he told the board, “but you lose your control and they do what they want.”

Evans said he has seen an increase in neurological symptoms in his patients who live near wind turbines.

Murray Thornton of Bedford told the board he thought Invenergy worked with absentee landowners in Taylor County “in a way that was secretive.”

“Then they came to the landowners who lived on the land, and we really didn’t know about it until it was almost too late,” he said. “You guys are in a little bit better situation because you know what’s going on right up front.”

Thornton said he has lost countless hours of sleep because of the turbines, the closest of which is 1,577 feet from his house.

“It’s like having a washing machine or dryer outside your bedroom and running all the time,” he said. “You can’t shut it off and you really can’t drown it out.”

Brandon and Sherry Hunter, who live near Blanchard, visited 33 homes in one township that would be in the footprint of the proposed project. Brandon Hunter told the board that one of those homeowners had signed up to have a turbine on his property, and another was not concerned about the project, but that 20 homeowners did not want the wind farm anywhere near their homes, and three were “very distraught” when the Hunters showed them the farm’s proposed footprint.

“I’m tired of us being considered as the wasteland,” said Sherry Hunter. “It’s my home, and I have kids, and they matter.”

Beekeeper Mike O’Hearn, who lives on an acreage near Northboro, said that turbines are hard on bees and birds.

“We had to deal with hogs, and now we have to deal with turbines,” he told the board. “How much does a guy have to put up with?’

“I’ve been involved in a lot of things the government’s done,” he said, “and we’ve tried to get our point across, and we get screwed. Don’t screw us. We’re tired of it.”

Several landowners asked Supervisors Jacob Holmes and Chuck Morris to consider a compromise that would contain the turbines within a landowner’s property lines.

The March 8 Page County Board of Supervisors agenda calls for a reconsideration of the county’s existing wind turbine ordinance and a 180-day moratorium on the submission of wind energy projects to the county as the ordinance is being reconsidered.

Under the county’s existing wind energy ordinance, which was passed in October 2019, that ordinance cannot be changed after a wind energy project has been submitted for consideration, and Invenergy representative Mark Crowl indicated to the board that the company would have its Shenandoah Hills project ready for consideration in the next week or two.