Battles over wind farms divide rural communities 

Fierce battles are playing out around the country over how and whether renewable energy should be developed locally. The push for wind farms in rural Kansas has divided communities. Special correspondent and Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell reports.

Transcript:

Catherine Rampell: Across Kansas, there are 4,000 wind turbines, and counting. But, as energy projects have expanded, so too has the controversy surrounding them.

Michael Forth, Douglas County Rural Preservation Association: They have turned friends against each other. They have turned families against each other over this.

Phillip Metzger, Farmer: I know I know two brothers that have farmed together for years. They hate each other now.

Catherine Rampell: Technological advances and big federal subsidies have spurred a green energy boom across the country. But as critics have gotten louder, some local governments are putting the brakes on development.

Man: In Franklin County, we have been able to get a three-year moratorium on the construction of any turbines or solar projects.

Catherine Rampell: Why does this matter? The U.S. government needs rapid renewable development to meet its climate goals.

We went to Kansas, ranked fourth in the country in wind capacity growth, to see what all the fuss is about.

James Blaine, Enel Green Power: We have 95 turbines on site and produce about 300 megawatts.

Catherine Rampell: The Diamond Vista Wind Farm, run by Enel Green Power in rural Marion County, covers 73 square miles.

These 500-foot turbines have been generating power since 2018. Jim Blaine oversees the maintenance.

James Blaine: It’s like having 95 kids. You have the good kids, you have the OK kids, and then you have the troublemaker kids.

Catherine Rampell: Now, these kids do have some great admirers.

David Mueller, Farmer: I think they’re majestic. I like building things. I’m a builder. And looking at the turbines, it’s just a marvel of engineering.

Catherine Rampell: David Mueller, a county commissioner in Marion County, says wind development has given struggling farmers have shot in the arm.

David Mueller: This is generally a lower income area. It’s poorer ground.

And you’re here on an extremely beautiful day. Normally, the wind howls here, and we do not say nice things about the wind. So, if we can generate some income off of something that’s not popular, that’s a real win.

Catherine Rampell: Mueller leases his land to Enel. He views it as another extension of farming.

David Mueller: Personally, I’m proud of the fact that we’re harvesting wind, as a farmer. I grow wheat and we export it to feed the world. We raise cattle. We export it to feed our country and our world. I’m proud of the fact that we take wind and export the energy.

Catherine Rampell: He points to all the ways the company has also invested in the tiny town of Tampa, population 100, annual payments to the schools, money for a new library, funding for a freezer at the co-op grocery store, $35,000 for a new fire truck.

Greg Berens, Chief, Tampa Fire Department: It’s got a 700-gallon tank on it.

Catherine Rampell: Volunteer fire chief Greg Berens.

Greg Berens: We have done fund-raisers, chili feeds and hamburger fries. But that’s a lot of hamburger feeds to make up that kind of money.

Catherine Rampell: The company also paid to upgrade the roads.

David Mueller: We can use the roads to get into our pastures. We can use the roads to get to the pastures, which wasn’t possible before when they were dirt roads.

Amy Stutzman, Landowner: My property goes all the way down to the hedge row.

Catherine Rampell: Not everyone is such a fan.

What was your reaction when you first heard that a wind development was coming to this area?

Amy Stutzman: Anger.

I had just built this new custom log home. This was supposed to be my retirement home. This was supposed to be my dream. Wind turbines is not my dream.

Catherine Rampell: Amy Stutzman’s property is surrounded by wind turbines recently installed by a different company.

So you were never approached about putting turbines on your own property?

Amy Stutzman: No, ma’am. I only own 20 acres, and it’s an 80-acre minimum.

Catherine Rampell: She felt powerless to protect the magical country setting she loves.

These big beautiful windows you have all have blackout shades. Why is that?

Amy Stutzman: When that is the new view, I don’t care to look at it. I moved out here to be on the farmland. Wind farms are not farms at all. It’s nothing but industrial and commercial.

Catherine Rampell: When we visited, the turbines were not yet operational.

Stutzman feared things would get worse when they were up and running, shadows cast by the moving blades, for instance.

Amy Stutzman: You’re going to have shadow flicker. You’re going to have next winter ice throw, noise, vibrations on the ground. What does that do to underground aquifers? What does that do to livestock?

Catherine Rampell: At the Diamond Vista project on the other side of the county, there has been no obvious impact on livestock or groundwater.

But, at night, one common complaint does have people seeing red, blinking lights that warn aircraft of turbines. As for the project surrounding Amy Stutzman’s property, it’s already destroyed her relationship with neighbors who leased their land.

I understand things got kind of heated here.

Amy Stutzman: I had vulgar messages spray-painted on the side of my House. I have received death threats in my mailbox.

What are you going to call that one?

Catherine Rampell: She’s been accused of harassing people herself and firing shots when wind company employees conducted a land survey nearby. She says she was target shooting.

Amy Stutzman: I was still convicted of three felony counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Catherine Rampell: And you’re appealing this now, correct?

Amy Stutzman: Yes.

Catherine Rampell: Stutzman wants to leave the area, but says she can’t afford to.

Amy Stutzman: One of my neighbors actually contacted a real estate agent and was basically told, you don’t even need to list.

Catherine Rampell: Because nobody will buy it?

Amy Stutzman: Nobody will buy.

Catherine Rampell: Elsewhere in Kansas, residents of Douglas County fear a proposed wind development could hurt their property values.

Phillip Metzger: The turbines will start about three miles Southwest of here right along the tree line. They will just run to the north. My wife loves this view, and wind turbines will mess that completely up.

Catherine Rampell: Phillip Metzger (ph) is a farmer near Lawrence. He hosted a group of community members opposed to projects being considered nearby, including Janet Jehle.

Janet Jehle, Landowner: If they put wind turbines in here, the electricity does not stay here. It’s all sent to a Southeast or Southwest power pool.

Michael Forth: I’m concerned because our county has high population density. If you take the three cities that are dominant in our county out, we still have over 30 people per square mile.

Catherine Rampell: Michael Forth, president of the Douglas County Rural Preservation Association: Michael Forth: Put them where it’s less populated, where people aren’t affected by them.

Catherine Rampell: While some residents back in Marion County saw wind as a means to preserve their farmland, Forth worries these kinds of developments will have the opposite effect here.

Michael Forth: We have absentee landowners that live out here who have signed leases. Well, farmers rent that ground to farm, and now they’re going to lose it. We have hawks. We have soaring birds. They’re all going to be at risk.

Catherine Rampell: He and his neighbors say they don’t oppose clean power projects. They just don’t want them so nearby.

Phillip Metzger: I’m for clean energy, renewable energy. I’m totally for it. But I don’t like the idea of somebody ramming something down my throat.

Sarah Mills, University of Michigan: Wind development over time is getting more contentious.

Catherine Rampell: Sarah Mills studies state and local renewable energy policies at the University of Michigan.

Sarah Mills: As the more remote rural places with lots of farmers have been taken up and wind projects have moved closer to where there are vacation home owners or where people have moved there in retirement, those more natural amenity landscapes, that’s where you start to see lots more contention.

Catherine Rampell: And that means getting permits for new projects is more difficult in some places.

Nicholas Coil, Enel North America: What you have done at the local level is you have created what’s effectively veto rights for the local governments. It becomes a classic case of, we want renewable energy, but not in our backyard.

Catherine Rampell: Nick Coil, who oversaw development of Diamond Vista, says he is running into more local resistance to renewable projects.

Nicholas Coil: If there is discretion involved in the permit approval process, they can be in a bad mood that day, and a vocal minority can prohibit a broader community from benefiting from all of the economic and other benefits that these projects provide.

Catherine Rampell: Mills says energy developers must convince local residents that building new infrastructure is in their interest, at least if we’re going to meet our national decarbonization goals.

Sarah Mills: I think that’s hard because we can all imagine landscapes where we wouldn’t want to see energy infrastructure.

And one of the real tricks in this is that those landscapes for me may be different than the landscapes for you. People in a place may have differences of opinion about that very same landscape.

Catherine Rampell: As is the case in the places we visited in Kansas. To some, the turbines enhance the view and local economy. To others, they ruin both.

For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Catherine Rampell in Marion County, Kansas.