Community meetings & public hearing on second draft of revised wind farm rules coming later this month 

The Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on the second draft of its revised regulations for wind energy projects later this month, and a number of community meetings will take place before then to help educate the public.

The process of revising the rules to better align with the new standards for solar projects approved by Douglas County leaders in May 2022 has been underway since the beginning of last year, though the county has had regulations for personal and commercial-scale wind farms on the books since 2017. The Planning Commission got its first look at the first draft of revised wind project rules in December, and the second draft was published last week.

The next step in making the new regulations official could come at the Planning Commission’s public meeting, which is set for Monday, Oct. 23, at 6:30 p.m. at City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St. Members of the public can provide comments to the Planning Commission at that hearing, or submit them in advance by emailing windregs@lawrenceks.org or mailing their comment to the Lawrence Planning Office (Attn: Wind Regs), 1 Riverfront Plaza, Suite 320. Those comments must be received by 10 a.m. on the day of the hearing. A link to attend the meeting via Zoom will be provided closer to the meeting date on the City of Lawrence web page dedicated to updates on the revision process.

But before then, the subcommittee formed in March to examine the revised regulations more closely will be hosting several community meetings in locations throughout the county, with the aim of educating the public about why the code is being revised, the logic the group used in crafting the second draft and discussing the next steps in the process. The first of those meetings is coming up on Monday from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. at the Baldwin City Public Library, 800 Seventh St. in Baldwin City.

Three more community meetings will take place the following week:

• Sunday, Oct. 15, from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Flory Meeting Hall on the Douglas County Fairgrounds, 2120 Harper St.

• Tuesday, Oct. 17, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Greenbush Resource Center, 1104 East 1000 Road

• Thursday, Oct. 19, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Lecompton Historic High School, 640 E. Woodson Ave. in Lecompton

As the Journal-World reported, the last public meeting about the revised regulations became contentious as members of the public voiced opposition to the possibility of commercial wind energy projects coming to rural areas of the county. That group – and others during the past year – have particularly spoken out against Florida-based energy firm NextEra Energy Resources, which has previously confirmed to the Journal-World that it’s exploring whether a wind energy project of that scale might be viable in southwest Douglas County.

According to county planning staff, there have been no proposals for a commercial wind energy project in unincorporated areas of the county since the original wind regulations were first adopted.