Cedar Co. family in turmoil after explosive turbine demolition scatters debris across farm 

A storm-damaged wind turbine in Cedar County, Iowa, was demolished with explosives Tuesday, leaving behind widespread debris that has sparked frustration and concerns from a local farmer. Sally Freeman, whose family owns the land where the turbine stood, has accused the wind turbine company responsible, Acciona, of mismanaging the process and leaving her land covered with potentially hazardous waste.

The turbine, a concrete structure rendered inoperable after a lightning strike months ago, was brought down in a controlled explosion early Tuesday morning near Mechanicsville. The demolition was overseen by state agencies, including the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, but no permits were required at the county level. Cedar County officials say this was a unique case due to the nature of the turbine’s damage.

“If I understand correctly, because of the nature of the concrete tower in this case and the thermal event which occurred a few months ago, the tower needed to be removed by demolition,” said Philip LaRue, a Cedar County environmental official. “And according to an Acciona representative, that is how they are done.”

Freeman, however, questioned why Acciona did not dismantle the turbine in sections, a method she said was used for another damaged turbine previously removed from her property. “We told them many times to look for an alternative method,” Freeman said. “We knew it was going to cause a lot of destruction, and it did, obviously.”

“You can go about 200 feet in any direction and find pieces of concrete,” she said.

Freeman said the fallout has left her farm fields and corn stalks, typically used to produce bales of feed for her cattle, covered with hair-like strings of fiberglass and other debris she believes could be toxic and most certainly are not edible. “We always bailed this for corn stalks for the cows. Well, can’t bail this now,” she said. “We can’t feed the fiberglass to the cows or risk using it for bedding.”

Freeman pointed to chunks of material scattered far from the demolition site and expressed doubt the company will follow through on cleanup efforts. “Now it’s a matter of how that’s going to get picked up, and after now three wind turbine fires, they don’t have a very good track record of cleaning things up,” she said.

Acciona has not responded to Iowa’s News Now’s requests for comment about the demolition process and when, or even if, the mess will be cleaned up.

Local officials have emphasized that oversight for the operation fell to state and federal agencies, not the county. “No permit was required from Cedar County. All permits are either state or federal,” LaRue said.

Freeman’s frustration extends to what she sees as a lack of transparency and communication from Acciona throughout the process. “They never sat down with us and said, ‘OK, what’s a good plan of attack?’” Freeman said in reference to how the company handled cleanup of the other turbine that was dismantled on their property. “Instead, they sent out a company to clean that never actually cleaned.”

Freeman also claimed the company misled her family about the extent of the damage to their property. “There’s been one lie after another. I mean, just like, yeah, they said the most it will go is two feet in the ground,” she said about the size of the crater where the nacelle, or top, of the turbine fell. “And obviously, it’s much more than two feet in the ground.” She estimated the crater at 15 to 20 feet and said she was told more digging was still needed to fully pull out the nacelle, which may or may not still have had the hundreds of gallons of hydraulic fluid that were once flowing through its components.

LaRue said the demolition was closely monitored by the Iowa DNR, which conducted an inspection on-site. “To my knowledge, there is no remnants of explosive materials,” LaRue said. “The Iowa Department of Natural Resources was on site and had done an inspection. There was very little hydraulic fluid or oil left in, although the inspection is still on.”

Freeman said she was not reassured by those findings. She expressed skepticism about the thoroughness of the cleanup and the long-term impact on her land. “Topsoil is not disposable. It takes hundreds of years, thousands of years in some places to make an inch of topsoil,” she said. “That’s considered okay and environmentally friendly? I mean, that’s so far from it. I can’t even imagine.”

Freeman also raised concerns about the broader implications of wind energy projects, particularly the lack of legislative protections for landowners once turbines become nonfunctional. “There’s nothing in our laws that say they can’t just abandon them,” Freeman said. “And when it’s left up to a civil litigation, the landowner against a giant company, who do we think is gonna win? Not the landowner.”

Freeman also says issues with the turbine began long before its demolition. She said her family was told the structure had fire protection and lightning protection, assurances she says have since proved to be false or insufficient. “When people sign these wind turbine contracts, they think they’re doing a good thing. It’s promoted as a way to add another form of income to your farm or you’re helping the environment,” she said. “Well, when you see something like this, you start to wonder how much you’ve really done for your farm and what are you really doing for the environment.”

For Freeman, the damage to her land goes beyond physical debris and unusable cattle feed. She described the emotional toll of seeing her fields rendered unusable. “When you farm, your land is kind of an extension of you,” she said. “And it goes beyond just property rights. You know, it’s part of you. And to have somebody just come in and basically say, ‘it doesn’t matter what you think, it doesn’t matter what you know, this is what we’re going to do,’ it’s just adding insult to injury.”

Freeman said she hopes to see stricter regulations on wind turbine companies, including requirements for fire protection and detailed plans for decommissioning. Until then, she said, landowners like herself are left to bear the consequences.