Iowa farmers share concerns about wind turbines as legislators continue wind energy push

Credit: By Grace Vance · Published: Dec. 9, 2024, at kcrg.com ~~

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All that’s left of Cedar County farmer Sally Freeman’s last wind turbine is fiberglass, wires and concrete after the company, Acciona, decided to take it down with explosives in November.

Freeman said the turbine had been damaged after lightning strikes caused three fires. She said the operation to take it down left a big crater on her family’s farm.

“Now it’s a matter of picking up the mess that’s here,” Freeman said. “And hopefully they actually clean up this mess, being they’ve got three before them, they didn’t do.”

She said she had to clean up debris from fires on both of her wind turbines after the company Acciona’s cleanup.

Freeman said she ran into problems that got worse that no one seemed responsible for.

“We found that with wind turbines, there’s a lot of passing the buck, you know, ‘It’s not my job, it’s so-and-so’s job,‘” Freeman said.

Now, she’s pushing for more protections for farmers and landowners.

“There is absolutely no law, no legislation, no rules, anything that say [the company has] to maintain these wind turbines,” Freeman said. “Well, if they’re not making money, why are they going to maintain them?”

Freeman is among thousands of other farmers with turbines.

Wind power has become a dominant force in the state in the last two decades – making up almost 65% of Iowa’s electricity in 2024, according to the Iowa Environmental Council.

That is partly due to efforts led by Senator Chuck Grassley.

“This push can only really happen when you have folks sort of working across the aisle and working with each other to get these policies into place,” Megan Goldberg, assistant professor of American politics at Cornell College, said.

Goldberg said private companies usually pay farmers to lease part of their land for the turbines.

“The piece where Grassley comes in is that wind companies then are incentivized to basically build turbines through federal tax credits,” Goldberg said.

Freeman said her family got the prototype turbines after the company approached them over ten years ago, offering it as a way to make extra money.

But four fires later, her family said the money and stress wasn’t worth it. She’s now hoping for more regulation to prevent this from happening to other farmers like her.

According to the Cedar Rapids Gazette, officials in Linn County visited that same farm after the fires. The Board of Supervisors has since passed a wind ordinance establishing debris clean-up requirements.

TV9 reached out to Acciona, the company who installed those turbines. It says the turbines were producing energy and maintained until the fires that damaged them.

The company said both turbines have now been decommissioned following state guidelines and the agreements with landowners.

In a statement, Acciona said in part, “We are now proceeding with clean-up efforts, and we remain in regular contact with the landowner whose property the wind turbine sits on. The cleanup process will see all remaining debris removed with minimal disruption to the surrounding areas.”

Source: By Grace Vance · Published: Dec. 9, 2024, at kcrg.com

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