National Wind Watch: Wind Energy News » Proposed wind farm in Lincoln raises local concerns

The proposal for a wind farm 5 miles north of Lincoln is in the very early stages of study and is years away if it happens at all, the development manager for the proposal said Thursday.

“We can’t do this without local support, and wouldn’t do it without that,” said Madalyn Farquhar, development manager for RES, a global energy company with U.S. operations based in Denver.

The company is talking with local landowners to see if enough support exists to begin detailed study, she said. Whether such a project would work will depend on engineering studies measuring winds from towers yet to be built, among other factors, she said.

Still, residents of Lincoln and nearby areas spoke to the Washington County Quorum Court’s Services Committee meeting Monday expressing concerns about the proposal’s impact on the environment, the beauty of the landscape, the traffic on local roads and other issues.

“One of the things that we don’t often talk about when we talk about environmentalism is the whole thing of aesthetics,” Mike Landry of Harmon said in his remarks to the county committee. Landry is professor emeritus of marketing at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Okla., who also taught at the University of Arkansas.

“We live in the Ozarks. We live in the Natural State,” Landry said. The large-scale industrial wind turbines being proposed are inconsistent with the surroundings, he argued. “Would you like to have an integrated steel mill located in Washington County?” he asked. “That’s heavy industry.”

Other county residents and some of the committee members expressed concerns to statements of outright opposition ranging from health effects, noise, environmental impacts such as the effects on birds and bats, traffic to and from the sites both during construction and after and the possibility of tower collapse or fire.

Other committee members gave reactions ranging from a willingness to consider the project to pointing out there are few details available so far for making any decision.

A representative of Concerned Citizens of the Ozarks, an environmental group opposed to large wind farms, also spoke at Monday’s meeting.

RES posted a website about the proposed “Trillium Wind” project. The company is talking to land owners to see if there are enough interested parties with enough contiguous land to lease to begin the development process, Farquhar said. The project would require at least 6,000 acres, she said, and probably more. That amounts to more than 9 square miles.

The proposal would install 34 wind towers generating a total of 200 megawatts of power, according to the company – electricity equivalent to that needed to power 40,000 homes.

The company contacted landowners in the area of interest by mail and expects to have a map of the area where they are looking for leases up on the website soon, she said. Where the site would be exactly is not known until and unless the company can find enough landowners willing to participate, she said. Whether the project would work or not also depends on testing of the specific site once that is found, she said.

“It’s a slow process,” Farquhar said.

Construction could not begin until 2028, according to the company website. Operations would not begin until 2029.