Wind farm foe
to detail challenge
Staff writer
County commissioners will receive a protest Jan. 12 about how a conditional use permit for the county’s southern wind farm was approved in 2019.
Former commissioner and wind farm opponent Dianne Novak has been placed on the agenda for the meeting.
Her contention is that calculations regarding how many protests were needed to block conditional use permit were incorrect.
The commission approved the application June 10, 2019.
Protests had to be filed within two weeks. According to a letter to the planning and zoning commission from consultant Russ Ewy, 34 protest petitions representing 58 people were filed.
Only one of the petitions, Ewy determined, came from within 1,000 feet of the project. The rest, he said, were invalid and could not be counted toward the minimum 20% to require a unanimous vote by county commissioners to grant the conditional use perme.
The buffer was 497,811,317 square feet. The net protest area was 278,146,663 square feet. The 20% threshold was 55,629 square feet. With only one petition qualifying, protested property within the buffer was 17,015 square feet, or 6.12%.
In July 2020, however, wind farm opponents proposed testimony from two people they considered to be expert witnesses that Ewy’s calculations were incorrect and the actual percentage protesting was 61.14%.
The lawsuit, however, was dropped before they could testify.
Although Novak, a commissioner at the time, admits nothing can now be changed or reversed, she said she asked to be placed on agenda because she wants the public to know the full story.