Lack of housing, wind farms discussed
Staff writer
More and better affordable housing would draw new people to live in Marion, City Commissioner Larry McLain said during the Oct. 13 special planning meeting for both short- and long-term goals, at the City Building.
If an industry were to bring 100 new jobs here, where would the employees and their families live? Or, where could a developer build a cluster of new homes?
These were among the questions that came up at the meeting, the second one in seven weeks.
Mayor Eloise Mueller suggested that perhaps some homes that are in bad shape could be torn down, and new ones built in their places.
But these would be scattered throughout town, not in a cluster or development, someone said. Whether such dispersal would be a big problem was not discussed.
Housing attracts business and vice versa, it was agreed. Like the chicken-and-egg riddle, it's hard to tell which comes first. It's a vicious circle, said Susan Cooper, still director of economic development for the city. (Her last day in that post was Friday.)
McLain said he knew of one town where the city inspects rental units every time new tenants are about to come into them.
There's a problem involving sub-standard housing for lower- or moderate-income people, it was agreed.
Harvey Sanders, director of public utilities, spoke of a school he had attended about wind-generated power. He said the wind cannot generate all the power needed all of the time.
During the peak part of the season, a wind of at least 6 mph is needed to generate electricity. And "you have to be a generating city," he said, to really take advantage of wind generation.
Wind generation would help to bring fuel costs down, Sanders said. A substation nearby would pump the electricity generated into lines of Westar, or KPL, or whatever huge utility company was serving the area.
This would save the utility company some measureable money. There could be problems with voltage because of the lack of a consistent wind velocity, Sanders said.
It takes 150 "farms" (units) to generate 15 kilowatts, Sanders said.
"Since we don't have a generation plant, it (wind generation) wouldn't help us that much," he said. "It might help KPL."
The farms, units, windmills, whatever one calls them, are 140 feet high. They're "not bad-looking," Sanders and Cynthia Blount both said.
Transmission lines can make the cost of wind farms soar sky-high, Sanders said. Florence, where there's a 115,000-volt line, would be a good place for a substation, he said, if someone did start a wind farm.
"It could feed into that (line)," Sanders said. Wind generation could serve at most only 30 percent of the city's power needs.
The city has a very lucrative contract currently with Westar, a 15-year one, and "I'm sure they wish they'd never signed it," said Sanders.
The price of electric power will rise, he said. The next time Marion signs with Westar, it'll probably be only a five-year contract, he said.
County Commission Chairman Howard Collett, attending the meeting, said by state law wind farms are property-tax exempt for a while.
Sanders said the only beneficiaries of wind farms right now are the landowners and power companies.
"It's a peak-shaving deal," he said. "They need a way to keep power going when the wind stops blowing. Right now it's a nightmare for workers at power plants."
Blount and others said the wind farms near Montezuma, in Gray County, Southwest Kansas, are a pretty good tourist attraction for the motels and restaurants of that small town.
Sanders said that if someone were going to put in a wind farm, they would need to study local wind trends for a year, and then a year or two would be required to build the farm.
