Setbacks may prove contentious for Washington Co. wind ordinance

WASHINGTON — An ordinance governing wind turbines in Washington County is back on the Board of Supervisors docket almost three years after officials canceled a vote on the subject due to an energy company’s abrupt withdrawal of development plans.

County Supervisor Marcus Fedler, who took office the same day as the canceled vote in 2021, has made a handful of revisions to the ordinance since then, with a new draft expected to begin public readings in a matter of weeks.

Discussion on the subject has slowly gained traction after prospective developers started reaching out to the county last summer, starting with Duke Energy in July.

While the latest draft contains myriad changes from the ordinance proposed in 2021, a section governing property setbacks is sizing up to be the most hotly contested rule, based on comments at a board meeting on Monday.

Both Fedler’s draft and the original proposal would require that turbines be placed 1,500 feet from the nearest occupied building, or 1.1 times as far away as the turbine is tall, whichever is greater. Both versions of the ordinance also allowed property owners to waive that setback requirement when applying for a project’s approval from the county.

But Supervisor Jack Seward Jr. said the distance should be greater, citing another section of the proposed code requiring turbines to stay at least a mile from state parks and half a mile from other government-owned properties.

"My question is, why are we giving parks and government-owned properties a greater setback than we give personal individuals?“ Seward said. ”We’re giving half a mile from an uninhabited county conservation park, but we’re only giving 1500 feet to a person who might not be in favor of having wind turbines. So I think that the property from inhabited structures ought to be a half a mile.“

Fedler said he “had no problem” with Seward’s suggested change.

But Jeff Neves, a director of development for Deriva Energy, which is eyeing an area in the central area of the county for a wind farm, said half-mile setbacks would nix virtually any development of the renewable resource.

“A half-mile setback would probably obstruct the ability to develop a wind project, just from the spacing that’s required with the turbines,” he said. “I would just caution that, that type of setback would probably kill any potential to develop in the county … we do a lot of work to make sure that all the property owners within a project area are treated fairly and we try and have setbacks, and siding guidelines internally to respect everybody’s property rights.”

Deriva Energy gives some details on project scope

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In comments at the Supervisor meeting Monday morning and an open house with area landowners Tuesday night, Neves spelled out a few specifics about the potential wind project’s area in Washington County.

A map of the prospective region shows a large swath of Washington County bordered by Juniper Avenue, Highway 218, 160th Street, and County Road G36, roughly 46 square miles in total. Neves said that the project would target the same transmission line used by the Goldfinch Solar Project, recently approved by state regulators north of Ainsworth and Haskins.

He added that any potential project would likely install 5-6 MW turbines and estimated it could comprise as many as 40-50 of the generators, though he said that number was speculative, and would depend on numerous unknown factors like county laws, wind levels and landowner cooperation.

“I’m always careful to let everybody know, set the right expectations, it takes a long time to get these things done,” Neves said. “Sometimes people think, ‘Oh, this is just going to show up overnight and catch everybody by surprise.’ But that’s not how it works and that’s not how we operate.”

Deriva is a re-brand of the company formerly known as Duke Energy Renewables, which in October was sold to Brookfield, a Canadian asset management business that operates 5,900 Megawatts worth of wind, utility-scale solar and energy storage facilities in the U.S. according to a news release announcing the change.

Washington County isn’t alone in Deriva’s plans for Iowa. Neves said the company was also considering projects in Muscatine County, the Quad Cities, close to Mason City, and in central Iowa. Farther west, Duke Energy started operating the Ledyard Windpower project in Kossuth County in January of 2023, according to a news release.

“We’re looking at other areas too, we’re looking at sites around the Quad Cities, Muscatine County, back toward central Iowa, closer to like, Mason City. And we’d like to do all of them,” Neves said. “We’re hoping to be able to do a lot more in Iowa.“

Neves said the company would conduct environmental, hydrology and drainage studies before picking exact turbine locations, and planned to hold meetings — first for nearby property owners, then for the general public — as plans develop in Washington County.

The development manager also said at Tuesday night’s forum that Deriva planned to operate the wind farm itself, if it gets built, rather than simply constructing it for sale to another company.

“A lot of developers will just get projects to a certain point, then sell them off for other folks to own and operate, but out model is to take the project through the entire process,” Neves said. “If the project works, we’re the guys that are going to be around long-term, and that’s why we try and introduce ourselves from the start … we want to be good members of the community.”

New code proposal makes other adjustments

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Beyond setback policies, Fedler’s draft ordinance contains myriad other changes from the one proposed in 2021, although few of those markups were discussed at the Supervisor meeting Monday morning.

The new version removes several requirements for wind energy applicants, like naming a turbine’s manufacturer, certification from the county engineer, and documentation of land ownership at a project’s location.

The latest draft also drops language requiring compliance with various federal guidelines, like from the Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Communications Commission and the National Electric Code.

In an interview, Fedler said those rules were redundant, and not Washington County’s job to enforce.

"If we have a rule that’s associated with that, and it’s different than, say, the FAA or something else, it puts us in the position of knowing something that might potentially give us a liability,“ he said. ”So we’re staying out of that.“

New clauses to the ordinance abound as well. One such addition requires that turbines use Aircraft Detection Lighting Systems that only activate when an air vehicle comes near, rather than always-on blinking lights. Another establishes a process for 24-hour sound studies on properties close to turbines. A third requires project applicants to hold a public hearing before they start construction.

Other changes are more substantial. The new draft requires developers to provide a $25,000 escrow account to help pay for “conflict resolution” costs throughout the life of the wind project. It also instructs project applicants to pay for turbine-specific annual training at emergency response departments within 20 miles of a new wind farm.

Perhaps most noteworthy is a new clause requiring a “property value guarantee” for non-participating landowners close to new turbines. Under that rule, developers would have to make up the difference in values if a landowner “cannot find an interested party to purchase (their) property at market value within six months of actively marketing” the real estate.

"We do an assessment before the project, and then, we know that it’s valued at, say, $100,000,“ Fedler said. ”And then, 10 years from now, the average home value in Washington County goes up 10%, so let’s say it’s $110,000.

“You go to sell your property, and you can’t get any biters at $110,000, so you end up selling it for $90,000. What we say is, you have to guarantee that, that $20,000 loss, on paper, will be compensated to that individual selling the property.”

Otherwise, plenty of content from the 2021 ordinance remains intact. That includes rules governing decommission agreements, keeping turbines out of radio communication paths, requiring blades to stay 75 feet off the ground, and restricting what colors and types of paint the generators can use.

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com