Supervisors continue wind turbine discussions

Two residents of Iowa County attended the May 12 Iowa County Supervisors meeting to state their opinions about a new wind energy company requesting a copy of the county's ordinance for where they can be placed.

The first woman shared a note with the supervisors that she and her husband had written and signed. The note states they believe the controversy of the wind farms could be solved if they required that every person signing an agreement with the wind energy company live within 600 feet of a working wind turbine in the proposed wind farm and occupy the residence and stated that was the setback from a non-participating property owner's property line in the agreement with the Diamond Trail Wind Farm. However, the ordinance for wind turbine setbacks states the setback for residences is 1,500-1,800 feet depending on the size of the turbine.

The other county resident was a farmer who wanted to know if they started telling people what they could do with their land, if telling farmers what chemicals they could and couldn't use was next and was concerned, “We would turn into California.

At a later discussion, Supervisor Abby Maas said they did have a petition from the first windmill farm that had 1,000-1,600 signatures, but nothing more was said about it.

Both Maas and Supervisor Chris Montross called the company that had made the ordinance inquiry to the auditor’s office but hadn't heard back from them at the time of the meeting.

Supervisor Jon Degen said he wondered where they would be able to put them, since the Diamond Trail group had a difficult time getting the full number of turbines placed that they initially wanted. In the end, the wind turbine discussions were left on the agenda to discuss as they learned more.

Iowa County Engineer Nick Amelon brought bridge embargoes for the board. He told them that two of the bridges, one being on a farm to market road, would be fixed soon using the wind turbine money.

In building maintenance, Dylan Healey said that work on the courthouse windows was going well, and they would be moving to the west side windows around the third week in May. He said the kitchen project was going well also, but they'd made some changes to the plan because some of the doors were different heights on the floor plan than they were on the elevation plan. He said the planned completion of the project is mid-July to late in August.

Healey also brought three bids for the roof of the county building on Cherry Avenue in Marengo. There are several layers of old shingles on the roof, but only two gave separate plans for tearing off the entire existing roof vs Putting new shingles over the old ones. The board asked Healey to request that part of the bid from the third contractor as well.