Progress ongoing on wind farm project

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August 9, 2008

BY BRIAN L. HUCHEL The Commercial-News Sat Aug 09, 2008, 10:12 PM CDT

DANVILLE — Progress continues on the local level to prepare for the possibility of a wind farm in southwestern Vermilion County.

Horizon Wind Energy confirmed in March it was in the early stages of evaluating the potential of a wind turbine project that would cover the corners of Vermilion, Champaign, Edgar and Coles counties. Horizon officials have said test towers could evaluate the wind for as long as two years before work begins.

In Danville, however, work has already began to make sure all bases are covered for the potential of an incoming wind farm.

Bill Donahue, chairman of the Vermilion County Board’s finance committee, is working on an ordinance setting certain rules for everyone involved, ranging from landowners to Horizon.

Todd Lee and Vickie Haugen of Vermilion Advantage, approached the county at a recent meeting with a request for such groundwork.

“They want a uniform ordinance so that when they build these, there’s a common understanding of how they take care of the towers and responsibilities everybody has,” Donahue said.

He compared the need for such an ordinance to the controversy that arises regarding cellular phone towers.

“Everybody wants to be on a known playing field,” he said. “You don’t want to invest a lot of money and not know what the rules are. The better way to avoid controversy and differing local rules is have a model to go by.”

The ordinance will cover a variety of areas in connection with a wind farm, ranging from the installation and safety to coordination with local emergency personnel and decommissioning.

“We’ll have a process to decommission these and put the land back in order,” Donahue said.

A ordinance put together by the Chicago Legal Clinic Inc. is being used as a model for the local ordinance.

“I’m not going to reinvent the wheel, just conform it to Vermilion County,” Donahue said.

If the Horizon project proceeds, anywhere from 100 to 120 turbines would cover a general area of 10,000 acres across the tips of the four counties. Turbine blades, on average, slowly rotate about 20 times per minute.

The turbines add renewable energy to the local electric portfolio. Power created flows into the transmission lines and travels anywhere along that grid. Its destination, he said, is based on the sale of the power.

State topography and wind maps led Horizon officials to east central Illinois. Here, a ridge in the land, along with wide agricultural areas, provides a prospective spot to take advantage of wind flow.

Horizon already has developed a sizeable wind farm in McLean County near the town of Arrowsmith. It is the largest wind farm east of the Mississippi.

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