Dakota Beacon

Mark Armstrong

Burleigh County Commissioner

12/10/2009

Remarks for Public Meeting

Baldwin School

The winds of change are on North Dakota’s horizons.  They aren’t hard to see; giant silver blades the size of football fields rotating in the prairie breezes and producing “green” energy.  That color green may mean clean, renewable energy to some but for the investors that are rushing to build these wind turbine farms in North Dakota, the color green means cold hard cash profits.  And those profits, unless North Dakotans get smarter, like the energy being produced, for the most part, will end up out of state.

It’s ironic because while by all standards, North Dakota has the best wind energy potential of any state in the country, bar none.  And yet, we are coming in late to the game.  Our geography is partly to blame.  Once those towers go up, how are we going to ship all that energy to the places that really need it? 

Recent federal and state incentives and President Obama’s aggressive push for “green” energy have changed the dynamics and the wind turbine farm green/gold rush is on in our state.  Out of state corporations are running around as fast as they can, signing up farmers and ranchers to long-term wind contracts.  These companies want to “lock-up” the wind now and cash in on federal income tax credits and state property tax breaks offered to them before those tax break potentially blow away like the wind later in the next decade.

Most farmers and ranchers are happy to sign up for the extra cash for a turbine on their land and sacrifice the acre or two needed for its footprint.  The going rate is anywhere from $400 to $1000 per month per turbine once electricity is produced.  Not a bad deal, right?  Well maybe not at first glance. However, it fails to take into account a number of factors including what other communities around the country are doing when these out of state corporations come to buy wind.

COMMUNITY WIND PROJECTS

It is interesting that in North Dakota we don’t allow out-of- state corporations to own our farming operations or even our pharmacies, but apparently we have thought nothing of allowing out of state corporations to run roughshod over wind development.  Our legislators have had ample time to develop thoughtful laws and regulations which would have encouraged communities and cooperatives to develop wind resources in the state, profited from it locally, and minimized the risk involved with wind turbine farm development.  Feed-in tariff policies in other states have encouraged local development of wind resources.  None of this has happened in North Dakota.  Gone are the days when our forefathers developed the Bank of North Dakota, the North Dakota Mill and Elevator or even where I work, Workforce Safety & Insurance as a means to maximize profits for local citizens and minimize the influence of out of state corporations.  Wind power development is now in the hands of corporations.  These are for-profit corporations that want to maximize profits for their shareholders.  And they will do that on the winds of North Dakota and the backs of the contracts they sign with the landowners in North Dakota.

It can be still happen differently, as there is plenty of wind to go around.  In neighboring Minnesota, “community wind projects” are bringing more jobs and profits to their state.  And it could be that way here in North Dakota.

Unfortunately what happens in North Dakota is that you have an out of state corporation come in, tell landowners how strong the wind is blowing on their land, sign them to a long term contract that is often not adjusted for inflation and locks them into a confidentiality clause.

Imagine instead, that a group of landowners hire a wind consultant to measure their own wind on their land.  Then, with that information in hand, they could either develop a Request for Proposal (RFP) and bid out to the highest bidder a wind farm for their land area, or get financing (incentivized by enlightened North Dakota legislators) to build that wind farm.  The result would be rates of returns that would be 4 to 7 times what those out of state corporations are now offering them. Not only that, but it turns out that community-generated wind projects provide more jobs, and more local revenue than out of state corporations projects.

A recent 49-page study at the “WINDPOWER 2009 Conference and Exhibition” in Chicago last May on the “Economic Development Impacts of Community Wind Projects” by E. Lantz and S. Tegen, concluded that,

“Total employment impacts from completed community wind projects are on the order of four to six 1-year jobs per-MW during construction and 0.3 to 0.6 long-term jobs per-MW during operations. Furthermore, when comparing community wind to hypothetical average absentee projects, construction-period employment impacts are 1.1 to 1.3 times higher and operations-period impacts are 1.1 to 2.8 times higher for community wind. Comparing the average of the completed projects studied here with retrospective analysis of the first 1,000 MW of wind in Colorado and Iowa shows construction-period impacts are as much as 3.1 times higher for community wind, and operations-period impacts are as much as 1.8 times higher.”

The future is now, we need to hear from citizens

Burleigh County is just in the beginning phase of drafting an ordinance to accommodate a wind farm that is being proposed for Croft township in northern Burleigh County.  Most rural townships in our county have their own zoning authority; Croft does not.  The county ordinance we draft will affect not only Croft township but the other 11 townships in Burleigh County that have ceded their zoning authority to the county commission.

Nearby Ecklund township last year granted zoning authority to a similar project proposed by NextEra.  NextEra parent company, Florida Power and Light is a company with 2008 revenues of more than $16 billion, approximately 39,000 megawatts of generating capacity and more than 15,000 employees in 27 states and Canada.

There are other issues to consider, throughout the country as wind farms have been sited, there have been concerns expressed after they went up and began producing noise, shadow flicker, electronic interference and other issues.  We have the advantage in Burleigh County to address these concerns upfront before we draft our ordinance to regulate them.

Setbacks will be a major issue because the wording can be complicated.  The noise rating emitted from a wind turbine usually comes from the manufacturer and those tests are not done in the extreme temperature fluctuations that we experience in North Dakota. And we need to consider sub-audible noise issues as well. In other jurisdictions, residents near wind turbines complain of headaches, nausea and sleepless nights because of the low-frequency sounds that permeate their homes.

Setback recommendations have ranged from a low 700 feet to as far as over a mile from the nearest resident or property line.  Recently in Minnesota a local jurisdiction adopted an ordinance that based the setback on the tower height.

One newly adopted wind law puts setback distances at the greater of 1 1/2 times the total tower height or 500 feet from the nearest site boundary property line, public road or edge of the township.  The setback requirement for towers near off-site residences that exist at the time of application is set at the greater of 2 1/2 times the total tower height or 1,500 feet.  The World Health Organization has recommended that setbacks for wind turbines be set at 2 kilometers, which would put them at just over a mile from any dwelling.  And we will also need to take into consideration, of course, any occupied dwelling, but also perhaps any unoccupied dwelling also.

Other additions to the ordinance could require that cell phone towers be required or free WIFI connections be included on top of the towers to improve reception for these services in rural areas.  The towers have also been known to cause disruption of local television service, so this needs to be addressed as well.

A wildlife mitigation plan should be part of any wind turbine farm array that is being proposed as the towers are known to cause bird kills and the sub-audible noise has been shown to cause problems to bats.

Finally, while North Dakota law does not require a reclamation bond to be put up before construction takes place, it only makes sense that such a requirement be put into local ordinances. While the future of wind power looks promising, so did ethanol production just a few short years ago.  If this industry goes bust, then whoever put up these towers and concrete structures should be required, through a bonding requirement, to ensure that the landscape will be put back to its natural state.

Final Thoughts

North Dakota has more wind resources than any other state in the country.  We have the potential to produce more than 1.2 trillion kilowatts of electricity every year.  That would power one-fourth of the entire nation’s need for electricity just off our wind resources.

Developing those wind resources will come at a price though.  The profits from these wind turbine farms will either stay here or flow to out of state investors and shareholders; it’s our choice.  It’s also our choice how much we want to develop those resources.  To produce those 1.2 trillion kilowatts of electricity, we would need to construct over 250,000 wind turbines across the state.  If we do that, there will barely be a horizon where you will not see or hear a giant blade spinning.  Is that what we really want or need?

Fortunately, or unfortunately wind energy development, policies and local ordinances is lagging behind the times in our state.  At the end of last year, North Dakota had 714 megawatts of installed wind energy capacity and there are plans for nearly 1o times that amount at the Public Service Commission now.  By comparison, the number one state, Texas, had installed capacity ten times that amount at 7116 megawatts installed.

The push is on, as out of state corporations come in with federal and state tax incentives in their back pockets to get landowners to sign on the dotted line and lock up their wind for decades.  Those of us who are not landowners, but are still citizens need to ask, how green is the wind for the rest of us?  How much of the prairie vista do we want to trade to the giant spinning blades?  Is all still calm and bright on a winter’s night when a flashing red light and noisy rotating turbine pierces the starlit sky?