Video: 2/24/2010 Property Value Guarantees Panel:
Ruth Anne Tobias – Presentation/Q&A

Video: 2/24/2010 Property Value Guarantees Panel:
Ruth Anne Tobias & others – Q&A

So, what are we to believe? Let’s take a look at what Tobias has to say.

According to the NortherStar interview on 1/29/10 by Demarcus Robinson:
“DeKalb County negotiated a property value guarantee within 1.5 to .75 of a mile to a turbine,” Tobias said.

Let’s refer to Tobias’ presentation on 2/24/2010.

Take a look at Slide 2 on Page 134:
” Homeowners within 3/4 mile of a turbine ”
” lower price than expected in 3 mos – FPL pays difference… ”

Take a look at Page 137:
” http://dekalbcounty.org/PLanning/windfarm.html ”
” Look for ‘Ordinance’ with conditions (#14) and PVG details within ‘Exhibit D’ ”

Compare the information Tobias presents against the actual document, and you now have a different story. Follow Tobias’ link to the document and you end up looking at a map, not PVG details. So you will need to look at an authentic “Property Value Guarantee Agreement” document.

In this document there is no mention of mos, it’s all in days, either 30 or 180. 30 days regarding notification and 180 days in relation to the property. Here are the facts:

Section 7: “that the Property will be so listed until the occurrence of either the (i) sale of the Property or (ii) expiration of a period of 180 days;”

Section 8: “for a period of 180 days, not to accept any offer below the ASKING PRICE without the express and written approval of the Guarantor.”

Section 10: “within 180 days of listing the Property for sale,”

Section 11.b: “after 180 days of listing the Property for sale,”

Section 12: “during the 180 days of the property being on the market,”

This kind of gross error is inexcusable. How could Tobias, DeKalb County Board Chair and noted conference speaker be so irresponsible and misleading? It makes you wonder if she ever looked at the document and seriously question anything else she has to say.

I am writing in response to the lead story in the April 16 edition of the Telegraph titled “Turbines divide neighbors.” These wind companies still have everyone fooled. That wind farm will not produce an average 226 megawatts. As I stated in a previous letter, the average output will be about 50 megawatts. It will not power 55,000 homes.

The article states very few people would talk. There’s a reason for that. Once a landowner signs a lease to have a windmill, they can talk about it only to family members, a lawyer, or other landowners involved with the same company.

They forfeit the right to complain if there is an unforeseen problem. Neighbors who sign up for money are legally silenced, too.

What do the windmill companies have to hide? Why would they take away your due process if these things are so great? Would you have someone work on your house who gave you a contract like this to sign? If they are so great, then why did Renewable Energy Systems start having small meetings at a private residence?

By having small, personally invited groups, the windmill companies must feel they won’t be questioned by people who have done their research and won’t be asked the tough questions that come up in a more public forum. To meet this 25 percent renewable energy resource, it will take thousands and thousands of windmills. Apparently our Lee County Board wants all of these windmills in our county by making it so easy for these wind companies to come in and set up.

The zoning board won’t let a landowner sell off 1 acre from a farm to a family member to build a house because they don’t want prime farmland taken out of production, but this same board has no problem letting a wind company put three or four windmills on this same farm, taking up as much or more land with the turbine site and access roads as a 1-acre home site.

When will it end? When every parcel of land in rural Lee County is blanketed with windmills?

This is an excerpt from an RES brochure: “Usually, sites are located in high wind areas on larger parcels of undeveloped land.” Is Lee or DeKalb county a high wind area with undeveloped land? Then why are they allowed to come in so easily and disrupt people’s lives?

Neil Miller
Ashton

saukvalley.com

23 April 2009

Wind farm proposal goes back to public hearing

MALTA – The public will have a chance to be heard once again on an energy company’s proposal for a wind farm after the county’s planning and zoning committee sent the application back to a public hearing.

The DeKalb Planning and Zoning Committee voted 7-0 Wednesday on a motion to have a new public hearing based on an opinion rendered by DeKalb County State’s Attorney Ron Matekaitis. The state’s attorney’s office advised that new information on the application – the company has made a series of concessions since its original proposal – should render a new opportunity for public testimony to be heard by the hearing officer, Planning and Zoning Committee Vice Chairwoman Pat Vary said.

NextEra Energy Resources, a subsidiary of FPL Group, has proposed building and operating a 151-turbine wind-energy plant; 133 turbines would be built in Afton, Clinton, Milan and Shabbona townships and 18 turbines would be in parts of Lee County.

The date of the public hearing is tentatively scheduled for 9 a.m. on May 11, Vary said. She said that they would have liked to hold it earlier, but Hearing Officer Dave Dockus, who last week recommended the application for a special use permit be denied, will be out of town.

A location is still to be determined, Vary said, and if the public hearing is held on May 11, it would end by 5 p.m. and continued to the next day if need be.

Margaret Foshe, a Lee resident, said she would like to see more meetings in the southern part of the county.

“We have more of a vested interest,” she said, adding that while it may not change the county board’s final decision, it would bring a higher turnout of people living in the area of the proposed wind farm.

The public hearing is the third to be scheduled on the wind farm proposal. A Feb. 19 public hearing was canceled because of inadequate space when about 400 people showed up, spilling into the hallways outside of the multipurpose room of county health facility. Rescheduled to March 21, more than 700 people attended the beginning of a 19-hour hearing held in a high school gymnasium that lasted until nearly 4 a.m.

More than 100 people gathered for Wednesday’s Planning and Zoning Committee meeting, which lasted less than five minutes. Public comment was not to be heard.

After the meeting, audience members, company representatives and county board members shared sentiment that the proposal deserves more careful attention – no matter what side of the issue one stands.

“I didn’t know what to expect at this meeting,” said Roger Craigmile of Milan Township, who is against the proposal.

Vary said that the state’s attorney’s recommendation came as a surprise, as she and other county board members learned of it just hours before Wednesday’s meeting.

“FPL representatives responded to the hearing officer’s recommendation by offering to meet all of his objections,” said Michael Haines, D-Kingston. “It essentially changes the application, and the public deserves a chance to respond to the new application.”

“It sounds like the right thing to do,” John Emerson, R-Genoa, added. “It sounds like enough of a change where public opinion can be heard.”

NextEra has proposed a series of conditions to the application. The biggest change is the addition of a property value guarantee program, in which the company would compensate landowners whose properties had devalued, NextEra spokeswoman Mary Wells said.

“That had been an issue that many people expressed concerns about,” Wells said. “We listened and heard them and the county said that is something they would like to see.”

The company has also agreed to place a financial assurance, like a letter of credit, at the beginning of the project as part of the decommissioning process, rather than in 15 years as originally proposed.

In his report, Dockus listed eight reasons to deny NextEra’s proposal. Among those, the proposal lacked both a property value guarantee plan and a sufficient decommissioning process, he said.

Project manager Anthony Pedroni said even if the DeKalb County Board ultimately votes against the project, that wouldn’t necessarily kill plans for the 12 to 18 turbines permitted for northeastern Lee County.

“Obviously, it’d be a dramatic shift from the proposal we have right now, with the whole project together,” Pedroni said.

If in fact DeKalb County does opt out of the project, NextEra would conduct another wind study to see if building only a portion of its original plan would be financially feasible.

Pedroni said he is confident, though, that that won’t happen.

“We’re going to work hard to get to a successful conclusion of this project, and when we get there, we’ll have a wind farm everyone can be proud of,” he said.

Shaw Newspapers reporter Chase Castle contributed to this report.

Daily Chronicle

1 April 2009

In a March 25 report, DeKalb County Hearing Office Dave Dockus recommended the special use permit that was applied for in January by NextEra Energy Resources be denied based on eight findings.

Those reasons include “significant disagreement” between expert sources on the effect wind turbines have on property values and the effect noise of the turbines has on public health. Dockus also cited a lack of evidence on the impact heavy trucks would have on local roads.

But the officer’s recommendation isn’t the final say in the matter. The county board’s Planning and Zoning Committee is scheduled to meet April 1 to discuss the issue, and will make its own recommendation to the DeKalb County Board.

“The county board has a full range of options in front of it,” said Paul Miller, the county’s planning director. These include following the hearing officer’s recommendation and denying the application, approving the application, approving it with conditions, or tabling it and sending it back to the hearing officer.

“The point is that the hearing officer’s recommendation is just that – it’s a recommendation,” Miller said.

In his report, Dockus stated the company provided an inadequate property value guarantee plan, no clear plan on how it would pay property taxes after the current formula expires after 2011, an inadequate decommissioning process and no plan to correct drainage problems that may result during the proposed project.

Lastly, crop dusting and other farm activity would be affected by the proposed wind farm, Dockus stated in the report.

“I think I’m disappointed,” said DeKalb County Board Chairwoman Ruth Anne Tobias, noting that Dockus was the hearing officer who approved a wind farm proposal in 2002.

A 19-hour public hearing on the new proposal was held Saturday at Sycamore High School, after an earlier hearing scheduled in February was canceled because there wasn’t enough space for the several hundred who showed. Officials estimate more than 700 attended Saturday’s public hearing, which lasted until nearly 4 a.m.

Tobias said she was unsure what course of action would be taken.

“We have done that before – we have gone over the hearing officer’s recommendation. I don’t know what will happen this time,” Tobias said.

Dockus, contacted by Miller’s office, denied a request for comment.

To download a copy of the findings, click here.

By Elena Grimm

Daily Chronicle

26 March 2009

Read the full report.

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SYCAMORE – More than 700 people filled the bleachers and folding chairs in Sycamore High School’s gymnasium Saturday morning; just a handful stayed for the entire public hearing on a proposed wind farm, which stretched into the late evening.

As of 9:30 p.m., the public hearing was still in session, extending beyond the Daily Chronicle’s deadline.

Guy White and Charles Hart may sit on opposite sides of the fence when it comes to the wind farm issue, but both said they stuck out the entire day because they had no other choice.

Rick Porter from Citizens for Open Government speaks during Saturday's public hearing at Sycamore High School. (Wendy Kemp – For the Daily Chronicle)

“It’s our life; it’s our history,” said Hart, a fifth-generation farmer in Milan Township who will have about about six turbines surrounding his property if the proposal is approved. “If this determines the lifestyle of yourself, your children and your grandchildren, don’t you think it’s important to stay around?”

White, an engineer and member of the Local 150 union, is passionate about utilizing wind as energy, and had a speech prepared for whenever his turn at the microphone would come Saturday night.

“This is what we need,” he said. “It’s the right thing to do.”

The question before DeKalb County Hearing Officer David Dockus – and that will be before the DeKalb County Board next month – is whether wind turbines fall into the category of an “essential service structure” under the county’s zoning ordinance. The project requires a special use permit, which is determined by the DeKalb County Board.

NextEra Energy Resources, owned by FPL Group, wants to build and operate a 151-turbine wind plant; 133 turbines are proposed for DeKalb County, and 18 have already been approved by the Lee County Board for portions of Lee County.

Hours of testimony were heard from company representatives, lawyers and more than two dozen nearby residents to gather information on the project and help the hearing officer make a recommendation to the DeKalb County Board. Public comments weren’t heard until after 9 p.m., following NextEra’s three-hour presentation and a question-answer session that lasted eight hours.

Company representatives responded to a number of concerns – some of which included what effects turbines could have on chickens, honeybees and people who suffer from migraines or attention-deficit disorder; proximity of turbines to pipelines and crop dusting planes; and the possibility of turbines falling or catching fire.

One of the main concerns raised Saturday was the amount of noise created by wind turbines. Company representatives say they will comply with standards set by the Illinois Pollution Control Board.

“IPCB standards in no way state people will not hear these turbines,” NextEra developer Tom Factor said. “Yes, there will be a quiet sound that will be variable. What causes annoyance to one person may be a quiet whisper to everyone else.”

Waterman resident Tammy Duriavich believed the noise would be more than a whisper.

“How is it right that FPL has the right to make me listen to your stereo 24/7 within the boundaries of my 10 acres?” she asked.

Though they packed the gym early Saturday morning in neon shirts, just a few labor union members stayed until the end of the hearing to voice their support for NextEra’s project as a way to create local jobs.

Anthony Pedroni, the company’s project director, said the company was committed “100 percent” to hire local labor during construction – at least 300 would work at the peak of construction – and that about 20 maintenance staff that will operate the turbines could also be hired locally.

Under the proposal, NextEra would lease the land used for the turbines, and projects $50 million total to be paid to 75 landowners over 30 years, according to company documents.

Company representatives also described a community partnership agreement program, in which 200 homeowners living within three-quarters of a mile of any turbine would be paid $1,000 a year for 30 years.

However, zoning staff preferred a property-value guarantee program over the community agreement.

“Why not do both? The property value guarantee, by your own testimony, is not going to cost you anything,” County Planner Paul Miller said, referring to earlier statements made by NextEra officials that wind farms do not adversely affect property values.

“We feel that we’ve come up with a better program,” Pedroni responded. “We believe that our proposal for a community partnership agreement impacts more citizens of the county.”

However, a property-value guarantee program would be considered if the county board wishes, he added.

Kathy Bock of Waterman asked NextEra representatives if they have any turbines in their backyards, to which John DiDonato, vice president of development, replied: “We have real-life experience of having 7,000 turbines in areas like this.”

The special use permit request for the wind farm will next be discussed by the county’s Planning and Zoning Committee on April 1, with the county board scheduled to take action April 15.

By ELENA GRIMM - egrimm@daily-chronicle.com

Web Link:  http://www.daily-chronicle.com/articles/2009/03/21/89657564/index.xml

Hundreds of men and women of all ages flocked to the Sycamore High School gymnasium, 555 Spartan Trail, at 9 a.m., on Saturday to voice their opinions in a public hearing regarding the proposal of a wind farm in DeKalb County.

What many of these attendees didn’t know was that the hearing would last until about 3:40 a.m. the next morning.

The original hearing on Feb. 19 was canceled due to overcrowding.

The proposal included a plan for 129 turbines to be erected throughout the county and lasted until about 3:40 a.m.

DeKalb hearing officer David Dockus presided over the hearing. He said the purpose of the public hearing was to view all of the evidence and to listen to all opinions, not to make a verdict.

“I am not a judge … nor is this a courtroom,” Dockus said.

Paul Miller, DeKalb County planning director, stressed the importance of the hearing.

“This will be [the public’s] one and only opportunity to ask questions,” Miller said. “There will be no future opportunity for public input or commentary.”

Once the introductions were finished, representatives from NextEra Energy Resources, owned by FPL Group, pitched the idea of the wind farm to the community.

Project director Anthony Pedroni gave an overview of the turbine placement in the county. If the plan is approved, five turbines will be built in Clinton, 22 in Afton, 29 in Shabbona and 73 in Milan. Shabbona will also be the location for the operation center, Pedroni said.

The proposed turbines are to be nearly silent, producing no more than 45 decibels of sound. John DiDonato, FPL executive director said, however, the noise will be audible.

“There will be a quiet sound,” DiDonato said.

Cheryl Tate, Illinois Wind Watch affiliate, found FPL’s pitch to be misleading to the community.
“I felt the representation from the wind developers was not accurate or true,” Tate said. “All of their studies were skewed to their perspective.”

Despite some attendees’ apprehension, DiDonato said the goal of FPL is to help the community be more comfortable with the wind farming process.

“We want to be your neighbors, and we hope to be your friends,” DiDonato said.

By KIM SKIBINSKI
Web Link: http://www.star.niu.edu/article/6827
Last updated on 03/22/2009 at 6:48 p.m.

Next Era Energy wants to build 133 wind turbines across 70 miles in Afton, Clinton, Milan and Shabbona townships.

Several hundred residents and business owners showed up to the hearing at Sycamore High School. Many feel the turbines would destroy their property values and think they’re not efficient enough to make it worth it.

“We’re worried about the actual claims that are being made in the case of the number of homes being served. And the noise level that they’re talking about here sounds to us to already be in violation of the Illinois EPA.”

Illinois Wind Watch reps say Next Era’s windfarm would be ten decibels louder than Illinois standards.

If approved, this will become the first windfarm in DeKalb County. The project could create about 150 construction jobs and 15 permanent jobs.

Web Link:  http://www.wifr.com/home/headlines/41638552.html

21 March 2009

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County board member seeks city’s input

GENOA – DeKalb County Board Member Mike Haines addressed the Genoa City Council last week asking for feedback on two issues: a133-unit windmill operation proposed by NextEra Energy Resources, and a solution to the county’s need for more landfill space.

Haines represents District 2, which includes Kingston and Genoa, and already had addressed Kingston trustees. The wind project under discussion would include portions of Milan, Afton, Clinton and Shabbona townships.

“All the tough decisions are when there’s no right or wrong answer,” Haines said. “There will be good people on both sides of the issue.”

After a rescheduled public haring, the county board may vote on the issue in April.

“I’ve gotten e-mails from homeowners who don’t want this (windmill development) to happen. And I probably wouldn’t want to look out the window and see them either,” Haines said. “Also, the county portion of the revenue is only 12 percent – $230,000. The biggest benefit is to school districts, because the land use changes from agricultural to industrial.”

Farmers with wind turbines on their property are paid annually for the duration of the project, which could be for decades.

Haines said some people have told him they like the windmills, saying in effect, “They look really cool.”

Haines said he has not yet decided how he will vote, and wants to hear from more people in his district.

“If this was for the public good it would be different, but this is to benefit the (company) shareholders, and some people’s quality of life will change a lot.”

He said some of the negatives of the wind turbines can include noise, potential effect on property values and a “fluttering” of light, caused by interaction of sun and wind turbine blades. However, he said the company would guarantee property values for anyone within three-quarters of a mile from a wind turbine.

He said the turbines might also affect radio and TV reception.

Haines also discussed landfill concerns and a proposal the county board is expected to vote on in March.

“The county has a landfill south of the tollway, at Gurler and Somonauk (roads),” he said. “We could find a new dump, or we could pay to truck (waste) out of the county, which would cost more, or we could increase the size of the current dump.”

“The last option was the recommendation of the Solid Waste Management Committee, and it would keep our fees low.”

Part of that solution, however, would mean accepting solid waste from outside the county because Waste Management makes more money on outside waste.

“That could bring into the county about $2 million a year, and it could help pay for a new jail. We could build a new jail with garbage,” Haines said. “Waste Management said we have a dumper’s dream – 90 feet of clay (as a liner for the dump).”

Haines said his strong interest in recycling has him leaning in the direction of a landfill expansion. He said methane gas emitted from the expanded landfill could be used later for fuel.

By DIANE STRAND – dstrand@chroniclenewsgroup.com

Web Link: http://www.midweeknews.com/articles/2009/02/26/11212175/index.xml

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