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. 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. The date of the public hearing is tentatively scheduled for 9 a.m. on May 11, Vary said. 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.
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.
1 April 2009
