Skip to main content

Fighting Big Wind Continues: A New Opposition Group Forms in Champaign County!


Changes in the wind

By Brenda Burns - Managing Editor - Urbana Daily Citizen
January 25, 2018
Midge and Robert Custer stand near one of the out-buildings on their mini-farm on Parkview Road. The tongue-in-cheek message on the roof behind them could foreshadow Downsize Farm’s entry into the latest chapter of the Buckeye Wind saga. Downsize Farm is a Medicaid-certified facility for developmentally-disabled persons. The Custers are concerned about how the operations of a wind farm with turbines sited to the east and the west of them might adversely affect their clients. [photo credit: Brenda Burns of the Urbana Daily Citizen
Champaign County commissioners, several local townships, the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation and a new citizens group have filed notices to intervene in the amended Buckeye Wind/Champaign Wind project, according to case filings listed on the Ohio Power Siting Board’s website. The deadline for petitions to intervene was Monday, Jan. 22.
Named Champaign County Townships United, the new intervening citizens group formed shortly after learning that a previously-intervening group known as Union Neighbors United (UNU) had reached an agreement with EverPower in December. Neither side – EverPower nor UNU – has divulged the terms of the “confidential” agreement. READ MORE on the Urbana Daily Citizen website HERE:

Popular posts from this blog

Safe setbacks: How far should wind turbines be from homes?

Safe setbacks: How far should wind turbines be from homes? Let's start with what one manufacturer considers to be safe for its workers. The safety regulations for the Vestas V90, with a 300-ft rotor span and a total height of 410 feet, tell operators and technicians to stay 1,300 feet from an operating turbine -- over 3 times its total height -- unless absolutely necessary. That already is a much greater distance than many regulations currently require as a minimum distance between wind turbines and homes, and it is concerned only with safety, not with noise, shadow flicker, or visual intrusion. In February 2008, a 10-year-old Vestas turbine with a total height of less than 200 feet broke apart in a storm. Large pieces of the blades flew as far as 500 meters (1,640 feet) -- more than 8 times its total height. The Fuhrländer turbine planned for Barrington, R.I., is 328 feet tall with a rotor diameter of 77 meters, or just over 250 feet (sweeping more than an acre of vertical air spa...

What Can You Do?

We need to take action IMMEDIATELY to halt this project. The people of Champaign County are just now becoming aware of Everpower's proposal to change ALL of our lives forever. Let your friends and family know that this is happening without your consent. A project of this size, sited this close to people, is unprecedented. Are you prepared for you and your family to be an experiment? Especially without any meaningful due process, as is the right of every citizen? There are approximately 60 leaseholders (no one can be sure as the wind companies refuse to release the information). There are approximately 38,900 non-leaseholders in the county. Why are a few dozen people dictating the future of all of us without more debate? The only people benefiting from this scheme are a few leaseholders and a multi-national corporation, who has no plans to engage in any profit-sharing from the sale of Champaign County's wind. They specialize in pitting neighbor against neighbor and mak...

Abandoned Wind Turbines Worries Officials

Abandoned wind turbines worry officials by Associated Press KTVB.COM Posted on October 23, 2010 at 4:44 PM Updated yesterday at 11:32 AM BURLEY, Idaho -- Cassia County officials in southern Idaho are considering an ordinance that would require wind turbines to be decommissioned by their owners and not the county should the turbines stop turning a profit. The Times-News reports that County Commissioner Paul Christensen has asked planning and zoning to start drafting an ordinance to handle such problems in the future. Planning and Zoning administrator Kerry McMurray says dismantling one of the turbines would be expensive. The turbines can be up to 328 feet tall with 100-foot-long blades and profitable life spans of up to 20 years. McMurray says if the towers were abandoned due to bankruptcy, removing them would be the responsibility of the property owners. McMurray says most landowners probably couldn't afford that. source: www.ktvb.com