By STAN MADDUX

Indiana Correspondent

NEW CASTLE, Ind. — Plans for an Indiana wind farm have gone up in smoke, but those looking to rekindle the fire aren’t going away.

A tie vote by the Henry County Planning Commission on July 23 spelled defeat for a proposal requiring majority support. Big Blue River Wind Farm LLC out of Houston, Texas, was seeking a permit to erect 38 turbines in the Middletown and New Castle area, roughly 50 miles east of Indianapolis.

Jim McShirley, who lives on 20 acres about a mile from one of the proposed turbines, said he’s not against green energy. But he said Henry County has too many residents to place 500-foot-tall wind turbines – and possibly more later – if the proposal is approved.

“We are exceedingly too densely populated,” he said.

According to the company’s permit application, the farm as currently proposed would generate up to 132 megawatts of electricity. The power would go onto a grid through an interconnection with high voltage transmission lines of Indiana-Michigan Power Co.

Construction was slated to begin in the spring of 2020, with the farm operating by later that year. Hundreds of residents are opposed, though, some fearful enough about the potential impact on physical health and property values filing a lawsuit to try to stop it.

According to Big Blue River, the project would bring $160 million in capital investment along with additional local property tax revenue and upgrades to roads and other municipal infrastructure, totaling more than $20 million over the life of the project. Another $23 million, it said, would go to landowners allowing turbines on their properties through annual lease payments.

The company projected that about 200 jobs during construction and 10-12 long-term jobs to operate and maintain the wind farm would be created.

McShirley said a wind farm would jeopardize the economic health of a county that seems positioned to tap in the growth happening in surrounding areas. He said development cannot occur near turbines and that some wind energy-producing counties have realized noticeable population declines.

“We will be forever entombed by these turbines and never, ever be allowed to grow,” he said.

Big Blue River cited a study by MIT showing no clear evidence of harm to human health from noise produced by wind turbines. The company also claimed people worldwide live and work near more than 340,000 wind turbines with no health or safety effects, and that wind power represents a growing percentage of the energy generated in several states.

During optimal conditions, wind is the source of close to 40 percent of the power in Texas and more than 60 percent of the power in Colorado, according to the company.

The wind farm would be a project of Calpine Corp., a Fortune 500 company also based in Houston. Calpine is billed as the largest producer of electricity from natural gas and geothermal sources in the United States. The firm has 79 power-generating plants, mostly in the U.S. with some in Canada and Mexico.

Its only power generating facility in the Midwest is at Zion, Ill., north of Chicago.

Annie Wilson-Miller, another resident about a mile from one of the proposed turbines in Henry County, said there is evidence linking turbines to health problems from lack of proper sleep. She said the sound produced by turbines is not audible but registers within the brain to prevent a deep, restful sleep, particularly among the elderly and very young.

The stress from insufficient sleep can result in health problems and aggravate existing medical conditions like heart disease, she said. “If this happens night after night, then you get into some health problems later on,” Wilson-Miller said.

Her husband, Don Miller, said the plan is to keep having a physical presence at meetings to speak out just in case the proposal is revisited. He has videotaped each of the planning commission meetings for more than two years, since the wind farm proposal first surfaced.

“You just have to be vigilant. We have to be physically present to watch what’s happening,” he said.

Normally, a request not approved must wait one year before another permit application can be submitted, said Henry County Zoning Administrator Darrin Jacobs. He fully expects the developers to explore the possibility of court action and look at whether the tie vote could be a loophole for bringing the request back to the commission before the required waiting period is up.

“Like anything where major decisions are made, there’s obviously going to be attorneys involved to kind of pore over anything,” he added.