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| Zoning of wind turbines on hold in an Ohio town |
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By ANN HINCH
Assistant Editor
UNION TOWNSHIP, Ohio — Even the cleanest energy has its problems, if growing pains in two Ohio counties are anything to go by.
The only commercial wind turbines in the state at present are in Bowling Green, according to Scott Shockling, assistant prosecutor for Champaign County. He said a few of the surrounding electric utilities providers have formed a partnership to harness wind energy.
Two companies – Everpower Renewables of New York and Invenergy, LLC of Chicago – are now looking to install wind turbines on private property in Champaign and Logan counties, the energy from which they would sell to public utilities, according to Kevin Sheen of Everpower community outreach and development.
“We’re still really assessing the potential there,” he said, adding Everpower has a radio-type anemometer tower in each county to measure windspeed and other meteorological data, which it must collect for at least one year.
Invenergy has a tower in Champaign County, said Shockling. Both Champaign towers are in Union Township, part of which is located on a glacial ridge running through both counties. Everpower is pursuing projects in four other states, as well, and Sheen said the concerns he runs into the most are local residents worried about the visual impact of nearly 500-feet-tall turbines and their base setback from property lines and homes.
“Anytime you have development of any type, people are facing change, there’s going to be resistance and there’s going to have to be some education,” he said.
Shockling said there are local citizens’ groups, most notably Union Neighbors United in Union Township and Save Western Ohio in Logan County, opposing the agreements some landowners – including farmers – are signing with the two companies. (He explained these are options contracts for future turbine erection; nothing is immediate or promised by the companies.)
Ohio law, he said, allows townships to establish their own zoning resolutions, which can be amended through certain processes. One of these allows citizens to draft proposed legislation on which the township’s board of trustees may vote, once it goes through the local planning and zoning commissions for review.
Shockling said Union Neighbors United ran a proposal through the Logan Union Champaign Regional Planning Commission, which it then withdrew before the Union Township Zoning Commission could deliberate it last week. Township Trustee Howard Peters said thus far, the zoning commission has “felt the restrictions are too much” in the proposals it has received, and the trustees have agreed when items have come to a vote.
As for the recent proposal withdrawal, “I think what this group is more interested in now, is the prosecutor (Nick Selvaggio) is suggesting a study group,” Peters said.
“They (are) just going to try to come up with their own regulations. They wouldn’t have any authority, but they would present it to the zoning board,” whose opinion does carry some power with the voting board of trustees – Shockling explained all three trustees must unanimously oppose a zoning decision to defeat it.
Shockling said the study group is his boss’ idea, but “we don’t want the perception to be that it’s his committee,” he emphasized. Instead, Selvaggio wants it to be a community effort using officials and citizens, to make recommendations to zoning officials and trustees, based on the model of a similar work group in Logan County.
In Ohio, Shockling said public utilities are exempt from township zoning, but Everpower and Invenergy do not qualify as utilities. Everpower will likely get the go-ahead on permits for construction on projects in New York and Pennsylvania next year, Sheen said, and these experiences have taught him local legislative bodies are usually the ones that make final decisions – not the state.
Perhaps the last issue that raised such similar concerns in Ohio, as in other states, was placement of cellular phone towers. Shockling said the Ohio Supreme Court eventually ruled that cellular companies do qualify as public utilities, but provided a narrow exception in its opinion that townships may regulate placement of towers in residential areas.
As for whether farms are considered “residential,” he said, “That’s a matter still of some debate.”
Local government is looking to other states and wind farms for precedent guidance where possible. “The one thing I’ve learned about this is your power may not be coming from where you think,” said Shockling. “It might be hundreds of miles away.” |
| 10/3/2007 |
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