Registered letters were recently sent to ìadjacent property ownersî within the 25,000 acre footprint of this 30 megawatt wind farm project, informing them that another re-zoning hearing will be scheduled soon. This latest hearing follows Board of County Commissioners approval of the project in December of 2013. That timely approval allowed Next Era to qualify for the now expired Power Production Tax Credit. A year after the expiration of the tax credit, Next Era plans to submit an amended ìrezoning overlayî that adjusts turbine numbers and locations, locates two concrete batch plants, relocates the operations and maintenance facility, and realigns the transmission line.The Next Era letters are addressed to ìadjacent land owners.î That is Next Era speak for ìnon-participatingî land owners that will be living in the middle of a forest of turbine towers, but who are not tapped into the lucrative tax money cash flow.Unfortunately, based on the appalling performance of our Board of County Commissioners in December of 2013, approval of this ìrezoning overlayî by the BOCC has probably already been arranged and is thus a formality at best.Without the guaranteed cash flow from hard working middle class taxpayers, there would be no money to pay ìparticipating land ownersî and the Next Era wind farm would be an economic loss.The fact that this wind farm is actually being built in the current climate of declining conventional energy prices is a testament to the nearly unlimited power of government entities and crony capitalists to simply overrun the property rights of ìnon-participating land ownersî.L. J. Mott, PEConsulting Power Systems EngineerCalhan
