History, meetings, and more about solar plans

The Jasper County Historical Society met on Tuesday evening and after a brief business meeting, was entertained by Three Longs and A Short, a barbershop quartet.

At its business meeting Dr. William White, Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Purdue, thanked several members Historical Society (and especially Judy Kanne) for getting him involved in reviewing and sorting the papers of Charles Halleck from Halleck's days as prosecuting attorney. Dr. White wrote an article about what he found in the papers that was accepted in the Indiana Magazine of History, a peer reviewed journal published by Indiana University. You can see the abstract of the article here. Judy Kanne announced that the Society has very little about the Chicago Bears training camps in Rensselaer and requested anyone who has anything to let her or others at the Museum see it. They can copy pictures or papers; it does not need to be a donation.

The Jasper County Council also met on Tuesday evening. It has a new attorney, Jacob Ahler. He has served as attorney for Wolcott and Brook and attends City Council meetings in Rensselaer when Michael Riley cannot. He has had experience with the Indiana Board of Accounts and said he really likes serving as an attorney for government bodies.

Sheriff-elect Williamson presented the Council with a salary contract, which has been an annual item on the agenda. The discussion got bogged down into technical details of what state law and regulations require. State law gives two options for Sheriff's pay. One is to pay him 60% of what the prosecuting attorney makes and the other is to have a separate contract that allows him a percentage of tax warrants and other items. The prosecuting attorney is paid by the state at a state-mandated rate, which for next year will be $147,000. However, the County chips in an extra $5000. It was unclear which amount the 60% would be applied to. In addition, the County budget, which has been approved, has $86,263 in it for Sheriff's pay, which is a bit less than the 60% figure. Because the Council could not resolve the technical problems, the meeting was not adjourned at its end but continued to Wednesday at 5 pm.

The Sheriff also asked the Council to approve a contract for legal services for the Department. The Department uses a lawyer who is well versed on laws about the Sheriff's office and his advice has been very helpful in the past. The Council approved the contract.

Ray Seif, the Airport Manager, requested and received a transfer of funds. He also updated the Council on what was happening at the Airport. He said that currently the Airport cannot handle larger business jets. The runway is 4000 feet long, which is plenty long for small planes but not for some of the corporate jets in use. Also, those who fly these jets want hanger space for parking in bad weather and the airport lacks that. The Airport would like a second runway of at least 5000 feet, though 6000 would be better.

The Council approved several other transfers of funds, one of which was for $28.35. It approved a job description for the position of part-time sanitarian, a recent hire to replace a departing full-time sanitarian in the Health Department. It also set its meeting schedule for 2019: 1-15, 2-19, 3-19, 4-16, 5-21, 6-18, 7-16, 8-20, 9-17, 10-15, 11-19, and 12-17. (Those should all be the third Tuesday of the month.) It made appointments for various Boards, approving continuation of existing members with one exception. Gerrett DeVries resigned from the Plan Commission and Steve Jordan agreed to replace him.

The final item was a briefing from a representative from Orion Renewables on their plans for a large solar park in Kankakee Township. He began with some background on solar. His company has been mostly involved in wind farms and he said that solar did not make economic sense for the Midwest five years ago. However, since then the costs of panels has fallen so much that it now does make sense even though the Midwest does not have nearly as many sunny days as the desert Southwest. It helps that solar parks tend to produce when demand is highest, during the day and especially during hot summer days when there is heavy use of air conditioning. Solar alone would not make sense but solar as a part of an array of other sources does. Gas can be used to fill in gaps and battery technology has improved greatly in the past few years. He said that NIPSCO did an analysis of its energy needs for the next twenty years and he was surprised that they decided to go with renewables. He was asked what the lifetime of a solar installation was and he said 30 years was the expected life. The utilities sign contracts agreements that cover 25 to 30 years and it would not make sense to have these contracts if the life of the facilities was less than 30 years. The costs of solar parks is almost entirely up front. Once installed, there is very little cost to them because they employ virtually no people and use no fuel.

He was asked about the cost of removal when the facility was no longer needed. He said that unlike wind turbines, there is no concrete base. The steel poles are driven into the ground and can be pulled back out. The panels can be recycled.

Orion has arranged the lease of 2800 to 3000 acres of land near the Shahfer Plant. It has an interconnect agreement with NIPSCO that will allow it to access the grid. He noted that much of the land that they are leasing is sandy and not the best farm land, which was a reason many of the farmers were agreeable to leasing. The farmers also found it a way of diversifying.

Orion does not yet have a buyer for the electricity and they will not build unless they have one. They also will not build without a tax abatement. He said that other counties give tax abatements for solar facilities and Jasper County would not be a competitive building site without one. Further, an abatement allows them to be more competitive in selling power, which can be important in getting a buyer to sign a contract.

The scale of the project will depend on how much power they can sell. If fully built, it will generate over 250 megawatts and cost about $255 million (which will help offset the loss of assessed valuation when NIPSCO shuts down its generating station.) We will undoubtedly hear more about this in the next few months.

Jasper the Buffalo is back on the second floor of the Court House.