Spring, turbines, & bricks

 Signs of spring

Crocuses are blooming!

On Sunday I saw a turkey vulture soaring overhead. Walmart is preparing their garden section in their parking lot. My rhubarb thinks it is time to start poking above ground.

For our area this has been a very mild winter and you can see that in the plot of ice cover of the Great Lakes. (From the website at https://www.glerl.noaa.gov/data/ice/glicd/timeseries/2024.png )

JC BZA and Plan Commission meetings

I had to make a choice on Monday evening, should I go to the Rensselaer City Council meeting or the Jasper County Board of Public Works and Plan Commission meetings. They both were meeting at 6:00. I decided to skip the City Council meeting because the agenda looked routine but the Plan Commission had an item about a proposed wind farm in Carpenter Township that had attracted a lot of attention.

The BZA and Plan Commission had been holding their meetings in the Court House but moved these meetings to the Sparling Annex because they expected a large crowd. They were not disappointed. It was standing room only, and the number of people standing seemed to me to exceed those seated. This was the first meeting of the year for the BZA and it began with the Board re-electing its officers: Scott Walstra as president and Kent Korniak as vice president. It then approved the November minutes for its last meeting. The only cause before it was a request for a special exception to use an existing house in Jordan Township for short-term rentals as an Airbnb. The owners thought that there was an opportunity to serve work crews and agri-tourism. The house is very isolated. The request was approved with the condition that the special exception not transfer if the property is sold.

The Plan Commission met next and those attending for the wind-farm conversation had to wait until other business was conducted. The Commission had a new member, Summer Brown from the Extension Office, replacing Brian Overstreet. It reelected its officers, Kent Korniak as President, Vince Urbano as VP, and Justin Rodibaugh as Secretary. It approved minutes from its last meeting, from September 23, 2023.

The first cause was a rezone from A1 to A2 in Union Township so a person could purchase the land to build a house. This had been on the January agenda, but that meeting was canceled because of weather. The second and third causes were for the same property, a change in zoning from A1 to A2 and approval of a two-lot subdivision. The property is near the southern limit of Marion Township and if I heard right, the purpose of the rezoning was to avoid the road-frontage requirements of A1 zoning. Both requests were approved. The final preliminary cause was another two-lot subdivision, this one in Wheatfield Township along SR 10. The property is one acre and is zoned general business, so it will not be used for housing. It was also approved.

Finally the meeting was ready for its long consideration of a request for a wind-farm overlay district in Carpenter Township. The Commissioners in 2019 approved an ordinance that prohibits wind farms from most of Jasper County with the exception of Carpenter Township and a sliver of Jordan Township. A designation of an overlay district is a step toward establishing a wind farm; actual placement of wind turbines would still need approval from the BZA.

The proposed wind farm is a project of EDP Renewables. It would have 45 turbines and produce at capacity 200 megawatts of electricity, which NIPSCO has agreed to purchase. The company has signed up 80 landowners with 20,000 acres. (They have also signed up 60 people with neighbor agreements. They will not have anything built on their land but are paid for being near a windmill.) Remington has passed an ordinance modeled on the County ordinance that has areas in which wind turbines are not allowed and areas in which they are. The pitch from EDP Renewables stressed the economic benefits of the proposed farm. Over the course of the lifetime of the project, it would pay $70 million to landowners and $35 million in taxes, with half of that going to schools. The road-use agreement it has would have the company spend $25 million in improving roads. The company says it plans to build a maintenance building in Carpenter Township. 

Whatever the Plan Commission decides will only be a recommendation to the Commissioners, who have final say. Only the parcels that have an agreement with EDP Renewables were included in the proposed overlay district.

Then it was time for public comment. Most of the speakers were opposed to the wind farm. Several wanted to slow the process down. Some were concerned about the agreements already in place, the road-use and decommissioning agreements. There were concerns about what would happen to the blades of the windmills; they do not seem to be recyclable. There were concerns about noise and a feeling that they were not right for our County. One lady seemed to mostly concerned about the CO2 pipeline. One speaker pointed out that the only reason that wind and solar projects were happening was because of federal tax incentives, and he thought that implied that they should be opposed locally. A couple people thought that the windmills would prevent medical evacuation helicopters from landing so there was a safety issue. One person expressed concern that if they were allowed in Carpenter Township, they would inevitably spread north all the way to the Kankakee. 

There were several speakers in favor of the project. A person from White County representing relatives who had signed agreements with EDP Renewables said that hundreds of wind turbines co-exist nicely with farming in White and Benton Counties and provide substantial economic benefits. 

The discussion then returned to the Board. There were questions about the airport and wildlife. Turbine placement must be approved by the FAA and wind farms need to get approval from State and Federal wildlife agencies. Finally Vince Urbano made a motion to table the matter until an independent consultant had reviewed all the agreements, noting that this was a big project and the County had made mistakes handling the big solar park projects. However, that motion did not fit the recommendation categories that were allowed. So he changed his motion to an unfavorable recommendation with the suggestion that the whole matter be reviewed before it was again considered.  (The actual motion was quite long.) That passed on a six to one vote.

The meeting adjourned at 8:30. The next meeting will be on March 18 if there is an agenda. 

Busy crews

On Monday a large crew began removing bricks from the intersection of Van Rensselaer and Harrison.The bricks are being cleaned and then will be stored until they are replaced on the streets.

The bricks are lifted from the street with this machine that scoops them up.

Driving in downtown Rensselaer on Monday was a challenge. In addition to parts of Harrison and VanRensselaer Streets being closed for the Brick Streets Project, There were holes being dug in Front Street and another part of VanRensselaer. I think they were attaching shut-off valves on water mains. 

Another crew was busy removing the hackberry tree next to the LaRue Pool. 

They did not finish by Monday evening and were back on the site Tuesday morning.

Finally, work has begun developing Filson Park, though I did not see any activity on Monday.