Cascade Village Board approves wind turbine project

CASCADE – Indicating that they believed they had the support of a majority of their constituents and that it will be financially prudent for the village to do so, the members of the Cascade Village Board voted unanimously Tuesday evening to proceed with a project to construct two 100-kilowatt wind turbines to provide electric power for the village’s wastewater treatment plant.

This vote came despite the vigorous opposition of a small group of village and neighboring town of Lyndon residents who would rather see the installation of solar power units instead, who fear a host of negative impacts from the wind turbines, and who demanded a guarantee from the Village Board that such impacts would not occur. They particularly wanted assurances that the turbines would not be audible beyond 492 feet (a distance established in tests by the independent National Renewal Energy Laboratory).

Before the vote, village President David Jaeckels asked the trustees to share their thoughts on the proposal by Randy Faller of Kettle View Renewable Energy LLC of Random Lake. He noted that several residents had contacted him recently on the issue, including two who had changed their minds after earlier signing a petition opposing the project.

Trustee Jim Larson said he likes both solar and wind power as renewable sources of energy but decided in favor of the wind turbine venture based on the net construction costs to the village and the projected payback timetable.

“I wish there was a way to make everybody happy,” he remarked.

Larson suspected that more village residents would be upset if the board did not proceed with the project than there are who oppose it and that even more people would be upset “if we did nothing at all.” He said a solar installation fitted to the power use at the wastewater plant would have to be quite a bit larger but indicated the village could look at smaller solar power applications.

Faller’s analysis presented at earlier meetings and in his consultant’s report estimated that each turbine could provide up to 58 percent of the electric power needed at the wastewater treatment plant. There would be a metered credit with WE Energies at times of excess production and a charge from the utility when the wind speed is not high enough to have the turbines produce adequate power.

Trustee Todd Starnitcky was convinced by the economic comparisons and reported he had not heard anything negative about the proposal from the people he talked to at the recent Cascade picnic.

“Wind power is the way to go” for several reasons, Dan Mayer stated.

Gerald Hendrickson suggested the board would be remiss if it spent about $300,000 more for a comparable size solar project which would also have more than double the projected payable timetable. He also cited the positive feedback he received from the current users of the Northwind 100 unit.

Trustee Joe Harrison said he had heard from three to four persons opposed to the project and about four to five times that many who favor it. “The economics of wind power make sense.”

To a question by Trustee Brenda Kunkel on why the village embarked on this project, Jaeckels said it was a way to offset the likelihood of ever-increasing electric power costs from the village’s supplier WE Energies.

“I don’t like to upset people,” Jaeckels indicated. “That’s why I called the extra meetings” (May 26 and Aug. 6). He declared that it would be “a disservice to the village residents” if the board did not approve a project which has the “overwhelming support of its constituents.”

Not so, village resident Paul Lodl objected. Jaeckels allowed Lodl to read a letter addressed to the Village Board before the formal vote was taken.

Lodl questioned the annual cost numbers for renewable energy sources if the wind turbines were only in service for the five-year warranty stated in the proposal compared to the 20 years or more promised for a solar power unit. Based on the costs presented by Faller and Edward Zinthefer of Arch Electric LLC, Lodl indicated the annual costs would be $60,349 for the wind turbines and $32,347 for a solar unit over five and 20 years respectively.

Some residents would be negatively affected by the installation of wind turbines, more specifics should be provided on the costs associated with wind turbines, and more than one proposal on solar power should be sought, Lodl insisted. During the “public concerns” item on the agenda, he challenged the board to approve a formal guarantee that residents would not suffer from any direct or indirect effects of the turbines.

Jaeckels and other board members replied that they could and would not do that. Lodl wanted to know why not, noting “we were told we have nothing to worry about.”

“We’ve been given lots of information and there’s no hard evidence of any problems,” Starnitcky replied. “But we cannot guarantee anything.”

“It’s totally impossible to predict the future,” Jaeckels added. But he and other board members tried to assure the doubters that the board would certainly address any problems that might arise pertaining to the wind turbines, which have a monopole height of 120 feet and blades of 69 feet.

Sue Lodl was sure that noise would be “a huge issue.” Another resident warned that the Village Board would be sued because of its decision, perhaps on grounds that property values would drop.

To that, Jaeckels read a brief letter from local Realtor Peggy Breitzman. Indicating that the village’s water tower did not hurt property values, she suggested the same could be true regarding the wind turbines or that they might even boost the values.

When Sue Lodl again pleaded for a guarantee, Trustee Dan Mayer said “we’re acting in the best interests of the village. We’ve made our decision. It’s done.”

It’s not done, nearby town of Lyndon resident and project opponent Sandra Hoesel told The Review. With the help of environmental issues specialist attorney Elizabeth Gamsky Rich of Plymouth, she said a complaint has been lodged with Sheboygan County District Attorney Joseph De Cecco and Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen that the village is refusing to comply with open records requests regarding the wind turbine project.

Requests addressed to village Clerk Sherry Gallagher were made June 12 and 30 and July 22 and 31. Attorney Rich and the clients she represents want access to any documents on soil samples in the vicinity of the sewage treatment plant, pertinent engineering and environmental studies, complete zoning maps for the village and town, grant applications regarding the project, any land acquisition activities by the village since Jan. 1 and related materials, detailed financial data regarding the project, a wind turbine noise analysis, and all communications with Faller and Robert Waara (also of Kettle View Renewable Energy).

Given his limited time and experience in the wind energy field (this would be his first installation project), Hoesel questions Faller’s credentials. She also questions the board’s decision on using Faller as its consultant to the village on the project and then also selecting his bid (there was one other bidder) for carrying out the project. She also alleges that Gallagher is not properly fulfilling her legal duties as village clerk, particularly on grounds of not providing the documents asked for by attorney Rich.

Faller told The Review that he hopes to obtain final approvals for the project yet this month and that this would include grants of $150,000 each from WE Energies and the Wisconsin Focus on Energy program for each turbine – a contingency point for the project. Given that timetable and assuming approval on the grants, he expects construction to begin by October for one turbine and the other to follow in the spring of 2010.

Addressing the report on the Aug. 6 information meeting in the Aug. 11 edition of The Review, Faller said the setback of the turbines would be 804 feet from the nearest residence (a board member had said 600 to 700 feet at the Aug. 6 meeting), that the petition provided to the village by objectors contained only seven names (not several dozen), and that his comments about the major grants being “pre-approved” were misunderstood (he meant to say he expected them to be approved once a formal application was submitted).

In related activities, the Village Board approved a land swap, recommended unanimously earlier in the evening by its Planning Commission, with neighboring landowner Jerold Berg. Technically, the village is annexing a 40-by-1,089-foot strip to create a land bridge that brings the wastewater treatment plant into the village (it had been a village-owned parcel in the town of Lyndon without a contiguous link to the village). To complete the deal, it returned a one-acre parcel at the northern edge of Berg’s Northern Meadows subdivision that had been considered as a potential site for another village well.