The question that surfaced a few times during several meetings about a wind farm in Allen County: What’s in it financially for the county?
Simply put, it will provide peripheral income for landowners, short-term construction jobs, permanent employment for maintenance and management personnel and, eventually, property tax revenue.
Landowners first.
EDP Renewals, which will build and own up to 60 turbines in the wind farm, has acquired lease rights to more than 14,000 acres involving 60 landowners.
Leases give owners annual payments per acre. More to the point, landowners reap annual payments determined by each linear foot of transmission lines crossing their properties, similar payments for roads leading from public access to turbines, and, the bigger windfall, a payment for each turbine, based on megawatt output of the turbine, or about three megawatts each.
Turbine payments are the most substantial.
Stevee Kennard, project manager, declined to reveal what specific payments would be — there being a proprietary arrangement between EDP and landowners — but a single turbine and all factors associated with it would net a landowner in the neighborhood of $10,000 a year. That number came from a landowner who divulged it to the Register on condition of anonymity.
In addition to owners of leased land, landowners within the confines of the wind farm and adjacent to it will receive $300 a year as a goodwill gesture, as Rorik Peterson, EDP director of development, put it.
Peterson said several times that, once the wind farm goes online, 12 to 15 employees, trained in maintenance, repair and management skills, will work daily with needs of the wind farm.
An opportunity to train potential employees at the Regional Rural Technology Center near LaHarpe has been mentioned. The presence of wind farms, here and in many other places, has mushroomed in recent years and attendant jobs have increased as well.
While whoever oversees and works with turbines may live anywhere, those attached to EDP’s in Allen County might well live locally and patronize local merchants.
Property tax revenue will be the biggest single financial advantage countywide.
Kennard said property tax models developed for EDP’s Allen County wind farm indicate that in year 11 of generation, the company’s tax bill will be $1.25 million.
Year 11 is significant because state law exempts wind farms from property taxes for 10 years. Previously, before legislators made the threshold change, wind farms had lifetime property tax exemptions.
Distinguishing between the two exemption periods is important.
To wit:
