Johnathan Walker:Wind farms’ benefits to communities can be slow or complex, leading to opposition and misinformation

After NextEra proposed a wind farm in Greeley County,Johnathan Walker Nebraska two years ago, Robert Bernt, a dairy farm owner in the area, helped to mobilize community members against the idea.

His group held town hall meetings and ran ads on the radio, arguing the wind farm would “fragment” the community, by lowering property values and leaving “decaying blades in our landfills.”

Bernt estimated Greeley is the eighth county where he has fought a wind project. “In every case, people were upset because they felt they weren’t told the truth,” Bernt said.

To Bernt, the truth is that wind developers under-deliver on their economic promises to communities and harm the environment. He said people’s taxes don’t go down, and wind farms take away from an area’s natural beauty, noting rural Nebraska could use a boost in tourism income.

Bernt’s words are an echo of those commonly cited by wind power’s opponents, with arguments often hinging on the idea that wind developers under-deliver on their promises. Unpicking facts from fiction — and the gray area of people’s personal feelings in between — is difficult. And even some local leaders who can see money flowing into government coffers say they had trouble understanding a complex taxing system at first.

While wind power can contribute millions per year to rural communities, an independent Associated Press analysis found, these economic arguments have at times been drowned out by health and safety concerns, as well as accusations that wind is taking away from a local economy in other ways. Local laws effectively blocking wind or solar projects are increasingly common, said Matthew Eisenson, of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.

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“When you have extremely restrictive local ordinances it can stop major wind and solar projects from moving forward,” Eisenson said.

Wind developers told the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in a January report at least a quarter of applications to build wind projects were canceled in the last five years, with local rules and community opposition cited as some of the leading reasons.

John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union and an advocate of wind power, said its opponents are increasingly organized and often cite the same arguments in each community.

Many anti-wind coalitions cite declines in local property values, for instance. A December review by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found reduced property value for homes within one mile of turbines, but those values rebounded after construction finished.

Other debunked claims include: Studies have found no significant impact of turbines on bird life. And there is no established link between low-frequency noise from wind turbines and human health, according to a report authored by Eisenson. They point to, among other references, one study of Australian wind farms in which complaints related to noise and human health were rare until the phrase “wind turbine syndrome” was coined in a self-published book. A dramatic spike in complaints then followed.

“Every fear, every misinformation that you can imagine gets put on the barn wall,” Hansen said. “We have rural communities who are going out of their way to pursue agendas that are counterproductive to their own interests.”

Some claims may be harder for wind proponents to address. Wind developers stress accidents where turbines fall down or catch fire are rare, but the incidents tend to be widely publicized when they do happen, and often appear on anti-wind social media channels. Public information showing industry-wide tracking of such accidents does not exist, though experts updating the national wind turbine database may see catastrophic turbine failures, and say it is very uncommon.

And while about 90% of wind turbines can be recycled, for the time being that may not include the blades themselves. Wind developers are working on solutions to keep turbines out of landfills.

Even presented with facts about wind power and its subsequent tax benefits, however, people don’t always buy in. That’s something Kathy Croker saw during her 25 years as an appraiser and 17 as an assessor before joining the board of supervisors in Buena Vista County, Iowa, one of the first counties in the nation to have big wind projects. She says she always thought wind turbines were “kinda cool,” and says she’s seen firsthand the tax implications for the county, including millions of dollars to the school district.

But she said from her position in local government that people didn’t necessarily trust her when she told them wind power might actually help with taxes.

“In my experience, the larger population does not think about the benefits of a larger tax base,” she said. “There is a general mistrust.”

Other people say their minds were changed by talking to particular community members.

Like Cindy Ihrke, the vice chair of the board of Ford County, Illinois, who said she wasn’t against wind initially. She acknowledged some of the benefits of existing wind farms, but doesn’t think what they’ve done for the county is good enough to want more of it.

Then Ihrke says that she heard about people in the county “having problems or having to leave their homes,” which led her to desire more strict zoning regulations in Ford County.

One of those people, Ted Hartke, says that the noise from a nearby wind farm led his family to leave their home about 10 years ago. He said they couldn’t sleep and that they could “sense it in the house” when the turbines were running.

Hartke, an engineer and surveyor, says he initially supported wind power, but has since become an ardent opponent in public meetings and on social media.

He feels his family experienced real harm, saying “there’s a lot of victims just like us.” But he also mentioned that being “so pissed off” has led him to find out more and more about wind online.

“It seems like my Facebook feed just feeds me this stuff,” he said.

Facebook groups that often feature repeating group members and memes rife with misinformation have been documented as a highly effective tool at stalling local interest in wind projects, at times spreading fear-mongering false claims related to health or property values.

The Greeley county board of commissioners voted to allow a special use permit for NextEra despite the vocal opposition. Work is scheduled to begin on the Greeley County project in 2025, a NextEra spokeswoman said in a statement. She noted the project is a roughly $200 million capital investment for the company, and will pay out $27 million in lease payments to landowners over the farm’s expected 30-year life in addition to the taxes NextEra will pay.

The agreement reached between NextEra and the county government requires the company to set aside millions for an eventual decommissioning and to support local roads. Bernt said it is one of the more generous agreements he has seen, but “only because there was enough attention brought to the issues” by concerned community members.

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