Wind Power Project
Proposed to County
By Rebecca Osterberg
Boone County Representative Marshall Newhouse
(District 1) announced a major wind power project is in the
works at the Boone County Board meeting. Newhouse,
board Chairman Bob Walberg (District 1), county Engineer
Rich Lundin, county Administrator Ken Terrinoni and
Belvidere-Boone County Interim Planning Director Kathy
Miller were invited to an informational meeting held at
Belvidere City Hall last week.
According to Newhouse, the proposed project area
includes most of Leroy Township with a small amount of
Boone and Manchester Township, bordered by the state line
to the north and McHenry County line to the east.
Information from the Mainstream Renewable Power
Company’s website indicates, “The North Boone project
is a mid stage project in northern Illinois with a moderate
wind resource, good grid queue position and open, rolling
farmland. Abutting the Wisconsin border, the project will
provide power to the greater Chicago region and economic
benefits to the immediate local area.”
“They are working with officials to make this as smooth
a process as possible,” said Newhouse. “They are in the
midst of preliminary studies, potentially moving through
our zoning process at least a year away. They said they
have been met with a lot of interest.”
The proposed project currently includes approximately
6,200 acres of land with 34 owners.
“As of today they made it quite clear they were satisfied
with the number of contracts they have signed, the number
of acres that they represent and that they have the physical
land resources to move ahead,” Newhouse said. “What
they are waiting on now, is the completion of a multitude
of studies that have to be done to determine the spacing of
turbine, the size of turbine, the megawatts of turbine, and
they don’t have that done.”
Other board members were very interested in getting
further information, but Newhouse indicated it was a work
in progress and would likely not come before the board until
the Special Use application process was ongoing.
The project includes a proposed 200 megawatt system
however Newhouse indicated that until studies were
completed, the actual size and number of turbines was still
not confirmed.
“Mr. Terrinoni reminded me we have a very structured
ordinance on how a project can proceed,” said Newhouse. “I
congratulated them on how they were doing so far. Former
objections that there were on a previous project were 75
percent addressed. They picked a part of the county that is
very sparsely populated.”
Boone County Representative Cathy Ward (District 2)
was concerned about future meetings as well as whether
or not the townships affected had representatives at the
informational meeting. Newhouse indicated he had no
information on future meetings and that township officials
were not in attendance.
“They said they had already planned not to encroach too
close to Sharon (Wisconsin), when I said we want to be good
neighbors,” Newhouse said. “There was also discussion of
some type of compensation for neighboring properties.” He
indicated that there was an ordinance requiring a distance of
a 1,000-foot radius away from houses.
“I am confident that they are very aggressive about this,
and they have a track record of up-and- running projects just
in county’s south of us and bordering us.”
The project will have to complete the special use
procedure.
“We had what I considered a very ordinance friendly
language,” said Newhouse. “I was instrumental in making it
much more restrictive. We have new board members, a few
elections prior to this one, the board at that time voted to go
back to the more turbine friendly language. We are staying
with the more turbine friendly language, today.”
Taken from: http://boonecountyjournal.com/news/2011/Boone-County-News-01-21-11.pdf#page=4
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