BOONE COUNTY (WIFR) -- It's been just over a year since Boone County voted down a change to county law to make it harder to build wind turbines but that battle has started up again as a group wants even tighter restrictions than were proposed last time.
Boone County farmer David Cleverdon says while he supports wind energy, he doesn't want to see wind turbines built near anyone's home.
"I just don't think wind turbines should be in residential rural areas, near homes," he says.
Cleverdon is part of a group trying to make it harder for wind companies to build turbines in Boone County.
This isn't the first time a group has done this. A previous proposal was asking for the current one-thousand foot setback- which is the distance between a turbine and a home- to be extended to 15-hundred feet. That proposal was struck down by county board members last January.
This newest plan is asking for an even larger setback, at 2,640 feet, exactly half a mile from all property lines unless a homeowners.
"I want a safer Boone County," says Cleverdon.
Chris Dorman works for Mainstream Renewable Power, the company wanting to build a three to four hundred million dollar, one hundred turbine wind farm in northern Boone County. He says these changes would kill their plans.
"If not zero, near zero percent of the property would be able to host a turbine," says Dorman. "That is a ban."
Deb Doetch is a big supporter of wind energy. She lives in Poplar Grove and says she's tired of the opposition to a clean energy source.
"Well I think it's forward thinking, I don't want to go backward thinking," says Doetch.
Cleverdon presented his proposed zoning ordinance change to the county's Zoning Board of Appeals Tuesday night. It marks the first of what is expected to be several public information hearings on the proposed changes. It could be several weeks or longer before the proposal would come to a vote.
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