Pottawattamie County Supervisors approve wind, solar energy ordinance 

After months of debate and listening to public input, the Pottawattamie County Board of Supervisors recently approved new regulations for wind and solar energy projects.

“We have, I think, really done our due diligence on this, on the documents that are all presented to you, and it meets all of the public feedback that we’ve heard along with all of the board considerations that we put into this,” Planning and Development Director Matt Wyant said at the Feb. 27 board meeting.

The discussion about the wind energy ordinance has generated a lot of input from the community – for and against – in the nine months since the county first looked into amending it.

“There was definitely passions on both sides of the issue here, but we heard a lot more from residents who just really objected to having them put so close to their property lines or to their homes,” Wyant told The Nonpareil in an interview.

While devising the new ordinance, Wyant said it was important to keep in mind the county’s future growth opportunities.

“It’s our population that is really the factor in whether or not more windmills are placed in Pottawattamie County,” Wyant told supervisors. “We’re growing, we’re set to grow more, and we sure don’t want to hamper any of our small towns for their growth patterns nor our Council Bluffs airport’s (growth).”

While protecting Pottawattamie County’s smaller communities’ ability to grow, however, the new ordinance may have also knocked some wind from the sails of future wind energy projects.

“With this ordinance, how it’s worded, is restrictive for our project,” Matt Spaccapaniccia, a development manager for electrical genergation company RWE, told The Nonpareil. “It brings challenges, but I believe that we can move forward with the project in development.”

RWE’s wind turbines would generate $25 million for landowners and bring the county and its smaller communities $54 million in new tax revenue over 30 years, Spaccapaniccia said.

“We have landowners, many of them signed on to this project for years now, and continuing to get new landowners interested, and it seems like landowners are eager for a project here,” Spaccapaniccia said.

The new ordinance for commercial use wind energy systems states that wind turbines must be set back a minimum of three miles from communities, parks and recreation areas and the Council Bluffs Municipal Airport.

“We heard from the airport authority, we heard from companies out there at the airport that do the trainings and it is a big training hub for pilots, or future pilots, and we have to do what we can to make sure that we protect that availability,” Wyant told The Nonpareil. “We all see the shortage of pilots that’s out there, so having that good training hub, I mean, it brings a big benefit to our area.”

Turbines must also be at least 1,500 feet from lot lines or public rights of ways and half a mile from the closest non-participating homes unless the property owner agrees to waive the setback distance. Even then, the turbine still cannot be located closer than one and one-tenth its total height from a dwelling.

RWE currently has contracts with about 120 landowners that covers 20,000 acres and would generate 200 megawatts, Spaccapaniccia said.

“As of right now it’s a lower amount of buildable area (than envisioned), but through getting more and more landowners signed up onto the project, which has been happening more recently, which is good to see, it’s going to open up buildable acres for us,” Spaccapaniccia said. “And … more and more landowners signing onto the project will reduce those setbacks (which) will help us with buildable acres.”

Wind turbines cannot be taller than 412 feet, which is the height of the wind turbines that make up MidAmerican Energy’s wind farm east of Walnut.

“The board wanted to look at what the Walnut wind farm was currently at … so that was the height we went for,” Wyant said.

While most of the attention has been on wind turbines, the ordinance does include new regulations for solar energy systems as well.

“I think you do see on the solar impacts that they’re a lot less visually impactful,” Wyant said. “You might have a solar array farm on a 40 acre chunk versus spread out over 20,000 acres.”

For commercial projects, solar panels must be no lower than two feet off the ground and no higher than 20 feet. Additionally, the solar panels cannot be within 300 feet from a non-participating structure. There is no setback for participating property owners.

If a solar energy system is solely for personal use, ground-mounted solar panels cannot be higher than 15 feet, while panels affixed to a structure, like the roof of a house or barn, cannot extend higher than the height allowed by that district’s zoning regulations.

Setbacks for ground-mounted solar panels are 10 feet from another building or structure on the same lot. Solar panels are not allowed in the front yard setback unless they are at least 50 feet back from the edge of the county road right of way or 80 feet from the edge of a state or federal right of way.

Solar is more contained in delivering energy than wind systems, Wyant said.

“So I do think you see a lot more support for the solar just for those factors than what you see on wind,” he said.

The new ordinance can be viewed on the Pottawattamie County website.