Judge Testifies For Local Control Of Wind Farms

Oct 08, 2008 - 15:57:59 CDT.

LAUNCHING THEIR COMPETITION season with an exhibition performance at the Hill Country Marching Festival they hosted Saturday at FHS Stadium, the FHS Band, including trumpet player Daniel Herbort, started the process of polishing their show as contest season nears. Sandard-Radio Post Photo by Cathy Collier

Advocating local control to approve or disapprove of the installation of industrial wind farms in any Texas county, Gillespie County Judge Mark Stroeher testified before a State Senate committee Monday.

“Local county officials are in the best position to judge whether or not a wind project makes sense in their particular area based on all the relevant factors, including the desires of the citizens,” Stroeher said.

Speaking in a packed hearing room in Austin, he recommended to the Senate Committee on Business and Commerce chaired by Sen. Troy Fraser that the commissioners courts in each county be given the authority to approve or deny requests for the installation of wind farms in a county.

He recalled the Gillespie County experience with industrial wind energy companies over the last year.

“When we met with representatives of the two wind power companies last year, each time they asked our group what would happen if we were wrong about our assumptions that our economy and land values would suffer serious declines if wind farms were located in our county,” Stroeher said. “I think the bigger and more looming question for the members of this committee as well as all members of the legislature is this: What happens to the future of our communities if we’re right.”

Fraser, who represents Gillespie County, said yesterday in a telephone interview that the next step would be to “continue to pressure the wind coalition for voluntary compliance” much like that agreed to by Florida Power and Light Energy to not place wind farms in the Texas Hill Country area.

The FPL Energy spokesperson indicated his company’s recognition that “the Hill Country is unique” and that the company has not and will not pursue a wind farm in the Hill Country -- and they would encourage other wind companies to do likewise.

“That would likely solve most of the problems,” Fraser said.

Opening A Can of Worms

Fraser noted that one of his committee members said Monday that any measure “giving counties authority means giving all 256 counties in the state jurisdiction.”

Such action “could get very complicated and leads to questions about how much power county governments should have,” Fraser noted. “That opens a can of worms.”

Between now and the opening of the next legislative session in January, Fraser said that work would be done outside of the legislative process with the wind companies, the Public Utilities Commission of Texas (PUCT) and ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) which operates the electric grid and manages the deregulated market for 75 percent of the state.

A ‘Land Rush’ Going On

Stroeher told committee members Monday that “because of the lack of regulatory oversight, there seems to be a big ‘land rush’ going on by the wind power companies to secure all property across the state that potentially could be used as sites for wind farms in the future.”

He noted that of the 25 areas identified as potential Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZs), the zone including northern Gillespie County was ranked among those with the least potential -- 20th of 25.

But without regulation, “Gillespie County and every county in the State of Texas remains vulnerable to and unprotected from any company that wants to come in and take a chance on developing an industrial wind farm; and neither the citizens nor the local elected officials in these counties have any say whatsoever in whether or not these companies locate an industrial wind farm in our communities,” Stroeher said.

He recounted the beginning of the story for Gillespie County when in May 2007 commissioners learned that a major wind company had signed lease options with several landowners in the immediate vicinity of Enchanted Rock State Natural Area.

A meeting was held with two senior corporate representatives of the company and a small group of elected and non-elected local leaders. After seeing a detailed overview of the company’s plans, the group expressed concerns about “the potential negative impact on our community and economy,” Stroeher said and within a month, “we received word that a corporate decision had been made to withdraw from Gillespie County and release the option agreements that had been signed.”

Shaken To The Core

But, he noted “our community’s collective sigh of relief was premature,” and a month later another leasing agent for a second wind power company was working in the area.

At a meeting with the representatives of that company, “the CEO looked us squarely in the eyes and stated that he understood our concerns but did not agree with us,” Stroeher said. “He concluded by saying that despite our concerns, and whether our community wanted it or not, if their studies indicated that a project would be economically viable, he intended to build an industrial wind farm in Gillespie County.”

That statement “shook us to our core,” Stroeher said, noting their fears that over 160 years of efforts “to build an attractive, desirable community and a vibrant economy to sustain it could be destroyed by the decisions of one person who has no connection whatsoever to our community other than a desire to use it for his company’s monetary gain.”

Now, Stroeher said, “our community nervously waits for the next wind company to appear.” He made his request for local control “to give us the means of controlling our own destiny as a community.”

Also Testifying

The Senate committee also heard Monday from PUCT Chairman Barry Smitherman, Texas General Land Office Commissioner Jerry Patterson, Paul Sadler of the Wind Coalition, Bert Garvin of FPL Energy, the watchdog group Public Citizen’s Tom Smith, John Calaway of Babcock and Brown (which is constructing one of the two industrial wind turbine complexes being built on the Kenedy Ranch in South Texas, and John Barrett, representing the Coastal Habitat Alliance, which is challenging the Kenedy Ranch projects. The King Ranch is a neighbor of that project.

SOS Reps Speak

After the testimony of the invited witnesses, several individuals spoke during public testimony, including Robert Weatherford and Leo Tynan of the Save Our Scenic Hill Country Environment group which is a citizens’ group based in Gillespie County with over 300 members.

“We strongly agree that counties should have the ability to decide if industrial wind turbine installations make sense in their area based on first-hand knowledge of local economic and other considerations,” said Weatherford, who serves as president of the SOS group. “We continue to be highly concerned that citizens and their elected public officials have absolutely no say in where industrial wind turbine installations are sited.”

While wind generated energy may make sense in other parts of the state where the wind resource potential is greatest, Weatherford said, “industrial wind turbine installations simply do not make sense in Gillespie County and surrounding counties.”

Tynan, a physician in Fredericksburg and one of the SOS group’s directors, agreed.

“The current situation, absent any siting regulations, will allow for the construction of hundreds of towers of unprecedented size and extent on valuable parcels of land a fraction the size of those leased for similar purposes in the west,” he said.

“The negative impacts are numerous,” he continued, “and include noise, flicker effect of rotating blades, bird and bat kills, extensive clearing of tree cover and brush on hilltops and mesas, and the destruction of county roads by massive construction equipment while lacing the area with new construction roads.”

Tynan noted that “by virtue of its location, natural beauty and unique history,” the Hill Country has, “for many years been considered to be not only the ‘heart’ of Texas, but also its soul.”