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Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Environment - "St. Joseph County to consider windmills: Bill would regulate turbine installation in St. Joseph County"

Updating this ILB entry from August 9th, Ed Ronco reports today in the South Bend Tribune. Some quotes:

Tonight, the St. Joseph County Council will hold a public hearing on proposed regulations for building windmills.

So far, the turbines have gone up with little or no regulation.

"We put up eight of them without any type of permits because no one knew what to do with them," said Glen Smith, a sales representative for the turbine installer Wind-Wire, in South Bend.

Smith's firm has put up about 30 to 40 units in South Bend. The units run between $15,000 and $17,000.

There's nothing in the zoning code to regulate installation of wind turbines, said Larry Magliozzi, assistant director of the county's Area Plan Commission.

"The first thing is, St. Joseph County is saying yes, we should allow these," Magliozzi said. "But these are the circumstances and criteria under which we will allow them."

Those circumstances and criteria include:

-Limiting noise to between 52 and 55 decibels, less than the average air conditioner, which is about 60 decibels at 10 feet.

-Limiting the height in a residential district to 60 feet.

-Requiring lots with windmills to be a minimum of one acre.

-Requiring the turbines to withstand winds of up to 100 miles per hour. Officials say such winds are so strong and so rare, that if they actually occur, there would be bigger things to worry about than windmills.

-Requiring the windmills to be painted aesthetically pleasing colors — bright shades are out, and the color would likely be restricted to standard metal, white, gray or black.

-Requiring a single-pole design, instead of a lattice-work tower, which can be too easily scaled.

Tom Gruber, government liaison officer for the Home Builders Association of the St. Joseph Valley, said his group has concerns about the aesthetics of the windmills, which must tower above trees and nearby structures in order to pick up the most wind.

The association isn't opposed to wind generation, but it is concerned about the impact towers could have on buyers who might be deterred by a neighborhood with a lot of windmills.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on August 11, 2009 04:39 PM
Posted to Environment