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WC Ind. | I live and farm in the first county in Indiana that put in a windmill field. Our county now has 400 windmills in it. The county is 20 miles square in area. I do not know of anyone who is sorry they have them. A new 100 windmill field was put in on the county south of us last year and they turned down people wanting to have some on their property. I currently farm around 10 of them on our land lords property. We have no problem getting aerial applications done. The leases for the ones on our farms state that the owner at that time will restore the topsoil to a depth of 4 feet if they are abandoned. There is a bond held in escrow to accomplish this. Ours are located on average with 1 every 80 acres with all cabling being buried to a depth of 5 feet. They have never had to use eminent domain here that I am aware of. If a landowner does not want to accept what they offer for transmission towers, they will usually go around them as the neighbor next to them will usually reach an agreement with them. Payments seem to be all over the board depending on the contract. I think most owners here are receiving at least 7 to 8,000 dollars per year. It doesn't seem to be too much hassle to farm around them. No more that farming around tile inlets. The biggest drawbacks to me was in the construction as once they start building a field, they do not stop for any reason until done. There is usually an agreement they have with the utility company to start suppling electricity on a certain date. This means if it rains a lot, they will still keep constructing. Our contracts had a land use payment for the land they disturbed during construction that was quite generous that compensated us for loss of crops during construction. The second thing I did not care for is the building of the roads. The first windmill lanes were raised 6 to 12 inches off of grade. This has caused some surface drainage issues that did not exist before the construction. Since the first field was put in, the new contracts specify that this cannot occur. We have also found that the windmill companies are very reluctant to repair these lanes if washes occur. It is important to remember that the company constructing the windmills is not necessarily the company who will own them when they are producing, Sorry for being so long winded, but there is a lot to consider when signing a contract. | |
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Wind farm proposed for my area-gathering information
