Wyoming Newspaper Reveals Local Wind Farm Concerns

Wyoming's newspaper, The Platte County Record Times, is working on several long articles over the next few months regarding proposed wind turbines near the town of Chugwater.

I spoke with Marie Hamilton, a reporter from the PC Record-Times, regarding this issue, and she has agreed to join me on the air to discuss the series of articles she is working on. That interview will be on the Wake Up Wyoming radio talk show with Glenn Woods in the coming weeks.

The Platte Co. Record-Times has received numerous requests about these concerns and more from community members and has listened to concerns brought up at meetings around the county.

The paper is seeking to research, investigate, and address those concerns and questions, and has reached out to NextEra Energy for interview requests since the newspaper was not given the chance to ask these questions at the Open House in late June in Chugwater. (PCRT).

 

The first article in the series is long and detailed.

You can read it at this link.

An increasing number of concerns have been brought up at various county commissioner and town hall meetings around Platte and Goshen Counties since NextEra Energy announced a renewed interest in a wind turbine farm in the Chugwater area, on the Iowa Flatts. (PCRT).

Concerns of local residents are raised in the article, including the high number of bird and bat kills from wind farms.

When asked about decommissioning, Jones said there are concerns – such as, the fact the companies are only required to dig four feet down to decommission projects and not all the way down to the base of the turbines.

“The regulations state only four feet, and those bases are much deeper than four feet,” Jones said. “In most cases, they are twelve feet or deeper.”

 

In fact, although the companies are required to keep and store the topsoil for decommissioning use later, they aren’t required to put the exact topsoil back, nor are they required to put the exact seeding back.

In terms of how this relates to the Chugwater project, that could mean the elusive and increasingly rare Wyoming. (PCRT).

I host the Chugwater Chilli Cookoff, and while there, several local residents approached me with their concerns about this wind project. They are not fans, they told me, and are desperately trying to be heard.