Wind energy vs. wind energy - Solar, Wind and Land: Conflicts in Renewable Energy Development - page 51

and Light (FPL) in Dickey County, North Dakota. EnXco asked county
officials to impose more restrictive turbine setbacks on FPL's upwind parcel
to protect the productivity of wind currents flowing onto enXco's own
downwind property. The county granted enXco's request and imposed a
five-rotor-diameter wake buffer setback requirement on the FPL project.
According to at least one source, FPL “abandoned” its wind farm plans
relatively soon after the county's decision. 7
Just three years later, in 2008, a competing downwind developer lobbied
the local government to impose wake-based setbacks on another proposed
FPL project in North Dakota's Barnes County. Worried that wake effects
from FPL's proposed wind farm would reduce the productivity of turbines
on its own proposed project, Peak Wind asked the county's zoning commis-
sioners to impose five-rotor-diameter setbacks on FPL's project to prevent
such conflicts.8 8 Peak Wind argued, among other things that the Public
Utilities Commission in the neighboring state of Minnesota had embraced
such setback requirements and that FPL had previously complied with them
on other wind farm projects. 9 Ultimately, the zoning commissioners refused
to impose additional wake-based setbacks on FPL in this instance, 10 but not
until both parties had already expended considerable time, funds, and other
resources handling the dispute.
General opposition from downwind parties
More general opposition to wind farms based on concerns about wind
turbine wakes has also arisen multiple times in recent years. For instance,
in 2009, a downwind landowner and developer jointly challenged a draft
environmental impact report filed in connection with the Alta-Oak Creek
Mojave wind energy project in southern California on this basis. These
parties objected to the report in part because it “did not address the
impact of wind flow across their property.” 11 Although the local planning
department dismissed these objections on the ground that wake interference
issues were outside the scope of environmental review required under appli-
cable law, the upwind developer had to bear additional costs fending off a
wake-based challenge in this case as well. 12
A different downwind developer also reportedly challenged the expansion
of a wind energy project in Umatilla County in the U.S. state of Oregon
based on potential wind turbine wake effects.13 13 The parties to this dispute
eventually resolved it through a confidential agreement, but unquestionably
incurred some costs in connection with the dispute. 14
Patricia Muscarello and wind rights arguments as a NIMBY tool
Even landowners with no evident intention of ever using wind resources
on their land may nonetheless use wind rights-based arguments in their
efforts to oppose wind farms on neighboring parcels. Landowners using