HUMBOLDT — Jerry Daniels has one of three votes on the Allen County Commission, and if he were to exercise it today, he would vote yes to allowing wind farms to take root.
“It’s exciting, from my viewpoint,” Daniels told a Humboldt Lion group Monday evening. “We’re ahead of the game with conditions for a special use permit already decided.”
With Daniels was Sam Massey, project director for NextEra, a Juno Beach, Fla., company, that has expressed interest in Allen County.
At the Feb. 14 meeting of Allen County commissioners, Daniels and Tom Williams approved a unanimous recommendation from planning commissioners of rules and regulations a potential energy company would have to meet. Commissioner Jim Talkington voted against the measure expressing a desire for more time to review the criteria.
If EDP Renewables or NextEra, the two firms currently engaged in acquiring options to lease acreage, find Allen County acceptable — mainly through wind currents to turn huge blades attached to turbines — their first step involving the county will be to ask for a special use permit.
Planners would have the first look, make a recommendation and commissioners would decide yea or nay.
Allen County also has advantage of transportation lines along the east side of the county, which would be easily accessible to EDP’s proposed project — in a Moran, Mildred and LaHarpe triangle — and NextEra’s in Bourbon County and southeast Allen.
Rorik Peterson, director of development for EDP, earlier told the Register test results had found adequate wind patterns to support the 60 to 100 turbines his company was considering. NextEra may erect half again that many.
Both companies have a presence in Kansas; EDP has a wind farm in Coffey County near Waverly, and NextERA in six counties in central and western Kansas. Massey was in the state Monday to review projects elsewhere. He drove to Humboldt at Daniels’s invitation.
Both presenters cautioned the audience not to get their hopes up too high and that wind farms in Allen County remain no more than a possibility.
However, with Woodson, Neosho and Crawford counties also in the mix, the likelihood of Allen having a role in renewable energy is better than if it were a one-shot affair. Anderson County was wooed by Calpine, a Houston company, but Anderson County’s stricter conditions make location of a wind farm there more difficult.
Daniels likened a wind farm to the Enbridge pipeline and pumping station, features of Allen County.
“We’re very fortunate to have Enbridge here,” with it increasing countywide assessed valuation by nearly $40 million, or close to 30 percent. “We (commissioners) were able to lower taxes a little the past two years and also build up reserves.”
Daniels prefers buy-in by the public as to whether wind farms locate in Allen County. To date, their vote is encouraging for the energy companies. “It’s their land, they should be able to decide how it’s used,” he said of those who own rural properties.
EDP is known to have options on better than 14,000 acres; NextEra more, Massey said.
