Does Okoboji's future include wind turbines as tall as a 40-story building?
Wind energy has become a major point of conflict at the Iowa Great Lakes.
A proposal by a Chicago company, Invenergy, to build as many as 100 towering wind turbines in Dickinson County, each of them about as tall as a 40-story office building, has fired a heated debate. It is the first of three such projects that appear to be in line for consideration in the county.
Essentially, the proposed giant turbines could surround much of the Okoboji area — the vast stretches of mostly open land east and west of Spirit Lake, and east and south of East Lake. The area west of West Lake already is populated with wind turbines, but they are about one-third as tall as the turbines now being proposed.
It is a battle that has split environmentalists into two camps. The supporters of the wind turbines include those who see global warming as a threat that must be addressed and those who are benefitting financially from wind energy. Those opposed believe wind energy is not the best answer and are unwilling to let the wind turbines destroy wildlife conservation and the beauty of rural America. The battle also seems to have created some strange bedfellows, aligning the latter group of conservationists with climate-change deniers.
For the Okoboji area, one of Iowa’s top tourist attractions and a region that traces its generations of popularity to its natural beauty, some see the proposed turbines — each of them about three times taller than those lining many highways in the state — as a threat to the future of tourism.
Wind energy: Not what it used to be
Wind was one of the earth’s original sources of energy. It propelled vessels through the sea to targeted destinations thousands of years ago. By the 7th century, new uses were found for wind energy as wind wheels or windmills were used to grind corn, make flour, and pump water in the Middle East.
The first known use of wind to power a turbine that could produce electricity dates to the late 1880s. A university professor in Glasgow, Scotland, built a cloth-sail wind turbine in the garden of his holiday cottage in 1887 to power lighting in the cottage. A year later, an American inventor, Charles Brush, built the world’s first automatically operated wind turbine to provide electricity at his mansion in Cleveland, Ohio. For 20 years, it charged the home’s 12 batteries, which, in turn, powered the home’s electrical lighting system.
The next big step – producing electricity from coal-fired generators would arrive quickly.
By the 1890s, cities through much of America were building generators fired by fossil fuels and running wires to carry electrical power into commercial buildings and private homes.
Electricity soon would sweep through the civilized world. Unfortunately, decades later, the world would discover that the fossil fuels used to power the generators – as well as to power engines and automobiles – were changing the human environment in unfriendly ways. Carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning fossil fuels, was being ejected into the atmosphere, where it trapped heat that warmed the globe.
The phenomenon would become known as global warming. One of the possible ways to combat global warming: A return to wind as a way to power the turbines that produce the electricity. Wind turbines, aided by advancements in technology, began making major inroads in America in the 1980s.
Slowly, the state’s highways became dotted with enormous three-bladed wheels attached to the top of towers rising about 180 feet above the corn and soybean fields. They were hailed as a new cash crop for farmers, a new source of tax revenue for state and local government, and an environmentally safer way to generate electricity.
Iowa may have been slow to begin the rush toward Wind Energy Conversion Systems, but it soon made up for lost time. Iowa ranked No. 2 among the 50 states in total generation of wind power in 2022, behind only Texas, and No. 1 in the percentage of its total electricity – about 60 percent – generated by wind.
It has been a big win for local government and farmer participants as well. Wind companies paid out $67 million in lease payments to landowners, and wind turbines generated about $57 million in tax revenue at the state and local levels in 2021, according to the Center for Rural Affairs.
A workable solution — for the wind farm developer
The effort to slow or halt the erection of the new, giant wind turbines in the lakes area, and/or to make them less offensive to opponents began to gather steam about a year ago.
The proposed actions were led by a group called Dickinson County Concerned Citizens (DC3). Specifically, DC3 sought changes in wind turbine regulations regarding how close they could be built to residential housing units, how much noise the turbines could make, and the regulation of the flashing light from the sun shining through the rotating turbine blades into nearby homes.
The DC3 efforts brought the Invenergy project to a temporary standstill when the County Board of Adjustment voted to deny approval of the project in October.
Last month, however, the Dickinson County Board of Supervisors approved a new Wind Conditional Uses Ordinance on a 3-0 vote with one abstention. Invenergy described the ordinance as workable from their perspective.
Specifically, the ordinance provided a minimum distance of 1,600 feet between a wind turbine and a residential dwelling. DC3 had asked for a distance of four times the height of the turbine, or 2,400 feet for a 600-foot turbine. It provided an allowable noise of 50 decibels (as measured to describe the loudness of a sound as perceived by the human ear) for each wind turbine. DC3 had asked for 40 decibels maximum during daylight hours, 35 decibels at night. The ordinance allows shadow flicker from wind turbines in residential dwellings, but limits it to no more than 30 hours per year or 30 minutes per day on average.
Still to be decided, however, is how many of the wind turbines might be built in Dickinson County, which is one of three counties covered by the Invernegy Red Rock Wind Energy Center; the others are Clay and Emmet Counties. In April, as Dickinson County still was considering its proposed new ordinance, Invernegy said it might build more turbines in Emmet County than originally planned, and might pare back the number in Dickinson County.
What’s at stake for the Okoboji area?
One of the nation’s largest so-called wind farms is situated in the San Gorgonio Pass along Interstate 10 in Southern California between Cabazon and Palm Springs in Riverside County.
The pass is one of the deepest mountain passes in the 48 contiguous states with mountains rising to almost 9,000 feet on either side. Mount San Jacinto, on the south side of the pass, has one of the largest rock walls in North America. The mountain peak is just six miles off the Interstate.
Coincidentally, the pass is one of the windiest places in America — a perfect location for one of the early large wind farms in America.
Constructed in the 1980s, the 800 wind turbines operating in the pass today are far smaller than what is proposed for the Okoboji area. They range from 80 feet to 300 feet in height.
I have driven the pass scores of times. The only thing your eye catches are the wind turbines. They are interesting, but they obscure the natural beauty of the area. The thing that is memorable for travelers through the area is the wind farm, not the beauty of the magnificent mountain pass.
A NOTE TO MY READERS: I write this column, Arnold Garson: Second Thoughts, as a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. This diverse group of more than 50 professional writers covers a wide range of subjects and has deep roots in Iowa. The Collaborative was founded and is led by Julie Gammack of Des Moines and is a unique group on Substack. You can subscribe for free. However, if you enjoy my work, please consider showing your support by becoming a paid subscriber at whatever level feels right for you.
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There is such a conflict going on now. We want to protect the environment but are we also stealing the environment by doing so? Isn't there possibly a better way for us to discover? I hope so.