NextEra, a utility company based in Florida with wind, solar, electricity and nuclear energy infrastructure across North America, is working to install more than $1.05 billion in subsidized wind and solar projects in eastern Montana, specifically Dawson, McCone and Prairie counties. Citizens of Eastern Montana are appealing to county commissioners to enact interim zoning regulations to help protect nonparticipating landowners, while efforts are made to demonstrate the need for zoning regulations on industrial developments like the Glendive Wind Project, according to a report in Bozeman Daily Chronicle. Turbines should be considered a public health hazard, claimed the citizens in a meeting with Dawson County Commissioners, about the effects of sound frequencies — both audible and inaudible — produced by them may have on people and animals.
Prairie County Commissioners claimed that representatives from NextEra attempted to meet privately at the commissioners’ homes.
Any meetings with a quorum of a public body are required under state law to be posted in advance and open to the public.
Citizens of Dawson County complained that there hasn’t been anything on record of conversations with Dawson County commissioners and representatives of the wind company.
Among the issues of concern is the impact the sound of wind turbines on residents near them. It was claimed that a wind project in Rosebud County has forced residents on a nearby farm to move into town.
Another concern about wind developments is the potential for landowners to be held responsible for cleaning up wind turbines on their property, should they fail to establish a bond for decommissioning. Most other industrial projects in Montana are required by law to put up a decommissioning bond to cover potential cleanup costs. Alternative energy projects are not required to acquire a bond until the 15th year of operation.
NextEra claims they will have a bond right away.
Dawson County citizens voiced concern that if landowners were to be left with the responsibility of cleaning up a wind turbine on their property, they would not be able to do it and would face the risk of losing their property.
Citizens pushed back against claims about the economic and community benefits that could materialize because of the investment of alternatives energy projects. They pointed out that such benefits have not happened in Eastern Montana communities where such projects are already located.
Most alternative energy products are not economically justified in the market without considerable subsidies. For example, according to researchers Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling, writing in “Energy Bad Boys,” solar developers receive $56,000 per acre for solar facilities, or $2,253 per acre for each year of the solar facility’s useful life.
Fueled by the taxpayer-funded Investment Tax Credit (ITC), a subsidy allows developers to claim at least 30 percent of a project’s costs as a tax credit.
They report that initial estimates are that $369 billion in subsidies are available over the first ten years of the program. Another report from Travis Fisher and Joshua Loucks argues the true cost of the IRA could reach more than $1 trillion in the first ten years of the policy and between $2 trillion to $4 trillion by 2050. Other reports claim that the massive sums of taxpayer funded subsidies place some 2.4 million acres of American farmland out of production.
