LA PORTE — The La Porte Community School Corp. will not be utilizing wind power for its energy needs, said Business Manager Rande Thorpe.

And it’s mostly due to action by the state.

During Tuesday’s school board meeting, Thorpe told board members the district doesn’t have the space or the money right now to make wind power feasible, and the state is interfering in other ways.

“First it was difficult to even find people to talk to,” he said. “There’s not much happening on the school front. Then, the state Board of Accounts vetoed all wind programs.”

He said the Board of Accounts is preventing any school from using a windmill to generate power and sell it to the electric grid. All power generated must be used for the school building it’s set by and nothing more.

This is a problem because a windmill set by Indian Trail Elementary would generate three times the energy needed to run the school for a year, school representatives said. Any extra power would be wasted, and the district would be unable to recoup any of the $2 million cost of the windmill’s installation.

He said selling energy is considered beyond the scope of schools.

“But they don’t have a problem with us selling lunch,” quipped board member Adam Schoff.

It also vetoed the district’s use of Progressive Services to set up a windmill field in an empty space away from the schools.

“Right now, we don’t really have any viable place to put it,” Thorpe said.
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