With the Fayette County commissioners and council to tackle the subject of a proposed wind farm in the northwest portion of the county this week, the impact such a project could have has been spoken of in recent weeks.
For one Indiana county – the first to play host to a wind farm – the impact, according to economic development officials, has been nothing but positive.
Officials with Benton County Economic Development, the first county in Indiana to have commercial wind turbines put into place as part of the Benton County Wind Farm in 2008, cite nothing but positives which have come from wind farms within the county.
The county is now home to three wind farms, the Benton County Wind Farm, the Fowler Ridge Wind Farm and the Hoosier Wind Farm – numbering a total of 495 wind farms within the county – operated by energy companies Orion Energy Group, BP Alternative Energy and enXco, respectively.
Those wind farms, according to Kelly Kepner, director of economic development for Benton County, have been nothing but a boon for Benton County.
In an email sent by Kepner in March 2011, obtained by the News-Examiner, she describes the economic impact the wind farms have had. Those impacts are still cited, as of today, on the county’s economic development website.
“Benton County is now debt free!” she wrote in the email. “After receiving some of the company’s tax abatement payments, the county has been able to pay off all debt.”
Other benefits Kepner cited included that the county was able to use some of the tax revenue the county received from the wind farms to remodel its community center – which also includes a tourism center – along with purchasing emergency extraction equipment for its various county fire departments.
Those weren’t the only positives she listed, however.
“With the money received from the tax abatement, the county has made a huge impact financially in helping our schools by contributing 2 million,” she wrote.
Kepner also said the influx of roughly 760 workers to the county, which the construction of the wind farms was underway, helped to boost local business while also delaying the effects of the recession being felt in Benton County until about 2010.
From rentals of homes and properties by workers at the wind farms while they were constructed, to the creation of 93 permanent new jobs in the county as of that time, to county commissioners actually developing an economic development department for the county, Kepner cites positive after positive in her email.
“The county commissioners decided to develop a department for economic development,” her email read. “A full-time economic development director and full-time administrative assistant position was created. Through this department was the creation of the Tourism Center, which is providing tours of the windfarms and making money for the county.”
The county has even seen its property taxes lowered and more funding provided to its towns and townships for developing projects within those communities.
Additional information obtained by the News-Examiner from the Benton County Assessor’s Office shows that, despite each of those three wind farm projects in Benton County being between years three and five of a tax abatement, the county garnered more than $1.8 million in property taxes from the projects in 2013, payable in 2014, and that since 2009, the county has collected close to $5 million in combined property taxes from the three wind farms.
While the proposed wind farm project including Fayette County, introduced by NextEra Energy Resources, would have approximately 40 to 50 wind turbines placed within the county – nowhere near the number in Benton County – it is estimated that those turbines would bring in an additional amount of roughly $20 million in tax revenue over the span of 30 years to Fayette County.
That’s on top of approximately $2 million the county would receive, if they grant a tax abatement to NextEra Energy, in “economic development” payments spanning about half of the 10-year tax abatement period.
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