The following story ran in The Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne.

By Angela Mapes Turner | The Journal Gazette

The flat farmlands of northeast Indiana aren’t as vast as the sweeping plains of Texas, the state that leads the nation in wind power.

Developers say there’s plenty of energy to be harnessed in the region’s wind, but how – and if – that happens depends not only on government incentives to big wind developers but home rule in the region’s rural counties.

David Sewell, Whitley County’s executive director of planning and building, describes himself as an “eternal optimist.” He’s been a public planner for 35 years, nearly half that time in Whitley County, and he’s seen his share of land-use battles – landfills, major industrial sites, large farming operations.

The protracted fight over wind energy trumps them all.

“These issues, these structures, they go a little beyond what we normally deal with, as far as land-use jurisdiction goes,” Sewell said. “This one is definitely unique.”

Whitley County leaders, responding to interest by an American wind-energy company hoping to locate in the county, began working on an ordinance last year that would regulate the permitting process for wind turbines – how tall they could be, how far they would be set back from property lines, how they would be maintained.

The draft ordinance was scrapped when it was disclosed the plan commission’s president, David Schilling, had signed paperwork months earlier, in the midst of crafting the ordinance, that indicated he would be willing to lease his land to a wind farm.

Sewell said the plan commission decided to begin the process anew. A committee was created to study the issue and create a report. The committee is made up of three members of the plan commission, three wind farm supporters and three opponents.

The committee’s report will be taken into consideration by the plan commission in a few weeks, along with input from a consultant who was hired after the original draft ordinance had to be rejected.

Sewell sat in on all the committee’s meetings, and he said he’s worked hard to remain neutral on the issue, as he does with any divisive issue in his line of work. The meetings have been cordial, Sewell said, but even the eternal optimist has doubts the committee will reach any sort of consensus.

“The issue appears to come down to, ‘What do you believe?’ ” Sewell said. “There is not one set of facts as far as the impact of any potential wind turbine or farm.”

The newness of the technology, at least in the U.S., plays largely into the division.

A decade ago, Indiana was a literal blank slate on the U.S. Department of Energy’s map of wind-power capacity, or how much power the turbines can produce under ideal weather conditions. It was the same in 2005, even as surrounding states showed small gains.

A lot changed in the second half of the decade. By the end of 2010, Indiana had 1.34 gigawatts of wind-power capacity, more than the 1.21 gigawatts needed to power the fictional DeLorean time machine in the movie “Back to the Future.”

Indiana’s capacity could power between 300,000 to 400,000 homes, based on calculations by the American Wind Energy Association. The organization says that because the wind does not blow all the time, it cannot be the only power source for that many households without some form of storage system.

The state has outpaced all its neighbors except Illinois, which had 2 gigawatts capacity, according to the Department of Energy’s data.

It’s been left to individual municipalities to handle how and where wind companies can locate. Indiana’s first commercial-scale wind farm opened in Benton County, northwest of Lafayette, in 2008. Allen County currently does not have an ordinance regulating wind-energy systems.

Whitley County’s Sewell said having such a short time period to reflect on how the wind farms are affecting rural residents makes it difficult to make an educated decision.

“The issues are so new,” he said. “The people who say, ‘We don’t know’ – they probably don’t.”

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