Wind energy project in Northwest Iowa moves forward

MidAmerican Energy is celebrating a milestone today in the development of their wind turbine project in northwest Iowa. Company spokesman Mark Reinders says the project covers a large area from south of Schaller to almost Storm Lake. Reinders says the project isn’t producing energy yet, but is is producing jobs. He says it’s just over 310 megawatts, and during construction it’ll create 250 jobs and afterwards there’ll be 20 continuing operational jobs. Reinders says this is a milestone because it begins the process of setting up the turbines. He says they’ve had a lot of the infrastructure work going on the last several months, and the cement foundations were poured for the turbines recently. But, he says this is the first tower going up for a turbine. The 323-million dollar project is expected to create enough energy to power 85-thousand homes.