Officials in Crawford County are offering a warm welcome to windpower, and a proposal to build more than a hundred generators. Crawford County Zoning Administrator Duane Zenk says they’ve cleared the way for some zoning changes in rural areas near Schleswig and Ricketts at the request of a developer.
One of the companies, BPM Energy, which is affiliated with a company called Heartland out of Chicago, has asked the Board of Adjustment for a special exception so they can build wind-generator towers in an agricultural part of Crawford County. Zenk says the developers have already leased large sections of land needed to get the project started.
Now Zenk says the developers are studying how they may build service roads to carry construction equipment into the area, and how many towers they might put in any location. Then they’d request building permits, which he expects by summer, and construction may begin in the fall and run through winter, so some of the wind generators could be turned on in 2007. Iowa already has several wind-farms with operating generators, particularly in northern and western parts of the state.