A California-based energy company is planning a wind-farm in eastern Crawford and western Carroll counties. Tom Fieler is in charge of Midwest development for Clipper Windpower. Fieler says it’s one of the oldest, most established companies in the wind industry and is the only one in the U.S. that manufactures wind turbines, builds windfarms, and then does the operations and maintenance.

Clipper held a meeting this week in Westside, laying out the details of the “Victory Wind Energy Project.” Fieler says it’ll eventually include 86 turbines built near Westside and Arcadia. The two small towns are between Denison and Carroll. Fieler says construction’s set to begin next month.

It’ll generate about 150-Megawatts, which he says is enough electricity to power about 45-thousand average homes. The windfarm will be built on about 21 square miles of land. Fiedler says once they get a few more permits, work will begin.

In May he expects construction to begin on the sub-station, which is where the electricity’s connected into the transmission grid. More heavy construction will get underway this summer and it’ll be done in the fall, though he says a second phase on the south end of the property will then begin late this year or early next year.

Fieler says the turbines will have little impact on farming, and farmers will be compensated for any crop damage during the construction process. Easement agreements with the landowners for putting the towers on their lands will pay them royalties beginning at 350-thousand dollars a year, and he says the local governments will get tax benefits totaling about a million a year.

Fieler says it’ll also create some permanent construction jobs, and it’ll all total around 35-Million dollars of local value over the life of the project. Fieler says building them will create 175 jobs and after that there will be about half a dozen full-time operations and maintenance jobs. Clipper Windpower has been developing wind projects in the U.S. and Europe including two projects already in northwest Iowa.