Delaware, Craig County residents say ‘no,’ envision new zoning rules

KANSAS—Nearly 50 Delaware County residents dodged heavy rain Wednesday night , May 8, to gather in a Northeast Tech Campus conference room to share concerns about a coming wind energy project, but their focus quickly turned to a neighboring county.

“That’s where I live, right there,” John Spence gravely said as he pointed to a narrow sliver of red near Vinita on a sizeable plat map of Craig County. Large blocks of orange highlights dwarfed the spot.

“I’m completely surrounded,” he said.

He said the orangemarked plots are land owned by non-resident landowners on either side of his family ranch of six generations. Those landowners readily signed up for leases for the passive income that comes with providing land for wind turbines.

Six months into a campaign he characterizes as “a fight for civil rights against industrial wind turbines,” Spence rolled south Wednesday to share a strategy of public outreach and county zoning law changes rural counties can use to short-circuit plans for wind energy.

Delaware County residents and Green Country Guardians group members, still stinging with frustration over an unstoppable 2018 influx of hundreds of industrial- size poultry-growing operations, seized upon Spence’s words and said they’d be moving soon to reach out to neighbors, their county commissioners, and their county district attorney.

Zoning comes into play for health and safety reasons, Spence said.

“The problem with a wind turbine that is 660 feet tall and spinning at 180 mph is it affects people for two miles around. And there are a whole bunch of kids, and people and animals around these things that can suffer from lowdecibel sound, audible sound, ablation stuff coming off those blades, and blade throws of up to a half mile coming off those things,” he said.

Unlike agricultural developments largely protected from local zoning rules under state statutes, Spence advised the group that structures are not.

Posted on the wall at the head of the room, Spence’s map of Craig County showed those blocks of wind-leased properties surrounded by a sea of red that marked land owned by residents who not only said they didn’t like wind turbines but committed to saying “no” if speculators came offering money for easements.

While their phonecall campaign and neighbor-to-neighbor contacts so far focused nearest the areas already signed up for wind exploration easements, Spence estimated the red squares on the map already cover 176,000 acres of the 486,000acre county.

Triple Oak Power is working in Craig County to create the 300-megawatt Cabin Creek Wind Farm project to begin construction in 2027. The company’s website notes it would have 50-100 turbines on a 35,000-acre footprint.

“That’s the best way to stop wind turbines is for nobody to sign up,” Spence said.

He said the map gave their cause political momentum. The amount of red on the map shocked county leaders, who initially doubted objectors as a minority of complainers.

“Getting that map colored in red has really made the difference. That’s enabled us to show the DA and the commissioners where the people stand. That visual has had so much more impact than anything else.”

Emily Oakley was in familiar territory at the head of the room Wednesday. Six years ago, she was among the first to organize community members who were alarmed about the poultry farm explosion that arrived without public warning.

“I wasn’t sure how much of a community response there would be, but, just like the chicken houses, this is bringing people together,” she said.

“I think people are worried because they’re bringing something really big, and frankly on an industrial scale, to a rural community and to rural land without any of us ever really knowing about it until somebody kind of raises the word and said they either signed a lease or had been approached,” she said.

Oakley said residents searched for weeks until, only recently, a new web page for the Rocky Hollow Wind Project appeared.

The website details a planned 250-megawatt project with 56 turbines set for construction beginning in 2028. Steelhead Americas, the North American development arm of Vestas, the world’s leading wind turbine manufacturer and service provider, is driving the project.

Vestas spokesman Matthew Copeman responded via email that he was too short of time to correspond on Thursday.

The Oklahoma Ecology Project is a nonprofit dedicated to in-depth reporting on Oklahoma’s conservation and environmental issues. Learn more at okecology.org.