Henn Hired For Road Crew; Wind Turbine Noise Still Hot Topic

Amongst a full agenda, the Antelope County Supervisors conducted interviews with two candidates and moved to hire Tom Henn for the road and bridge employee position.

Wind turbines were a much-discussed topic. After the public hearing on the wind farm project was continued twice this month, the Antelope County Planning Commission recommended the conditional use permit of a proposed wind farm to the Antelope County Supervisors meeting by a majority vote on Wednesday.

During the last supervisor’s meeting, the board moved to have Zoning Administrator Char Carpenter further her research on other companies that could do a noise study and bring her findings to the board and make a recommendation at the next supervisors meeting.

With the window of opportunity closing in on doing a noise study in the winter season, Invenergy has hired an independent company to start the noise study on an existing wind farm within the next two weeks, setting up microphones at different residences of individuals who have filed noise complaints. 

In order to not hire a second company to do the same study, Carpenter presented the board with a recommendation to wait until the noise study is done and have Antelope County hire a third party to conduct a peer review of the completed results.

Invenergy representatives addressed the board and confirmed they were open to using other independent consultants with a peer review of noise study results.

After much discussion, no action by the supervisors was taken on the proposed wind project.

​The only action taken concerning the proposed wind farm project was the motion by Greg Koinzan to request a written statement from Invenergy assuming full responsibility for any icing issues of said turbines, addressing another repeated concern with the proposed project.