Farms clean up with new crop – wind turbines
From an article by Tom Content in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Town of Marshfield – The state’s newest energy crop is rising above the rolling farm fields overlooking Lake Winnebago in northeastern Fond du Lac County.
While farmers throughout Wisconsin have planted more corn in recent years to make ethanol, some area farmers will soon receive payments for giving land over to another renewable resource: wind turbines.
More than 170 turbines sit atop towers in two new wind farm projects in Fond du Lac and Dodge counties. The new turbines will generate only a fraction of the state’s power needs, yet they are the most significant expansion yet of the state’s renewable energy efforts.
“It’s our future for energy, isn’t it?” said Melvin Olig of Mount Calvary as he took an afternoon walk on country roads with turbines on either side.
Proposals to build the turbines were floated five years ago, and the projects became controversial. Some homeowners worried that the towers would dramatically change the rural landscape, and they raised concerns about noise and other potential problems.
“It doesn’t bother me,” said Olig, who checks which way the wind is blowing each morning by looking out his kitchen window at the two turbines he can see from his home.
“Some people are quite up in arms about it, but if you’re doing something that’s legal on your own land, I don’t have a problem with it.”
