While a Texas energy company called Dakota Access gears up to tell Lee County residents Monday what to expect from an underground oil pipeline that’ll stretch from North Dakota to Illinois, more than one-thousand Iowans have joined a group that opposes the two-billion-dollar Rock Island Clean Line wind energy project which aims to build two-thousand wind turbines across Iowa and a 500-mile-long transmission line.
Carolyn Sheridan, who lives near Spencer in Clay County, is president of the Preservation of Rural Iowa Alliance. Sheridan says they have several concerns with the project and its potential harmful effects.
Sheridan says, according to state law, wind companies may invoke eminent domain through what’s known as the franchise process. One of the first requirements, she says, is to hold informational meetings. Sheridan says there have been 12-hundred objections filed with the Iowa Utilities Board against the Rock Island Clean Line project. She says her group has hired attorneys and witnesses and will continue fighting the project.
Developers say the power generated by the Iowa wind turbines would be transported via the new transmission line to Chicago and points east. The line would run through 16 Iowa counties. Governor Branstad’s economic development director hails the project, saying it shows how wind energy can be a valuable Iowa export. Rock Island Clean Line officials previously announced Sabre Industries in Sioux City will make support structures for the transmission line. The preferred route for the line would start in far northwest Iowa’s O’Brien County and exit in eastern Iowa’s Scott County, just north of the Quad Cities.
