Wind turbines have become divisive issue in Traverse County

WHEATON, MINN. – Along U.S. Hwy. 75 in Traverse County, a black-and-white sign reads: “Wind Farmer. And Now My Neighbors Don’t Speak to Me!”

Philip and Latona Brink saw it while driving by and laughed. The couple, who live about 7 miles south in Dumont, has agreed to allow wind turbines to be built on the land where they grow corn and soybeans. The income will add stability to the ups-and-downs of commodity prices, and they also believe in renewable energy. Their daughter sells solar power in Colorado.

And, they say, their neighbors still speak to them.

“No matter what you do, you’re going to upset somebody,” Philip Brink said. “End of the day, you own your land and you think about what’s right for you and the environment.”

Like most of western Minnesota, Traverse County is pretty conservative. Trump trounced Biden here in 2020. It’s a big farming community, producing corn and soybeans, and dairy giant Riverview Dairy milks cows here. It’s also Minnesota’s least populous county, with 3,300 residents, meaning that many people know each other or at least each other’s family name.

But even here, where everyone has so much in common, divisive rhetoric is being used in the battle between those who are for wind power and those who are against it.

“It’s kind of like an extreme-right Republican and extreme-left Democrat having a conversation and trying to agree on something,” said Charity Carlson, one of the leading wind power opponents. “And I don’t think it’s political. I mean, there’s a lot of Democrats that are against it; there’s a lot of Republicans that are against it. So it’s not a political thing, but people treat it almost like it is.”

The problem with divisive rhetoric is that it obscures very real concerns.

Carlson doesn’t live in Traverse County, but her crop dusting service sprays fields there. And she worries about her pilots. Where there are wind turbines, there are utility wires, and utility wires can kill pilots and wreck airplanes. Wires, trees and other planes pose a constant threat to crop dusters.

Last year, two crop duster pilots died in plane crashes in Minnesota, according to National Transportation Safety Board records. One record did not list a cause, but the second, near Clara City, said the airplane hit powerlines along the perimeter of a cornfield.

Wind towers are also adjacent to wind evaluation towers, which can be a couple hundred feet high and also pose a risk to pilots.

“I’ve given a couple of public meetings down in Morris and in Holloway and in Wheaton, and that’s one of the big things that I talk about, is the safety of my pilots,” Carlson said.

Along with a partner, Carlson runs WindBreak LLC, which seeks to connect as many landowners as possible in opposition to wind turbines. So far, her company has signed up 25,000 acres, thousands of them in Traverse County. The more the company signs up, the more it can rely on setbacks to block turbines from being built on adjacent lands, she said.

Thousands of other acres have signed lease agreements with Cordelio Power, which wants to harvest Traverse County’s wind.

Other concerns include damage to county roads, farm fields and crops, and what happens to the enormous wind towers at the end of their useful life span. There are also visual concerns: wind towers can be enormous, reaching skyscraper heights. It’s like adding dozens of IDS towers to a rural landscape.

Traverse County has placed a moratorium on wind power while it updates its wind ordinance. One of its commissioners, Kayla Schmidt, is a fierce opponent of wind. The sign I mentioned on Hwy. 75 is on her family’s land. A second nearby sign reads, “If Windmills Are The Answer, How Stupid Is The Question?”

Schmidt didn’t want to talk about the rhetoric or her reasons for opposing the windmills. She did text me a message calling the state’s goals for net zero carbon emissions by 2040 “irresponsible and dangerous.”

Though given the heat records set yearly around the globe, doing nothing to reduce carbon emissions is what is truly irresponsible and dangerous.

Western Minnesota hasn’t always opposed wind power. In the early 2000s, neighboring Big Stone County saw two local efforts to create wind farms. It was a local effort, with local investors, and the wind turbines wouldn’t have been as numerous or as large as those now going in, said Big Stone County Commissioner Brent Olson, who was heavily involved in one of the efforts.

They were hoping to sell power to Otter Tail Power, but the power company decided against it, he said. That killed the project, and local investors lost money.

Nowadays, much of the wealth generated by wind power will leave the area. The landowners will do well, likely earnings tens of thousands of dollars or more, but any shareholder profits will go elsewhere. The company that wants to place wind turbines in Traverse County is based in Canada.

“Nobody is selling shares of the company in Big Stone County,” Olson said.

You can’t help but feel something important was lost. If the powers that be had listened to the little guy then, the situation today might be very different. Maybe today’s powerful people and companies should listen now. Definitely those wielding divisive language in Traverse County need to drop the divisive language. They can make their points better without it.