photo by: Journal-World

The west side of the Douglas County Courthouse, 1100 Massachusetts St., is pictured on Sept. 23, 2021.

On Wednesday, the Douglas County Commission could take the final step in approving revised regulations for wind energy projects in the county.

At Wednesday’s County Commission meeting, the only item on the agenda is the wind rules, which have been a work in progress for more than two years.

The revised rules call for substantially more rigorous application requirements and setback standards than the existing rules adopted in 2016, as the Journal-World has reported, namely in their required setback distances. The Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission in January approved the revised rules on a 6-3 vote with one of those distances set at 2,500 feet from the property line for property owners who aren’t participating in a project.

In an earlier proposed draft, that same type of setback was set at a thousand feet shorter, which both community members and some planning commissioners expressed concerns about because of potential risks like ice throw from wind turbine blades.

The agenda for Wednesday’s meeting includes more than 300 pages of advance public comments. Some of them urge commissioners to reject the rules entirely to preserve rural areas of the county, or because of further concerns about how wind turbines may cause disruptions or public health risks for neighbors.

A Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health review of existing research on the latter topic from March notes that peer-reviewed literature hasn’t indicated a public health risk arising from industrial-scale renewable energy projects.

Many comments specifically address the setback distances. Some of those commenters voice support for the 2,500-foot setbacks, while others say they will be too restrictive for a larger-scale project to be viable.

Currently there are no active applications for an industrial-scale wind energy project going through the approval process in Douglas County, but renewable energy giant NextEra Energy Resources has for a number of years been exploring the viability of bringing a project of that scale to southwestern Douglas County and has frequently commented on the rules as they’ve worked through the revision process. Representatives with the company have called the 2,500-foot setback standard too restrictive for developers.

The county health department has also put together a memo addressing setbacks for industrial-scale wind energy sites, which is included as another attachment with Wednesday’s agenda. The memo was prepared by academic staff with the health department and partners at the University of Kansas Medical Center Department of Population Health.

The memo includes a table of setback standards on the books for various cities and counties throughout Kansas, including Topeka, which illustrates that both fixed and variable distances are represented in other communities’ wind energy regulations.

One part of the memo refers to an empirical analysis about setback distance and whether it is the best criterion for siting wind turbines in crowded conditions — another concern expressed by members of the public as it relates to Douglas County’s population density. The memo notes that this study found an optimal setback distance for “social welfare” to be defined as between 2,297 and 3,937 feet.

“Noise and shadow flicker frequency tend to be correlated with distance from wind turbines,” the memo reads. “Noise is associated with long-term sleep disturbances, and shadow flicker is associated with annoyance for residents. Larger setback distances are therefore more acceptable to neighboring residents, although larger distances may limit the total potential area available for siting wind farms, and could increase costs of production because the power source will be further from the center of demand for electricity.”

According to the memo, that study also found that a narrower range of setback distances, starting at 3,281 feet and ending at the same optimal maximum of 3,937 feet, balances concerns about encroachment into environmentally sensitive areas with supporting wind energy efforts.

The Douglas County Commission has the final say on the revised rules for wind projects, meaning they could either choose to approve them with two affirmative votes from the three-member group, deny them or send them back to the Planning Commission for further discussion and revision.

The County Commission’s business meeting will begin at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Douglas County Public Works training room at 3755 E. 25th St. The meeting will also be available via Zoom.