1
1 STATE OF ILLINOIS ) )SS 2 COUNTY OF LEE )
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4
5 In the Matter of the Petition
6 of
7 Leeward Renewable Energy Development LLC, a Delaware Limited Liability Company 8 Lee County, Illinois 9
10 Volume I, Pages 1-108 11 Testimony of Witnesses Produced, Sworn and 12 Examined on this 8th day of September A.D. 2016 13 before the Lee County Zoning Board of Appeals 14
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18 Present:
19 Bruce Forster, Chairman Craig Buhrow, Vice-Chairman 20 Mike Pratt Gene Bothe 21 Glenn Hughes
22 Alice Henkel, Zoning Clerk Chris Henkel, Zoning Administrator 23 Tim Slavin, Facilitator 24 Doris Kennay, Court Reporter 2
1 APPEARANCES:
2 ATTORNEY DOUGLAS LEE, of the firm of Ehrmann, Gehlbach, Badger, 3 Lee & Considine, 215 East First Street, Suite 100, 4 Dixon, Illinois 61021
5 Counsel for Leeward Renewable Energy Development, LLC, 6
7 LEE COUNTY STATE'S ATTORNEY MATTHEW KLAHN, of the Lee County State's Attorney's Office, 8 309 South Galena Avenue, Dixon, Illinois 61021, 9 Counsel for the Lee County Zoning Board 10 of Appeals.
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1 INDEX
2
3 Witness: CHRIS GREEN
4 Examination Page
5 Attorney Lee (Direct)...... 17
6 Zoning Members/County ...... 32
7 Members of the Public...... 35
8 Attorney Lee (Redirect)...... 42
9 Witness: AARON ANDERSON
10 Examination Page
11 Attorney Lee (Direct)...... 43
12 Zoning Members/Personnel ...... 50
13 Witness: CHRIS HOWELL
14 Examination Page
15 Attorney Lee (Direct)...... 55
16 Zoning Members/Personnel ...... 61
17 Members of the Public...... 66
18 Witness: TERRY VANDEWALLE
19 Examination Page
20 Attorney Lee (Direct)...... 68
21 Zoning Members/Personnel ...... 89
22 Members of the Public...... 97
23 Attorney Lee (Redirect)...... 100
24 4
1 EXHIBITS
2
3 Exhibit Marked
4
5 Petitioner's Exhibit No. 1...... 16
6 Petitioner's Exhibit No. 2...... 16
7 Petitioner's Exhibit No. 3...... 16
8 Petitioner's Exhibit No. 4...... 16
9 Petitioner's Exhibit No. 5...... 16
10 Petitioner's Exhibit No. 6...... 16
11 Petitioner's Exhibit No. 7...... 16
12 Petitioner's Exhibit No. 8...... 16
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20 Certificate of Shorthand Reporter. . . . 108
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24 5
1 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: Good evening, Ladies
2 and Gentlemen. My name is Bruce Forster. I'm
3 the Chairperson of these proceedings.
4 I call this meeting of the Lee County
5 Zoning Board of Appeals to order.
6 Will the secretary please call the roll.
7 THE CLERK: Bruce Forster?
8 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: Here.
9 THE CLERK: Craig Buhrow?
10 MR. BUHROW: Here.
11 THE CLERK: Mike Pratt?
12 MR. PRATT: Here.
13 THE CLERK: Gene Bothe?
14 MR. BOTHE: Here.
15 THE CLERK: Glenn Hughes?
16 MR. HUGHES: Here.
17 (Roll call was taken and all were
18 present.)
19 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: First order of
20 business, is there a motion to approve the
21 minutes of our last meeting?
22 MR. PRATT: I make a motion we approve the
23 minutes of the last meeting.
24 MR. HUGHES: Second. 6
1 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: We have a motion and a
2 second. All those in favor say aye.
3 (All those simultaneously responded.)
4 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: All opposed?
5 (WHEREUPON, no verbal response by the
6 Board members.)
7 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: Tonight we will begin
8 the Public Hearing for Leeward Energy, Petition
9 16-P-1507, an application for Special Use Permit
10 to replace some and construct some other new
11 wind turbine generators in Lee County as part of
12 a Wind Energy Conversion System.
13 I will now entertain a motion under our
14 rules to set a reasonable time limit for this
15 evening's session and for those to follow.
16 MR. HUGHES: So move to set a two-hour
17 time limit.
18 MR. BUHROW: I second that.
19 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: We have a second -- a
20 motion and a second. Is there any comment?
21 If not, all those in favor say aye.
22 (All those simultaneously responded.)
23 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: All opposed?
24 (WHEREUPON, no verbal response by the 7
1 Board members.)
2 ZONING ADMINISTRATOR HENKEL: Mr.
3 Chairman, we also need to adjourn last month's
4 petitions.
5 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: Okay.
6 We need to have a motion to adjourn
7 pursuant to the County Board's approval of
8 Petition 16-P-1505 and 16-P-1506, which were
9 from our last zoning meeting and then were
10 approved by the County Board. So could I have a
11 motion pursuant to those.
12 MR. PRATT: So move.
13 MR. HUGHES: Second.
14 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: Mike a motion to move,
15 Glenn second, all in favor say aye.
16 (All those simultaneously responded.)
17 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: Okay. As contemplated
18 by the Lee County Ordinance and our own rules of
19 procedure, I will now entertain a motion to
20 appoint retired Judge Tim Slavin as our
21 facilitator for the duration of this hearing.
22 MR. HUGHES: So move.
23 MR. PRATT: Second.
24 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: We have a motion and a 8
1 second. All in favor say aye.
2 (All those simultaneously responded.)
3 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: I will now turn the
4 hearing over to our facilitator.
5 JUDGE SLAVIN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
6 Welcome and good evening, everyone. It's
7 good to see old friends. My name is Tim Slavin,
8 and I'm a retired Judge engaged as an
9 independent contractor to what is called,
10 facilitate this hearing. I have no adjudicatory
11 responsibilities. And I am not support for or
12 against any particular position. I'm a neutral.
13 I am here hopefully to add some organization,
14 efficiency and flow to these proceedings.
15 This is Leeward Renewable Energy
16 Development, LLC's petition to essentially
17 decommission and remove all 63 turbines in
18 Mendota Hills, LLC and replace the same as part
19 of an updated Wind Energy Conversion System,
20 commonly known as Mendota Hills Wind Farm.
21 As shown by certificate of publication,
22 notice of this hearing was published in the
23 Dixon Telegraph, Amboy News, and Mendota
24 Reporter. Notices to adjoining property owners 9
1 have been provided.
2 This proceeding is, by the nature of the
3 petition filed, a tad different than the
4 petitions on which we spent time previously
5 together in this very room. However, as before
6 and always, all who so desire will absolutely be
7 given an opportunity to be heard; but for
8 everyone's benefit, I want to do it as orderly
9 and efficiently as possible. There are many
10 possible reasons for anyone's appearance here
11 this evening. You could be a member of the
12 public as a citizen and a spectator; part of the
13 Petitioner' contingent; an interested party. In
14 this context, an interested party does not
15 necessarily mean someone who is absolutely for
16 or against the requested special uses, but
17 someone who wants to be heard. If you do want
18 to be heard, you will fall into any one or more
19 of three categories:
20 No. 1. You want to give testimony. This
21 means you desire, under oath, to testify to
22 facts relevant to the Board's eventual decision.
23 That is not the time to describe your feelings
24 or announce your opinion -- excuse me -- but to 10
1 testify under oath as to facts. And you are
2 subject to cross-examination. Everyone so
3 wishing to testify will be given one opportunity
4 to do so.
5 Second category. You want to be able to
6 cross-examine witnesses. But, please, that is
7 just to ask questions of a particular witness,
8 not to argue with him or her. Everyone so
9 wishing to cross-examine will be given one
10 opportunity to cross-examine each and every
11 witness.
12 Third category. You want to make a
13 closing statement. This is your opportunity to
14 tell the Board how you feel or give them your
15 opinion based on the facts adduced during the
16 whole hearing process as to what their decision
17 should be. Everyone so wishing to give a
18 closing argument will be given one opportunity
19 to do so.
20 Again, I emphasize, everyone will
21 absolutely have a chance to be heard. However,
22 in order to add some semblance of organization,
23 there are and have been three half-sheets
24 available to sign up to participate: One 11
1 indicating your wish to testify, another your
2 wish to cross-examine witnesses, and the last
3 indicating your desire to give a closing
4 statement. These were available at the door and
5 continue to be available from Alice Henkel.
6 While signing up is not a prerequisite to
7 testifying, cross-examining, or making a closing
8 statement, I will initially be calling on folks
9 using those signup sheets; only after exhausting
10 that list will I invite others to testify, to
11 cross-examine, or give a closing statement.
12 Please note that once you have signed up,
13 you will not have to sign up again at each
14 continued session. I will keep those half
15 sheets current throughout the proceedings.
16 Excuse me.
17 Written communication sent in advance of
18 this hearing or any written material intended as
19 something for the Board to consider, is subject
20 to Board Rule, Article 5, Section 12 that eight
21 copies be provided. Any communications received
22 that did not do or did not comply with this
23 requirement may not be considered by the Board.
24 Those communications received which conform -- 12
1 excuse me, and each Board member has a copy and
2 another copy will be made a part of the record
3 in this matter.
4 I will now proceed -- I will now review
5 the chronological progress of the hearing.
6 First the Petitioner or its agent may make
7 opening remarks. The Petitioner then presents
8 evidence one witness or document at a time. I
9 will place each witness under oath or
10 affirmation. After each witness, the
11 Commission, the State's Attorney, the Zoning
12 Officer, and then other interested parties have
13 the opportunity to cross-examine. And, please,
14 I emphasize again, this is the time only for
15 questions directed to the witness testifying.
16 Next, interested parties may present evidence
17 one witness or one document at a time. I will
18 place each of those witnesses under oath or
19 affirmation. After each interested party
20 testifies or interested parties' witness, the
21 Commission, the State's Attorney, the Zoning
22 Officer, and then the Petitioner have the
23 opportunity to cross-examine. Following that
24 rebuttal witnesses or documents may be presented 13
1 by the Petitioner one at a time. The rebuttal
2 witnesses may be cross-examined by the
3 Commission, the State's Attorney, the Zoning
4 Officer, and any interested parties. Lastly,
5 surrebuttal witnesses or documents may be
6 presented by interested parties one at a time,
7 and the Commission, State's Attorney, Zoning
8 Officer, and the Petitioner have the opportunity
9 to cross-examine those interested parties'
10 surrebuttal witnesses. Lastly, the Petitioner
11 will be given an opportunity for closing
12 remarks, and following that, any interested
13 parties will be given an opportunity for closing
14 remarks.
15 Some sub-rules. As you may have just
16 heard, each session has a time limit under the
17 Board's action of now two hours. However, we
18 certainly don't want to cut off anybody right in
19 the middle of something, so I will certainly
20 make a reasonable effort to let someone finish a
21 particular stage when the time limit has been
22 reached. Or if there is very little time
23 remaining at the end of a stage, I may simply
24 suggest to the Chair to continue the session 14
1 rather than starting on another stage. I also
2 have the discretion to call for short recesses.
3 Under the Zoning Board rules, I have the
4 duty to rule on the admissibility of evidence.
5 While the strict judicial rules of evidence do
6 not apply, I will exercise some equitable
7 control of what is being presented with or
8 without an objection.
9 We do have a court reporter here this
10 evening taking down what is said during these
11 proceedings. I ask all to be mindful of her
12 job, please. She is really, really good, but
13 she can not take down two people talking at
14 once. She cannot take down the sound of nodding
15 heads, or gestures, and there's a limit to how
16 fast a person can talk and expect her to keep
17 up.
18 I do please ask for civility and decorum.
19 This is certainly a public forum, but please be
20 respectful of all who consider it important
21 enough to be here. I ask to refrain from
22 displays of approval or disapproval. And now,
23 as with all public gatherings these days, I ask
24 you to turn you are cell phones off or at least 15
1 to put them on silent.
2 All right. Mr. Lee, I understand you are
3 representing the Petitioner Leeward, and you
4 may, if you chose, give an opening argument.
5 MR. LEE: Yes, Judge, thank you. But
6 first I will formally enter my appearance --
7 JUDGE SLAVIN: Thank you, sir.
8 MR. LEE: -- on behalf of the Petitioner.
9 By the way of housekeeping and in keeping
10 things as official as possible, I'd also like to
11 introduce some exhibits at this time.
12 Petitioner's Exhibit 1 is a copy of a Petition.
13 Petitioner's Exhibit 2 is the notice that was
14 supplied and sent to the landowners.
15 Petitioner's Exhibit 3 is a list of the people
16 who were sent notices and various tracking
17 information about what notices were received and
18 returned. Petitioner's Exhibit 4 is a copy of
19 the notice published in The Telegraph.
20 Petitioner's Exhibit 5 is the certificate of
21 publication from the Amboy News. Petitioner's
22 Exhibit 6 is the Certificate of Publication from
23 the Mendota Reporter. Petitioner's Exhibit 7 is
24 a binder that includes several documents, 16
1 including an environmental site
2 characterization, a radio frequency and
3 telecommunications study, the sound analysis,
4 the shadow flicker analysis, and a property
5 value study. And so those are in the binders
6 that are off to the side. And then last for the
7 moment is Petitioner's Exhibit 8, which is the
8 executed Agricultural Impact Mitigation
9 Agreement between the Petitioner and the
10 Illinois Department of Agriculture.
11 JUDGE SLAVIN: All right, sir, you may
12 pass those out.
13 (Petitioner's Exhibit Nos. 1-8
14 marked for identification and
15 received into evidence.)
16 MR. LEE: I doubt anybody wants these, so
17 I'll leave them here and if somebody does, they
18 can request a copy.
19 In terms of opening statement, I'll be
20 brief. I have to say I didn't -- missed the
21 fact that people saw me here and thought, oh, my
22 God, not again. But, hopefully, this won't be
23 nowhere near like the last one. This is
24 actually a very unique, 17
1 first-of-its-kind-in-Illinois project. As Judge
2 Slavin mentioned, it is basically a teardown and
3 rebuild of an existing project. There are 63
4 turbines currently, and the request to this
5 Board is to recommend approval of a Special Use
6 Permit that allows the reconstruction of up to
7 35 more. With advances in technology, those
8 half as many turbines will produce more energy
9 and more economic benefit to Lee County and its
10 residents.
11 Nobody wants to hear me talk anymore than
12 absolutely necessary, so I'll start by calling
13 Chris Green as the Petitioner's first witness.
14 JUDGE SLAVIN: All right. Mr. Green, you
15 want to step up in front here.
16 MR. GREEN: Sure.
17 CHRIS GREEN,
18 having been first duly sworn, was examined and
19 testified as follows:
20 D I R E C T E X A M I N A T I O N
21 By Mr. Lee
22 Q. Would you state your name for the record.
23 A. Sure, it's Chris Green.
24 Q. And how are you employed? 18
1 A. I'm employed with Leeward. I've been employed
2 for four years with them.
3 Q. And what do you do with Leeward?
4 A. Kind of two hats. I do asset management for
5 them, which is managing the -- some of the
6 operating assets, including GSG that's in the
7 area, Mendota Hills, and also Crescent Ridge in
8 Bureau County. And also do development work as
9 well.
10 Q. And just so we're clear, Leeward is the
11 Petitioner in this proceeding, when you say
12 Leeward, that's what you mean?
13 A. Correct.
14 Q. And the project that we're talking about here
15 is commonly known as Mendota Hills; is that
16 right?
17 A. That is correct.
18 Q. And how long have you been working on the
19 Mendota Hills' project?
20 A. The repower development?
21 Q. No, no, just in general.
22 A. I've been doing the asset management work for
23 close to four years.
24 Q. And I understand that your purpose in 19
1 testifying today is to explain the project.
2 A. Correct.
3 Q. Okay. And you have a Power Point?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. And please proceed.
6 A. Okay. Thank you.
7 First off just thanks for the time,
8 appreciate everybody's time in hearing us out
9 here, so...
10 Just way of intro, kind of our team here,
11 Leeward reps: Chris Green, like I said, been
12 with the company four years. John Wycherley,
13 who is working the machine there. He's senior
14 director of development working on the project.
15 We also have some consultants as well. We've
16 got Doug Lee, who introduced himself; Aaron
17 Anderson, who's with Burns & McDonnell, he's
18 doing the shadow flicker consulting as well as
19 some other consulting, too. Chris Howell, who's
20 with Burns & McDonnell as well, doing -- he's
21 our noise consultant. And then Terry VanDeWalle
22 with Stantec, he's our environmental and
23 wildlife consultant.
24 So just an intro on the company. So 20
1 Leeward Renewable Energy is the parent company
2 to Leeward Renewable Development, LLC, which is
3 developing this project. Leeward Renewable
4 Energy owns, on top of owning the development
5 entity, they own the management asset entity
6 which manages the asset and then they have an
7 ownership entity which owns the actual assets.
8 They own 18 assets in the U.S., that's a total
9 of 1,557 megawatts of generation in the U.S., to
10 be exact. As of now, we're ranked the 15th
11 largest wind portfolio in the U.S.
12 We recently were purchased, so we were
13 Infigen Energy. And just kind of a history on
14 who has owned Mendota Hills. So the original
15 project was developed by a company Navitas back
16 in 2003. They owned the project for three
17 years. A company called Babcock & Brown, who
18 effectively is basically the same company that I
19 work for now, it's just changed names for, I
20 think, four times. They bought the project back
21 in 2007. So the reason I bring that up is it's
22 effectively the same people that have owned the
23 project since 2007, it's just a name change.
24 There's been various entities that have owned 21
1 us, but by and large it's been the same people
2 who have been working on the project for 10
3 years.
4 We were purchased by Arclight a year ago,
5 and it's been a great thing. They want to grow
6 the business, which is kind of why we're here.
7 This is one of our first assets that we are
8 going to be trying to develop as they grow the
9 business.
10 So this is just a map of all the assets.
11 There are 18 assets, wind farms, across the U.S.
12 You can see we got projects from California to
13 New Jersey. You can see there in the middle
14 we've got the three projects: GSG and Crescent
15 Ridge and Mendota Hills.
16 So Mendota Hills, this is the existing
17 project. Just to give you a little summary on
18 the project, it's got -- the developer went
19 commercial 2003 when it began operating. It was
20 the first wind farm in Illinois. It consists of
21 63 Gamesa G52 turbines. The hub height is
22 65 meters. Should have brought a calculator up
23 here to spit that out in feet, but multiply
24 anything I say by 3.28 and that will get you the 22
1 feet, so. The rotor diameter is 52 meters, so
2 that 52 there is the rotor diameter. It's
3 historical production over the past five years
4 has averaged around 90,000 megawatt hours.
5 A little background of the commercial
6 summary. Like I said, it was the first project
7 utility-scale wind farm in Illinois. Went COD
8 in 2003. We've paid over 5 -- 5-and-half
9 million in local taxes since 2003. We've
10 averaged around 10 full-time employees dedicated
11 to the site since 2003. There's obviously many
12 subcontractors that come in and out to do work
13 here and there. One of the reasons -- one of
14 the reasons why this project has struggled
15 financially is due to the low energy prices. So
16 when this project was developed back in 2003,
17 gas prices were higher, energy prices were
18 higher. Since then the prices have kind of
19 dipped, so that has added stress to the project.
20 The main stress, however, is the simple fact
21 that these machines are not efficient. Their
22 rotor diameter is -- it's too small and
23 effectively -- the operating costs, it
24 operates -- it operates at a deficit. It costs 23
1 more to operate it than it does -- than it
2 actually makes. So that's kind of an intro to
3 the next slide.
4 So this table here is kind of a breakdown
5 of the existing project, and it shows the size
6 of the project that we're proposing here, the
7 repower project; and we also wanted to list
8 three of the neighboring projects to give you a
9 context of the size of the turbines that we're
10 installing, mainly to let you know that they're
11 not that much bigger than the other projects
12 that are out there. They are going to be
13 bigger, but, you know, they're not going to be
14 that much bigger. From the naked eye, I think
15 they would be difficult to tell the difference.
16 I guess that's -- the Mendota existing project
17 65 meter height, 52 meter diameter, it's a 50.4
18 megawatt project. This other number here, the
19 estimated net capacity factor, that's basically
20 the efficiency of the wind farm. So basically
21 it's producing 23 percent of the amount of
22 energy that it's capable of producing, is what
23 that number is, and that leads you to that
24 90,000 megawatt hours. 24
1 The repower project we're proposing, the
2 number of turbines is going to be less. It's
3 going to be somewhere around half, if not less
4 than half, 27 to 34. The hub height that we are
5 proposing are 102 meters to 134 meters.
6 Actually put feet in this table. That's
7 335 feet to 426 feet hub height. The rotor
8 diameter is 110 to 130 meters; 361 to 426 feet.
9 The project capacity is 70.4 and the fact that
10 the rotor diameters are that much bigger allows
11 you to get that much more efficiency.
12 Particularly in this wind regime, the winds are
13 a little bit -- like if you go out west, the
14 winds are quite a bit higher, and you could get
15 away with the smaller rotor diameters. In this
16 wind regime, it's better to have a longer rotor
17 diameter to capture winds at lower wind speeds.
18 So this turbine, it's much more efficient, but
19 it's also a better fit for this particular wind
20 regime.
21 The initial capacity factors, 43 percent,
22 so it's a very high number relative to wind
23 farms in the U.S.. and I would say it's
24 definitely high for an Illinois wind farm and 25
1 that's solely due to -- solely due to the newer
2 technology that's out there with the larger
3 rotor diameters.
4 So our estimate of the production, even
5 with this 27 to 34 turbine setup, we're
6 estimating it's going to be able to produce
7 270,000 megawatt hours. That's three times the
8 amount with almost half the turbines. And like
9 I said, these other three projects, GSG, Shady
10 Oaks, I listed them here solely to demonstrate
11 that the turbines we're wanting to install are
12 going to be fairly in line with the size of
13 them.
14 This slide here, I'll just go through
15 quickly, it kind of illustrates where the wind
16 industry is headed, where it was back in 2003
17 when this project was developed. You can see
18 back then that the size of turbines were about
19 the same size as what -- height wise the same
20 size that rotor diameter even back in 2003, say
21 would be on the smaller side. But as you can
22 see, turbines are getting bigger and more
23 efficient, and what that's doing is driving down
24 the operating costs of the project, and it makes 26
1 it more economical.
2 So this slide here discusses the benefits
3 of the project. Like I said earlier, the
4 current project, it operates at a deficit.
5 Every year is cash negative at the end of the
6 year and that's solely due to the operating
7 costs per megawatt hour. It costs more to run
8 the machine than it actually generates. So the
9 repower project, the fact that you're going to
10 have the larger rotor diameters, we're going to
11 be able to produce more energy, therefore,
12 lowering the operating costs per megawatt hour
13 of production, making the project -- well, I'll
14 say, yeah, more economical but also economical.
15 So yeah, increased energy output obviously
16 is going to increase the overall project
17 revenues. The fact that we're able to increase
18 the project revenues, we're able to increase the
19 royalty payments to landowners. The royalty
20 payments in total should be, as it sits now,
21 three times what the current project is paying
22 royalties. And another benefit of increasing
23 the revenue and reducing operating costs will
24 improve the financial outlook for the project 27
1 and hence create a viable asset to the company,
2 but also to the county and community for future
3 decades. The project that's out their right
4 now, as I said, it's not economical. It's
5 losing money every year, so I'm not sure how
6 long that can continue.
7 You know, by doing the new project, we'll
8 have -- you know, we'll firm up the local
9 permanent and contractor jobs. Something else
10 that we've been doing every year, we've done,
11 you know, $10,000 to local charities. And one
12 of the other big benefits of the project to the
13 community is the increase in tax revenue.
14 So these are just two of the bigger items
15 for the tax increase that we're going to bring
16 to the community. First, just in the permitting
17 alone here, you know, we're estimating that the
18 special use and building permit costs alone is
19 going to be somewhere around 425 to 525,000 and
20 that's based on the -- well, the building permit
21 cost is based upon the $25 per linear foot of
22 turbine height and that's from blade tip to the
23 ground. The other benefit is going to go on --
24 the largest benefit that's going to continue 28
1 annually, put together this chart here that
2 shows -- it shows the property taxes that
3 Mendota has -- Mendota Hills has paid since
4 2011, which back in 2011 was around, like,
5 430,000. It is now down closer to 380,000 this
6 year. And the reason for the decline is the
7 calculation -- the property tax calculation is
8 based upon -- you depreciate the value of the
9 equipment over 25 years. So with that -- with
10 us bringing in the new project, not only will
11 the new project -- the value of the project is
12 also based upon the capacity of the project. So
13 you have an existing project that's 50; this new
14 project, even though it's going to have half the
15 amount of turbines will be a 70-megawatt
16 project, and the tax code is based upon the
17 capacity of the project, so we're going to be
18 increasing the capacity, so the value
19 automatically goes up there. On top of that,
20 we'll be resetting the depreciation clock. So
21 for instance, if we -- we're trying to get the
22 project -- our goal is to get the project
23 constructed summer 2007 -- 2017, excuse me. Our
24 estimated taxes for that year for the existing 29
1 project will be somewhere around 350,000. Our
2 estimated property taxes for 2017, same year,
3 will be close to 900,000. So that's close to
4 570,000 increase in property taxes. If I was
5 smart, I would total that out over 20 years and
6 then change that, but it's a sizeable number.
7 All right. So getting into the nitty
8 gritty of the layout here. The first one there,
9 the first image, probably can't see it from
10 there, but this image, it outlines all of the
11 setbacks that we apply to the layout. And these
12 setbacks were what in our petition and the
13 permits. It's primary structures, schools,
14 churches. Primary structures basically a
15 business or a residence that is occupied. If
16 any of those are owned by a non-participating
17 person then we need to be 3.5 times the turbine
18 height from that structure. On the same hand
19 for a primary structure, which includes a
20 residence owned by a participating property
21 owner we -- the ordinance states we can be
22 within 1.1 times turbine height. We try to stay
23 outside of that in the our design, but that's
24 what the ordinance states -- or not the 30
1 ordinance, that's what our petition states,
2 excuse me. Platted subdivisions, we need to
3 remain 3.5 times the turbine height from a
4 platted subdivision. Transmission lines, roads,
5 communication towers, we have to be 1.1 times
6 turbine height. Non-participating parcel
7 boundaries, so any parcel that's not -- so the
8 farmland or a parcel that does not have a
9 primary structure or residence on it, we have to
10 be 1.1 times the turbine height from that parcel
11 boundary. Let's see, aviation setbacks, we have
12 to follow the Illinois Admin Code, Title 92, and
13 as well, we have to file a permit application
14 with the FAA. We have to avoid wetlands,
15 wildlife areas, cultural areas. And then we
16 have to design around shadow flicker and noise
17 and all those being passed, so this is just a
18 summary of what we had to design around.
19 And after you throw all that together, you
20 come out with this layout. I'm not sure if you
21 can see this or not, but this layout it shows
22 the location of the new turbines as well as it
23 shows the location of the existing turbines.
24 You can see that we have -- we're placing new 31
1 turbines outside of the existing project's
2 footprint. The reason for doing that is simply
3 because the larger rotor diameters require more
4 space between them because an upwind turbine
5 will eat -- well, will consume the energy from a
6 downwind turbine, so you have to maintain
7 spacing. One thing I want to caveat that with
8 is -- granted, the project boundary, if you
9 will, is expanding; the actual space and land
10 that we will be using will be shrinking, because
11 the number of turbines on the land that's
12 actually utilized is based upon the number of
13 turbines. And I also would caveat that with all
14 of the land that we're not using and roads,
15 everything that we're not using with the
16 existing project will be returned back to its
17 original state. Next one.
18 This map here is the same map, it's just
19 an illustration that shows the 1.1 times the
20 turbine height boundary around each of the
21 turbines, that would be the red circles. The
22 brown circles are the 3.5 times the turbine
23 height. Also in this map, it shows the proposed
24 location -- preliminary proposed location of the 32
1 collection lines and roads -- access roads. We
2 have other images that are zoomed in here where
3 you can see exactly the location of all the
4 primary structures, residences, everything that
5 we will need to stay away from.
6 MR. LEE: Mr. Green, so the Zoning Board
7 knows, those are all within Exhibit 7 of the
8 binder, correct?
9 A. Correct.
10 Yeah, we have this map here zoomed in to
11 much finer detail so you can see the exact
12 locations of all the structures and boundaries.
13 With that said, I'm going to kick it to
14 our shadow flicker consultant.
15 JUDGE SLAVIN: No, you're not, but that's
16 okay.
17 Any further questions of your witness?
18 MR. LEE: No.
19 JUDGE SLAVIN: Questions of this witness,
20 Mr. Forster?
21 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: I have no questions at
22 this time.
23 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Buhrow?
24 MR. BUHROW: I've got a couple. You seem 33
1 to talk a great deal about operating costs of
2 this new project versus the other ones. Is it
3 the situation the operating costs are going to
4 be the same as larger ones and just more output,
5 or is there going to be a reduction? What are
6 your major operating costs that you thought
7 about in this?
8 THE WITNESS: Well, the main operating
9 costs for this wind farm, Mendota Hills Wind
10 Farm, are the turbine maintenance -- wind
11 turbine maintenance, property taxes and then the
12 -- what we call the balance of plant
13 maintenance, those are the three. The
14 maintenance -- the turbine maintenance costs
15 will -- you know, coming out of the gate will be
16 close, probably less -- less than the existing
17 project. Property taxes, as I showed, are going
18 to be probably twice. But by and large, the
19 costs will be more, but you're making up for it
20 on the production, because it's cost per
21 megawatt hour that you produce. So the biggest
22 gain that we're going to be getting will be from
23 the production.
24 MR. BUHROW: Okay. So you mentioned there 34
1 the residences and the map. The brown circles
2 then were the distance of three-and-a-half times
3 the height -- the tip height then?
4 THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.
5 MR. BUHROW: Okay. And what is the total
6 tip height you're looking at then, about
7 600 feet?
8 THE WITNESS: The total tip height will
9 be -- yes, around 600 feet.
10 MR. BUHROW: Have you picked out what
11 turbines you're going to use then for sure or...
12 THE WITNESS: We have not settled on the
13 turbine that we are going to use at this point.
14 MR. BUHROW: Okay. So when you talk about
15 the noise, your experts on noise, that will give
16 us several different models of what the noise --
17 THE WITNESS: Well, we haven't settled on
18 a turbine type yet. We are in discussions with
19 Gamesa on a couple of different models of
20 turbines and that's what this -- the noise and
21 the shadow results were based upon.
22 MR. BUHROW: So they'll give us an idea of
23 what these noises ratings will be for each of
24 the turbines you're looking at then. 35
1 THE WITNESS: Yes, sir. And by and
2 large -- by and large all turbine types, if
3 they're equivalent in size, will have fairly
4 similar noise characteristics.
5 MR. BUHROW: Okay. I think that's all
6 I've got now.
7 JUDGE SLAVIN: Okay. Thank you.
8 Mr. Pratt?
9 MR. PRATT: I have no questions at this
10 time.
11 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Bothe?
12 MR. BOTHE: I have no questions.
13 JUDGE SLAVIN: And Mr. Hughes?
14 MR. HUGHES: No questions at this time.
15 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Klahn.
16 MR. KLAHN: No thank you, Judge.
17 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Henkel?
18 ZONING ADMINISTRATOR HENKEL: Not at this
19 time.
20 JUDGE SLAVIN: Interested parties who
21 signed up. Tom -- and if I mispronounce names,
22 I apologize -- Kapraun.
23 MR. KAPRAUN: I'm busy formulating my
24 questions. 36
1 JUDGE SLAVIN: Okay. You want me to skip
2 you for a minute?
3 MR. KAPRAUN: If you would, please.
4 JUDGE SLAVIN: Either Gail or Gabe
5 Barnickel?
6 MR. BARNICKEL: I'm fine.
7 JUDGE SLAVIN: I can't hear you, sir.
8 MR. BARNICKEL: I'm fine.
9 JUDGE SLAVIN: You're fine, but do you
10 want to ask questions?
11 MR. BARNICKEL: Not at this time.
12 JUDGE SLAVIN: Okay. Okay. Josh Hickey.
13 MR. HICKEY: I just have one question.
14 JUDGE SLAVIN: If you would come up to the
15 mike, please. It's much easier on the court
16 reporter and the rest of us that way.
17 If you would state your name, please.
18 MR. HICKEY: Josh Hickey.
19 JUDGE SLAVIN: And Josh, where do live?
20 MR. HICKEY: 1143 Steward Road, Steward.
21 JUDGE SLAVIN: Go ahead, ask a question.
22 MR. HICKEY: The other evening we had an
23 informational meeting at our township building,
24 and I had asked a question that I'd like the 37
1 Zoning Board to hear as well. My question the
2 other evening was, are these turbines louder
3 than the turbines that are there now? And so
4 I'll ask that question again, I guess.
5 JUDGE SLAVIN: The question is: Are the
6 turbines that you are proposing louder than the
7 ones that are there now; is that correct?
8 MR. HICKEY: Correct.
9 JUDGE SLAVIN: Is that correct?
10 MR. HICKEY: Yes.
11 THE WITNESS: I would like to defer that
12 to our noise consultant, the details; however, I
13 will say -- are you -- is your question on a
14 turbine by turbine --
15 JUDGE SLAVIN: No, you don't ask him
16 questions, you just answer the question;
17 otherwise, it'll go back and forth and, it never
18 ends.
19 THE WITNESS: Okay. The answer to your
20 question is yes, they are slightly but by a
21 small amount, very small.
22 MR. HICKEY: Slightly louder.
23 THE WITNESS: Yes.
24 MR. HICKEY: Okay. Thank you. 38
1 JUDGE SLAVIN: Thank you.
2 Folks who wants to ask this gentleman
3 question who did not sign the half sheets, if
4 you'd raise your hand, and I'll call on you.
5 Seeing no hands, back to you, Mr. Kapraun.
6 MR. KAPRAUN: My question is: Leeward is
7 owned by Arclight; is that correct?
8 THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.
9 MR. KAPRAUN: Who owns Arclight?
10 THE WITNESS: No one.
11 MR. KAPRAUN: No one.
12 THE WITNESS: Correct. They're a private
13 equity company, yeah.
14 MR. KAPRAUN: Private equity company.
15 THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.
16 MR. KAPRAUN: Now, the decommissioning --
17 the cost of decommissioning, as I understand it,
18 comes from money that's been kept in escrow from
19 the original construction; is that correct.
20 THE WITNESS: For the existing project,
21 yes.
22 MR. KAPRAUN: Okay. And will money be put
23 in escrow as well for the new towers.
24 THE WITNESS: We plan to set aside funds 39
1 for decommissioning; however, that's going to be
2 based on this permit exactly how that is
3 settled.
4 MR. KAPRAUN: So once you determine the
5 number of turbines and the cost of
6 decommissioning, when does that money go into
7 escrow.
8 THE WITNESS: It would go in the first
9 year, but it is trickled in over 15 years, is
10 what our petition states.
11 MR. KAPRAUN: Trickled in over 15 years.
12 THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.
13 MR. KAPRAUN: Is there any assurances that
14 should Arclight and this private equity firm --
15 is there any assurances that should they, if
16 worst comes to worst, go belly up, how is that
17 going to -- how's that money going to be --
18 additional money going to be put into escrow
19 after that.
20 THE WITNESS: Uhm, how the decommission is
21 structured in the petition, there should be
22 ample funds in year one. It's trickled --
23 there's more funds trickled throughout, but
24 there must be ample funds after year one. 40
1 MR. KAPRAUN: So after year one, there's
2 sufficient funds to decommission should that
3 become necessary in year two, correct.
4 THE WITNESS: Correct, because the formula
5 is based upon the salvage value of the turbines,
6 so based upon the formula, yes.
7 MR. KAPRAUN: Then you're saying as -- if
8 the cost of the decommissioning goes up over
9 time then monies will be put in -- more monies
10 will be put into escrow.
11 THE WITNESS: That is correct. So what's
12 in the petition right now, the decommissioning
13 estimate gets revisited every five years
14 throughout that 15 years, and you settle on if
15 it goes down or if it goes up.
16 MR. KAPRAUN: And the holder of that
17 escrow money is the bank and -- as I understand
18 it; is that right?
19 THE WITNESS: Yeah, it would be a bank
20 between the County and ourselves.
21 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Kapraun, just so we
22 don't get off track -- and your questions are
23 fine.
24 MR. KAPRAUN: Yeah. 41
1 JUDGE SLAVIN: So we all understand, it's
2 not this gentleman's -- the petition doesn't
3 determine what happens. This gentleman doesn't
4 determine what happens. It's the Zoning Board
5 that determines what happens. They make the
6 conditions of the special use. So really your
7 questions are more, what does your petition
8 propose.
9 MR. KAPRAUN: I believe there's a special
10 on the petition and I was trying to clarify what
11 all --
12 JUDGE SLAVIN: I'm just trying to explain,
13 in the context of asking your questions to say
14 what are you proposing that this -- how this
15 works, so we all don't get off course and
16 misunderstand. It's these gentlemen who are
17 going to decide how the decommissioning works;
18 not this gentleman.
19 MR. KAPRAUN: Okay.
20 JUDGE SLAVIN: That's why we're having the
21 hearing, so these gentlemen can make the
22 decision.
23 MR. KAPRAUN: I'm just asking the
24 questions for the benefit of myself and -- 42
1 JUDGE SLAVIN: No -- and I appreciate
2 that. I'm just trying to make sure we don't get
3 off target. Really your questions are to him,
4 what is your petition propose? You keep saying,
5 how is it going to work? He doesn't know how
6 it's going to work, because those five guys are
7 going to decide how it works.
8 MR. KAPRAUN: That's good, I hope so.
9 And the current -- the footprint of the
10 entire project -- last Tuesday, you had
11 indicated that you didn't believe there was
12 going to be anymore turbines east of German Road
13 or north of Route 30; is that still correct?
14 THE WITNESS: That is correct.
15 MR. KAPRAUN: That's all my questions.
16 Thank you.
17 JUDGE SLAVIN: Thank you.
18 All right. You may step down. Unless you
19 got -- I'm sorry, I absolutely apologize.
20 Redirect.
21 R E D I R E C T E X A M I N A T I O N
22 By Mr. Lee
23 Q. Again, just again, Mr. Green, just so the
24 record's clear, the decommissioning aspect of 43
1 the proposal is also dealt within the
2 Agricultural Impact Litigation Agreement with
3 the State; is that right?
4 A. That's correct.
5 Q. And the State has requirements that you agree
6 -- that Leeward has agreed to follow in that
7 regard?
8 A. That is correct.
9 MR. LEE: Thank you, that's all I have.
10 JUDGE SLAVIN: All right. You may step
11 down.
12 Another -- next witness?
13 MR. LEE: Aaron Anderson, please.
14 AARON ANDERSON,
15 having been first duly sworn, was examined and
16 testified as follows:
17 D I R E C T E X A M I N A T I O N
18 By Mr. Lee
19 Q. Would you state your name for the record,
20 please.
21 A. Aaron Anderson.
22 Q. And how are you employed?
23 A. I work for Burns & McDonnell Engineering
24 Company. 44
1 Q. And what do you do for your employer?
2 A. I am a project manager in Burns & McDonnell's
3 renewable energy group. I've been there for
4 approximately 10 years specializing in wind farm
5 development.
6 Q. Okay. And what training did you have to get
7 involved in that kind of project?
8 A. I'm an engineer by training, mechanical
9 engineer. I also have a MBA and a physics
10 degree.
11 Q. And you're going to testify today about the
12 shadow flicker analysis?
13 A. My purpose today is to talk about the shadow
14 flicker assessment that was done for the layout
15 that Mr. Green presented a few minutes ago.
16 Q. Have you done other assessments for shadow
17 flicker?
18 A. For...
19 Q. In general, in your career.
20 A. In general, yes, we've done dozens of other
21 shadow flicker assessments.
22 Q. Is there anything unique about this?
23 A. No, it was very typical.
24 Q. I understand you have some slides to explain? 45
1 A. I do.
2 Good evening, everyone. I'd like to talk
3 to you for a few minutes. My presentation is
4 the best kind of presentation in that it is
5 brief, so three slides; and you'll know
6 everything you need to know about shadow
7 flicker, hopefully. We studied the flicker
8 affect of a 34-turbine layout at the site that
9 -- at the wind farm locations that Mr. Green
10 pointed out a few moments ago. This was based
11 on a Gamesa 126 wind turbine, has a 126-meter
12 rotor diameter with 102 meter of height. For
13 context, that is very large by current wind farm
14 standards throughout the United States. We use
15 that only as a conservative approach to give
16 what we consider hopefully a worst case idea of
17 what shadow flicker affects would be throughout
18 the wind farm footprint.
19 Shadow flicker, if anyone is not familiar,
20 is caused by the rotating blades of the wind
21 turbine; and when the sun passes through those,
22 they cast shadows on objects behind them. We
23 used the model called WindPRO, which is the
24 industry standard for evaluating shadow flicker 46
1 affects. And with that model, we considered a
2 number of inputs, many of which you can see on
3 the screen. These vary from the locations of
4 what we call receptors, so these would primarily
5 be occupied residences. For context we
6 evaluated approximately 260 residences
7 throughout the footprint and beyond, again, to
8 give a conservative evaluation. We looked at
9 terrain, so we pulled in topography for the
10 site, so we could see variation in -- where a
11 turbine was sited and where receptors would be
12 located. We looked at turbine specifications,
13 that would be anything from the rotor diameter
14 to the hub height. It would be how fast the
15 turbine operates at different wind speeds,
16 etcetera. All these things have impact on the
17 total amount of flicker that occurs throughout
18 the year. And, finally, we look at
19 environmental conditions, so this would be
20 things like the angle of the sun. So the
21 WindPRO model that we utilize calculates flicker
22 on a residence, if it happens to occur, at every
23 single minute throughout the year. It
24 aggregates that and that's what we ultimately 47
1 refer to is what we call the total hours per
2 year on a particular receptor. We also look at
3 wind speeds that are expected, so we can say if
4 a wind turbine is spinning, that there is an
5 opportunity for flicker to be caused. If a wind
6 turbine is not spinning, by definition there can
7 be no flicker, so we take into account wind
8 speeds. And then ultimately roll all those up
9 into the model, the shadow flicker model, to
10 what we call a conservative real case. So there
11 are options throughout the model to go one way
12 or the other. Anywhere that there was one of
13 those forks in the road, we tried to -- and
14 you'll see this in our report, each one is
15 described, every single assumption involved. We
16 try to be as conservative as possible, again, to
17 give a -- what we consider a worst-case scenario
18 of what those tests would be.
19 Finally, we compared that to the standard
20 that is within the petition that you will read.
21 This is a very standard number throughout the
22 industry, 30 hours per year. This is what most
23 guidelines that they found in most states and
24 most ordinances throughout the country and, 48
1 frankly, throughout the world. 30-hours-per
2 year was our target. 30-hours-per year below
3 for any non-participating residence was the
4 standard that we worked for, again, that's a
5 standard petition.
6 If you go to the next slide, you'll see
7 the graphical results from the study. By the
8 nature of the how shadow flicker works, it
9 creates what we call a butterfly. The sun
10 obviously rises in the east and sets in the
11 west, and what happens with that is you get
12 these butterfly-looking contours where the sort
13 of light blue color is zero hours per year
14 working up to the red color very near the
15 turbine that can go very high, but, again,
16 because of the setbacks that Chris pointed out a
17 few, moments ago, we don't have any homes within
18 that close of a proximity to a wind turbine
19 anyway, so keep in context when you see the
20 scale.
21 Finally, if you go to the last slide, the
22 most important results. So taking all of those
23 considerations into effect, of the 260 or so
24 receptors that we evaluated, there were 11 that 49
1 had shadow flicker at or above 30 hours per
2 year. Each one of one of those is expected to
3 be a participating landowner in the future
4 project if and when it is built.
5 There are options proposed within the
6 petition in the event that flicker exceeds,
7 through a verifiable study, the 30 hours per
8 year once the project is constructed.
9 Mitigation measures can include anything from
10 installing more vegetation, so things as simple
11 as a hedge row or tree line can prevent
12 additional shadow flicker from occurring on
13 residence. Awning has been commonly used on
14 houses or there are even electronic
15 considerations within the turbine where at a
16 very high level what you would do is tell it to
17 not operate under certain conditions, under
18 certain wind speeds, under certain geometries,
19 etcetera, and that can also help bring the total
20 flicker number values down.
21 Q. Concerning, Mr. Anderson, the mitigation
22 measures you talked about, the vegetation, the
23 awnings, those kind of things. Does the
24 petition propose that that would be at the 50
1 Petitioner's cost?
2 A. That's correct.
3 Those are the results of the study. I'm
4 happy to take questions.
5 Q. I have one more, again, just for the record.
6 And you prepared a written report, Shadow
7 Flicker Analysis?
8 A. Correct.
9 Q. And that includes all the things you talked
10 about and more?
11 A. Correct.
12 Q. And that's part of the binder that's Exhibit 7?
13 A. It is.
14 MR. LEE: Thank you.
15 JUDGE SLAVIN: All right. Questions from
16 the Board.
17 Mr. Forster?
18 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: I have none.
19 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Buhrow?
20 MR. BUHROW: You use the standard of
21 30-hours-per year. Did you also break this down
22 anymore of, you know, is there certain
23 residence, so many residences, that have 20
24 hours per year or anything like that then? 51
1 THE WITNESS: What you'll see within the
2 report that we submitted is every single one of
3 those, let's call it 260, may have been 259.
4 But every one of those receptors you'll see the
5 exact number of flicker that's calculated,
6 ranging from zero hours up to whatever the
7 maximum would have been.
8 MR. LEE: Judge, can I interrupt just for
9 a second?
10 Mr. Klahn, would you like the Board
11 members to have the reports in front of them?
12 MR. KLAHN: Yeah, that would be great.
13 MR. LEE: They're sitting there, might as
14 well.
15 MR. KLAHN: Yeah.
16 MR. BUHROW: Since you deal in this type
17 of thing, when the companies work on this
18 situation, do they base the positioning of their
19 towers based on residences or how do they go
20 about -- or they just pick the best area for
21 their performance?
22 THE WITNESS: It is a give-and-take, so
23 there is a two-part exercise that happens: One,
24 when wind turbines are sited, obviously, the 52
1 wind resource at every location throughout that
2 project boundary would be -- is very important,
3 because more wind speed means more revenue to
4 the company. However, to determine feasible
5 areas within the project site, what's generally
6 done and what was done here is a -- what we
7 would call a net buildable area is developed.
8 So Mr. Green put a listing, a table, of all the
9 various setbacks that were fine. To develop
10 that net buildable area, each one of those was
11 overlaid at the project site, and the area that
12 remained would be an area that would
13 simultaneously honor every one of those setbacks
14 with the turbine located at that position. So
15 within that net buildable area, that's where
16 they would take the most feet into effect.
17 MR. BUHROW: And based on the model of the
18 three-and-a-half-times turbine height, what's
19 that figure out, 2100 feet or something from
20 houses?
21 THE WITNESS: It would be -- so the total
22 turbine height, you're going to test my
23 knowledge on my here, but total turbine height
24 would be 126 meters divided by 2, because that's 53
1 the rotor diameter. The hour height is
2 102 meters, so 126.21 on top of that for the
3 blade tip height. I believe that comes out to
4 160 -- 50? 150, so whatever three-and-a-half
5 times that is. 500 meters or so, roughly.
6 Multiply that by three, 1500 to 2000 feet,
7 ballpark.
8 MR. BUHROW: That's all I have, Judge.
9 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Pratt?
10 MR. PRATT: No questions.
11 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Bothe?
12 MR. BOTHE: I have no questions.
13 JUDGE SLAVIN: And Mr. Hughes.
14 MR. HUGHES: No questions.
15 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Klahn.
16 MR. KLAHN: Thank you, Judge.
17 Is physics the scientific discipline that
18 you use to make these predictions?
19 THE WITNESS: No, I would not say that
20 physics is the basis of this. It's frankly just
21 geometry --
22 MR. KLAHN: Okay.
23 THE WITNESS: -- with how the sun rises
24 and sets in proximity to a turbine receptor. 54
1 MR. KLAHN: And you said your background,
2 though, you have a background in physics?
3 THE WITNESS: I have a degree in physics
4 and a degree in engineering.
5 MR. KLAHN: Okay. And the opinions or the
6 predictions in your study, were those made to a
7 reasonable degree of certainty with regards to
8 engineering or the geometry involved?
9 THE WITNESS: Of course.
10 MR. KLAHN: Thank you.
11 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Henkel.
12 ZONING ADMINISTRATOR HENKEL: No
13 questions.
14 JUDGE SLAVIN: All right.
15 Mr. Kapraun?
16 MR. KAPRAUN: I have no questions.
17 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Barnickel.
18 MR. BARNICKEL: No questions.
19 JUDGE SLAVIN: Okay. And excuse me, Josh
20 Hickey?
21 MR. HICKEY: No questions.
22 JUDGE SLAVIN: Okay. Folks who did not
23 sign up to ask questions, if you'd raise your
24 hand if you want to ask this gentleman 55
1 questions.
2 Seeing none, you may step down.
3 And we'll take a break until 8:10.
4 (A recess was taken at 7:58 p.m.
5 and proceedings resumed at 8:10
6 p.m.)
7 JUDGE SLAVIN: All right. Let's try to
8 come to order, please.
9 All right. Mr. Lee, you may continue.
10 MR. LEE: Chris Howell.
11 CHRIS HOWELL,
12 having been first duly sworn, was examined and
13 testified as follows:
14 D I R E C T E X A M I N A T I O N
15 By Mr. Lee
16 Q. Would you state your name for the record,
17 please.
18 A. Chris Howell.
19 Q. And how are you employed, Mr. Howell?
20 A. I am the project manager at Burns & McDonnell
21 Engineering Company.
22 Q. And what do you do as a project manager?
23 A. I help siting and permitting of facilities such
24 as this in our environmental studies and 56
1 permitting group.
2 Q. And what is your educational background?
3 A. I have a bachelor's in mechanical engineering
4 and training in multiple acoustics equipment.
5 Q. And how long have you been doing this kind of
6 work?
7 A. 14 years.
8 Q. And I understand you did the sound analysis for
9 the project?
10 A. Correct.
11 Q. And your written report called the Sound Study,
12 which is part of Exhibit 7; is that right?
13 A. Correct.
14 Q. And I understand you have some slides to
15 explain your findings?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. Will you please proceed.
18 A. Thank you for having me tonight.
19 Real quickly, talk about the acoustics
20 study that was performed for this proposed
21 facility. In general, the State of Illinois,
22 the Illinois Pollution Control Board, has
23 regulations for noise from a facility such as
24 this to residential areas, businesses, 57
1 agricultural areas, things like that. What is
2 shown up there is the lowest nighttime limit
3 that the IPCB describes for a residence and was
4 used as the overriding limit at this point for
5 the analysis.
6 A little bit about how we predict impacts
7 on facilities such as this. We use a program
8 called CadnaA. It is ISO 9613 standard model,
9 it's the industry standard basically across the
10 world, for predicting how sound propagates out
11 from a source of noise to discreet receptors,
12 and we also use it for grid receptor analyses.
13 Input that we use for this type of
14 analysis are, you know, the receptor locations.
15 In this specific instance, we're looking at the
16 residences, other structures in the area. We
17 use turbine specifications data from the
18 vendors. You know, Gamesa provides a value that
19 they would guarantee for a max amount of over
20 various wind speeds and things like that. It
21 was thrown out earlier that multiple turbines
22 potentially could be used. At the time, we had
23 only done a sound analysis on one type of
24 turbine. In general, all the turbines have 58
1 fairly similar overall sound power levels.
2 Other inputs for the facility -- or for
3 the wind farm were terrain, ground cover, things
4 like that. For terrain, we incorporated all of
5 this. For ground cover we assumed, you know, no
6 foliage whatsoever to maintain conservativeness.
7 We also only took advantage of half of the
8 potential ground absorption that would be
9 available in standard for the facility.
10 Standard meteorology was used. In doing
11 so, ISO 9613 assumes every single receptor is
12 downwind of every single turbine. So if a house
13 is in between two turbines from two sides, it's
14 going to assume that they're both blowing
15 straight to that house. Extremely over
16 conservative approach, but it's been borne out
17 to give conservative results that help protect
18 your interests moving forward.
19 Doing all of that, you know, using actual
20 3D spatial data and things like that, we come up
21 with predicted models that provide us these
22 types of contours that you can see here. This
23 specific contour here is for the thousand hertz
24 frequency. As you saw -- excuse me, as you saw 59
1 in that first table, the IPCB prescribes very
2 stringent noise regulation, actually. They
3 require each individual occupant frequency to
4 meet a limit. Most towns, counties, things like
5 that have a single overall value, they don't
6 particularly care about makeup of that sound.
7 So meeting individual frequencies like this is
8 much more difficult. And it's a very
9 labor-intensive type of analysis.
10 This right here is the thousand hertz
11 frequency for turbines like this is typically
12 the hardest frequency to meet in Illinois.
13 Based on the dynamics of the situation, you get
14 the blade tops frequency of the turbine, end up
15 being around a thousand hertz, so you would get
16 more sound in that specific -- propagating out.
17 There are other multiples of a thousand hertz
18 that you would get frequencies in as well, but
19 in general, this is the most difficult one to
20 meet.
21 Next slide.
22 Q. Well, before we do that, what's this show
23 exactly, what's the red?
24 A. All right. Okay, sorry. So this -- the red 60
1 line on this figure here is the actual IPCB
2 limit, and you can see it's fairly close into
3 each of the individual turbines. If there were
4 a single turbine in a space, you can see up in
5 the northeast there, there's a single turbine
6 sound propagating out directionally from that
7 specific turbine, basically circular. That is
8 basically, worst-case direction. So if the wind
9 is blowing from a specific direction, that
10 contour's over-predicting one direction and
11 basically predicting right-on for the other
12 direction.
13 Q. And so the red line signifies a limit of some
14 kind?
15 A. Yes, that is a the thousand hertz limit,
16 41 decibels.
17 As you can see, as you get multiple
18 turbines next to each other it becomes more
19 ameba shape as opposed to a circular shape, that
20 is the interaction of the multiple turbines with
21 each other. Their sound levels are being
22 logarithmically added together.
23 Going on to the next slide. So all of
24 that said, we analyze the same number of 61
1 receptors that Aaron did for the flicker
2 analysis. For the planned participants, there
3 were five residences that had exceedances of the
4 IPCB limits ranging from 1.1 to 2.1 decibels.
5 It takes 3-decibel difference to notice a
6 difference in sound levels, so these would not
7 be appreciably louder than what the actual limit
8 is. It shows up there five and one. One of
9 those residences had both a thousand and 2,000
10 hertz frequencies. It was a small amount. None
11 of the non-participating residences, as you can
12 see there, had any exceedances, pretty good.
13 MR. LEE: No further questions.
14 JUDGE SLAVIN: All right. Members of the
15 Board.
16 Mr. Forster?
17 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: No questions.
18 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Buhrow?
19 MR. BUHROW: What was the noise level
20 again for the non-participating people at the
21 closer the point with the --
22 THE WITNESS: Yeah, so the number I
23 mentioned, 41 decibels, that is actually the
24 specific thousand hertz frequency limit. There 62
1 are different limits for each of the
2 frequencies, so 31-and-a-half hertz has a limit,
3 63 hertz has a limit, 125 hertz, etcetera, on up
4 to 8,000 hertz. They all have individual limits
5 that the facility would have to meet. Gamesa
6 provided data on how to determine the individual
7 frequency impacts of their specific turbines
8 that we analyze and those were input into the
9 model and propagated out for each of the
10 individual frequencies. The air, ground, things
11 like that, interact differently with different
12 frequencies so the intrinsic absorption values
13 for those specific frequencies were applied in
14 the model. And so from the hub height and the
15 blades basically, the sound is propagating out
16 directionally, however, low frequencies travel a
17 little further than higher frequencies.
18 MR. BUHROW: What -- in this model, what
19 time of year, do they average for all the
20 seasons of the year, or how do they do that?
21 THE WITNESS: Basically the model, the way
22 we do it, as opposed to using an average number
23 of hours per year exceedance or something like
24 that, this assumes the absolute worst case 63
1 scenario to give you a single power value,
2 basically. It says at any given time this could
3 be your worst impact. It does not give you a,
4 you know, this might happen --
5 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Anderson, a couple
6 comments from the audience, it's difficult to
7 hear you. It's hard. If you get the mike
8 closer to your mouth, that will help.
9 THE WITNESS: I'm sorry, it's hard for me
10 to hear myself.
11 JUDGE SLAVIN: Thanks.
12 THE WITNESS: Sorry about that.
13 MR. BUHROW: Okay. Thank you.
14 THE WITNESS: You bet.
15 Those specific limits in are listed in the
16 application that we provided. They're in the
17 sound study.
18 MR. BUHROW: That's all.
19 JUDGE SLAVIN: Okay. Thank you.
20 Mr. Pratt?
21 MR. PRATT: No questions.
22 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Bothe?
23 MR. BOTHE: No questions.
24 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Hughes? 64
1 MR. HUGHES: No questions.
2 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Klahn?
3 MR. KLAHN: Thank you, Judge.
4 So what is the discipline you used in
5 making this model? Is it acoustics you said?
6 THE WITNESS: Yes.
7 MR. KLAHN: Okay. And it's based on -- is
8 there some mathematical equations involved?
9 THE WITNESS: Yes, there are standard
10 mathematical equations that you use, how sound
11 waves will propagate over distance and taking
12 into account absorption factors for various
13 things such as shielding, blocking, ground
14 absorption, atmosphere absorption, geometrical
15 spreading, things like that.
16 MR. KLAHN: And Mr. Buhrow had asked Mr.
17 Green when he testified, in respect to not --
18 they haven't decided on a particular turbine.
19 How are you making those predictions then by
20 size and what usually goes into this type of
21 turbine?
22 THE WITNESS: This data was based on a
23 specific turbine that we had data from from
24 Gamesa. They provided a maximum overall sound 65
1 level and also provided a way to calculate
2 individual frequency impacts. You know, the
3 specific turbine that gets purchased would end
4 up being analyzed or that they come to a
5 contract on.
6 MR. KLAHN: And certainly that would meet
7 the requirements of the Illinois Pollution
8 Control Board or any governing body that
9 provides standards.
10 THE WITNESS: Correct.
11 MR. KLAHN: And the -- I think you
12 referred it to as the model or the techniques
13 you used in coming to these opinions. Are they
14 generally accepted in your field --
15 THE WITNESS: Yeah.
16 MR. KLAHN: -- the acoustics?
17 THE WITNESS: The model we use, CadnaA, is
18 used throughout the world for this type of
19 analysis, various other noise propagation
20 analyses.
21 MR. KLAHN: Is it universally accepted
22 or...
23 THE WITNESS: Yes.
24 MR. KLAHN: Okay. No further questions. 66
1 Thank you.
2 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Henkel?
3 MR. HENKEL: No questions.
4 JUDGE SLAVIN: All right.
5 Mr. Kapraun?
6 MR. KAPRAUN: No questions.
7 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Barnickel?
8 MR. BARNICKEL: No questions.
9 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Hickey?
10 MR. HICKEY: No questions.
11 JUDGE SLAVIN: All right. Folks
12 spectating who did not use the half sheets to
13 sign up. Anyone who would like to ask this
14 gentleman a question, if you raise your
15 happened, please.
16 Very good, come on up.
17 You can help us out from the stating your
18 name first.
19 MR. CASTLE: Good evening. I'm John
20 Castle. I live on Fisk Road, Compton.
21 My question for you, sir, is: To what
22 degree will the new turbines exceed the noise
23 level of the existing turbines?
24 THE WITNESS: Okay. So the absolute 67
1 values, the sound power level of the physical
2 units themselves will be slightly louder than
3 the existing units. They are a bigger unit, a
4 more powerful unit. However, the actual impact
5 to each of the residences will vary based on the
6 actual distance that turbine becomes sited from
7 the residence. The differential between the two
8 types of turbines isn't all that significant;
9 it's a fairly small amount. However, if you
10 currently have a turbine very close to your
11 house and the new turbines get put up and
12 they're not very close to your house, it's going
13 seem a lot quieter to you. If a turbine gets
14 sited closer to your house, it will seem louder.
15 MR. CASTLE: Given that some turbines will
16 remain the same distance from my house, I would
17 experience more noise then.
18 THE WITNESS: Potentially slightly more,
19 yes.
20 MR. CASTLE: Can you quantify slight more?
21 THE WITNESS: If it is the exact same
22 distance, it would be the difference between the
23 two types of turbines, so a few decibels.
24 MR. CASTLE: So a few decibels would be 3 68
1 or 15 or...
2 THE WITNESS: A few decibels would be
3 around 2 to 3 -- 2-3 range. A 3 decibel
4 differential is -- and those will change, to
5 most people, barely noticeable. 5 dB change
6 will be a noticeable change to most people, and
7 more than that would be a significant change.
8 MR. CASTLE: Okay. Thank you.
9 JUDGE SLAVIN: Thank you, sir.
10 Anyone else, raise your hand if you have a
11 question of Mr. Anderson (sic)?
12 Seeing none, you may step down.
13 THE WITNESS: Thank you.
14 JUDGE SLAVIN: I'm sorry, Mr. Howell. I
15 looked at the top of my sheet instead of the
16 bottom of the sheet. Thank you.
17 All right. Mr. Lee?
18 MR. LEE: Terry VanDeWalle.
19 TERRY VAN DE WALLE,
20 having been first duly sworn, was examined and
21 testified as follows:
22 D I R E C T E X A M I N A T I O N
23 By Mr. Lee
24 Q. Would you state your name for the record, 69
1 please.
2 A. Terry VanDeWalle.
3 Q. How are you employed?
4 A. I'm a senior biologist with Stantec Consulting
5 Services in Independent, Iowa.
6 JUDGE SLAVIN: Would you spell your last
7 name for the court reporter?
8 THE WITNESS: Sure. V-A-N capital D-E
9 capital W-A-L-L-E.
10 JUDGE SLAVIN: Thank you. All right.
11 Q. And how long have been doing this kind of work?
12 A. I've been in environmental consultant doing
13 natural resource surveys and assessments and
14 permittings for slightly over 25 years. Working
15 with wind projects for the last 10 years.
16 Q. And when you work for a wind project, what do
17 you do?
18 A. We do really all types of environmental -- or
19 well, environmental and natural resource surveys
20 and permitting. We do pre-construction bird and
21 bat surveys, wetland delineations, cultural
22 resource surveys, some hazardous material
23 surveys, things like that. We also do
24 post-construction surveys, and there's 70
1 post-construction bird and bat mortality
2 surveys, also compliance monitoring for wind
3 farms, and then we do permitting as well, so
4 environmental permitting.
5 Q. And you prepared a document that's called a
6 Site Characterization for this project; is that
7 right?
8 A. That's correct, yes.
9 Q. And that's part of the Exhibit 7, the written
10 report?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. And so what exactly is a Site Characterization
13 report, what do you do?
14 A. Sure. So the Site Characterization report that
15 we prepared is based on the -- excuse me -- U.S.
16 Fish and Wildlife Service Land-Based Wind Energy
17 Guidelines. You know, it's been known for
18 awhile that wind projects have an affect on
19 wildlife, particularly birds and bats. And so
20 as a way of assessing those impacts and leading
21 up during the siting and development projects,
22 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service put together the
23 land-based wind energy guidelines as a way of
24 taking a look at or assessing impacts. So it's 71
1 a tiered approach and we -- what we look at were
2 Tiers 1 and 2.
3 Q. And is that part of your Power Point
4 presentation?
5 A. Yes, it is.
6 Q. Feel free to continue.
7 A. So yes, on the screen then, really what we look
8 at are Tiers 1 and 2. Tier 1 is really a
9 process of looking at the location of the
10 proposed project on the landscape. So we look
11 at the landscape it's in, the ground cover, the
12 vegetation, topography, things like that and its
13 relationship to other natural resource areas,
14 parks, wildlife refuges, things like that that
15 are in the area. So Tier 1 takes a look at that
16 -- those things, the placement of the project on
17 landscape.
18 Tier 2 then takes a little closer look at
19 the site itself and any project's specific
20 information that is out there. So if there had
21 been any wildlife surveys, vegetation surveys,
22 things like that, conducted at the site, we
23 would look at that information. Otherwise,
24 again, we just use whatever public available 72
1 information, you know, is out there regarding
2 the location of the projects, so... I will say
3 this is a desktop assessment, so there has not
4 been any field surveys done, not conducted by
5 Stantec. There is a Tier 3, studies which then
6 are field studies that are conducted. So far,
7 you know, those haven't been done at this site,
8 though.
9 Go ahead, next slide. So taking a look
10 then how the project is on the landscape, you
11 know, if we look at the land cover data. When
12 we look at wildlife, we think of wildlife
13 impacts, we have to look at the habitat, right,
14 the area that's out there for the animals to
15 use, what plants and animals are there. What
16 wildlife occurs in particular areas is largely
17 based on the habitat that's there. Each species
18 needs a certain habitat in order to survive. So
19 we take a look at what's there and sort of that
20 first big picture look at what wildlife might be
21 there. So this is a land cover map that's on
22 the screen now. It's based on a national land
23 cover data base, and essentially when you look
24 at this map -- a couple things to orient you, 73
1 the project boundary as it is today is on there.
2 We also show the existing turbines, those show
3 up as the kind of reddish dots on the screen,
4 and then the proposed turbines as well, which
5 are kind of a bluish-green color as well. So
6 you can see the locations of existing -- of
7 those turbines. What you notice, probably hard
8 to read the legend at the bottom, the project
9 area is almost entirely brown. That brown color
10 is -- probably no surprise to anyone here -- row
11 crops, corn and beans. The project is set in a
12 largely agricultural landscape. The yellows
13 that you see are hay and pasture lands. There's
14 a little bit of that in the project. The
15 greenish colors, they're probably difficult to
16 see, there's some up in the northwest and really
17 on the fringes of the project, that's woodland
18 that's in the project, and these are really just
19 fingers that kind of enter the project from
20 really outside the boundary or in some cases
21 just along stream corridors.
22 Go to the next slide. This slide is
23 really a graph or a chart of the information
24 that was on the map. So, again, you can see 74
1 that, you know, about 93 percent of the project
2 area is row crops. And then there's, you know,
3 less than 1 percent of the area is hay and
4 pasture. There's little bit of woodland.
5 Slightly over 1 percent of the project area is
6 woodlands. The rest of the project area then is
7 made up of development, and so roads, towns,
8 farmsteads things like that. No wetlands and no
9 large bodies of water or other habitat like that
10 in the project area. So it's a pretty
11 typical -- pretty typical for what we see for
12 wind farms here in the midwest. They're often
13 sited in these largely agricultural landscapes.
14 Well, so the Land-Based Wind Energy
15 Guidelines defines certain sensitive species,
16 and we'll kind of run through what those species
17 are now and what the potential impacts to each
18 of those species is. And also what -- you know,
19 if there's habitat available for those species.
20 So one group of sensitive species that the
21 Land-Based Wind Energy Guidelines defined are
22 migratory birds. So migratory birds are really
23 most of the birds that you see around here.
24 There's a list that is produced -- or that is 75
1 part of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, a federal
2 law that does protect birds. So this includes
3 most of the birds that you see: Robins,
4 cardinals, hawks, owls, things like that. Most
5 of the upland gaming birds, things like turkeys,
6 Bobwhite quail are not included, because they're
7 not migratory, they stay here all year.
8 Pheasants are not included, because they're not
9 a native species, they're introduced. So but
10 migratory birds, again, are kind of, you know, a
11 broad group. When we look again at the project
12 area, there's really limited habitat for
13 migratory birds when it comes for breeding, like
14 where are they going to build their nests? Most
15 birds are not going to build their nests in corn
16 fields or bean fields, so they're going to look
17 for those grasslands, those woodlands, maybe
18 wetlands, things like that. Again, 93 percent
19 of this project area is corn and beans, so very
20 limited breeding habitat. Those crop fields do
21 provide some stopover habitat during migration,
22 so we'll get some birds that come into those
23 crop fields in the spring, when they're flooded,
24 you know, they'll hang out there for a few 76
1 hours, maybe a few days before they move on to
2 wherever they're migrating to and then the fall
3 they stop back there and feed on the grain, you
4 know, that's on the ground. So you get some
5 stop over, but really no breeding habitat for
6 migratory birds.
7 As we said, we have not conducted any bird
8 surveys at the project area. Back when the
9 project was -- or maybe prior to it being
10 constructed in 2003, there was a two day -- a
11 two-day visit by another company to the site.
12 They recorded a few birds, but no extensive bird
13 history for the site. So the way of looking at
14 what species might be there, we looked at other
15 publicly-available data and the one set of data
16 that is available out there is the from the
17 Breeding Route Survey. So the U.S. Geological
18 Survey every year has the Breeding Route Survey,
19 these are routes that are established all over
20 the country and these routes, there are
21 observers, these are volunteers usually, they go
22 out to the same route every year, year after
23 year, generally on the same day, these are
24 almost always done in June, and they stop at the 77
1 same points every time, and they record birds.
2 So they have many years of data for most of
3 these routes. There is a route that passes
4 through really a northeast portion of the
5 project area, it's known as the Compton Breeding
6 Bird Survey Route.
7 So if you look -- so we took a look at
8 what are the most common species that are
9 observed every year along this Compton route,
10 and it's really, in the last bullet here you can
11 take a look at the species, really the things
12 you would expect, you know, robins, barn
13 swallows, chipping sparrows, common grackles.
14 European starlings and house sparrows are not --
15 those are both nonnative species here in the
16 U.S., and so they are not included in that
17 Migratory Bird Treaty list. Killdeer, northern
18 cardinals, red-winged black birds, and
19 songbirds, so these are all pretty typical
20 species that you'd see and expect to see in
21 these agricultural landscapes in the Midwest.
22 These are birds that hang out on the edges of
23 the crop fields, the road ditches, edges of the
24 little woodlands that are there and things like 78
1 that. So in other words, there are migratory
2 birds that are in the area, but they're very
3 typical and the ones we would expect to see in
4 this area.
5 Eagles and other raptors is another group
6 of sensitive species. Raptors are the birds of
7 pray, so hawks, owls, eagles, vultures, falcons
8 fall in that group. Again, limited -- really
9 limited habitat for nesting for these birds,
10 especially eagles. Eagles build some of the
11 largest nests of any bird in these really large
12 trees, not a lot of woodland, you know, in the
13 project area. So while there is some -- you
14 know, some potential for eagles and other
15 raptors that nest in the area, it is again
16 limited, because of the lack of woodland. There
17 are no known, at least publicly available
18 records of eagles within the project area or
19 adjacent to the project area. In addition
20 there's really no known attractants for eagles,
21 in particular. Eagles -- sort of the classic
22 habitat for eagles would be these woodlands
23 around large bodies of water, big lakes, the
24 Illinois River, Mississippi River, things like 79
1 that, that's where the eagles hunt. Now, today
2 eagles have moved away from those areas, but
3 they need some other attractant then, some other
4 food source; and so what we often see in the
5 Midwest then are eagles that are attracted to
6 livestock operations where there might be, you
7 know, a hog farm or maybe a poultry farm.
8 They're taking, you know, dead animals and
9 putting them out in the fields and those are
10 attracting them. To our knowledge, there aren't
11 any livestock operations in the project area
12 that serve as attractants either. So no known
13 eagle nests and really no attractants as well.
14 Prairie grouse and sage grouse is another
15 group of species that is, you know, considered a
16 sensitive species. These would be things like
17 prairie chickens and then some of the grouse.
18 There are no -- well, the project currently --
19 the project does not occur within the current or
20 historic range of any of those species, so -- so
21 no impacts to, you know, that group of species.
22 So as I said to start with, though, wind
23 projects do have potential to affect birds, and
24 as a result of that, you know, Mendota Hills or 80
1 Leeward has taken -- already taken some measures
2 to minimize the impacts to birds, as collision
3 risks to birds. And so one of those is, you
4 know, simply using modern turbines, which are
5 monopole turbines as opposed to the lattice
6 tower turbines. Those lattice tower turbines
7 provided places for birds and eagles and
8 raptors, in particular, to perch, and so you saw
9 a lot more mortality with those birds -- with
10 those type of turbines than you do with
11 monopoles, they're unguide, of course.
12 Guidewires also were a problem for birds, when
13 it's dark they don't see them, they run into
14 them.
15 The collection and communication lines are
16 buried, so you know, there's not an overhead
17 line for -- that can cause the, you know,
18 electrocution to eagles or other birds that are
19 going to perch on them. In addition, the
20 project is doing a few things with lighting.
21 These again, are suggested by the Land-Based
22 Wind Energy Guidelines, so each turbine, you
23 know, has low voltage lights, and these are the
24 lights that are on the doors, not the FAA lights 81
1 necessarily. But the lights by the door of the
2 turbine, they're down shielded so that the
3 lights face down, not up. That's important for
4 birds on low visibility nights. When there's
5 fog and if those lights are shining up, the
6 birds will see those; and they'll be attracted
7 to the light, in which case, they might fly down
8 through the rotor zone then. So it's been found
9 that by down shielding lights, you can really
10 minimize the bird mortalities. So the project's
11 implementing those. And that's -- the last
12 bullet here is really a similar one, you know,
13 training their own in-staff to turn the lights
14 off when they leave. Again, it's an example of
15 a project on the East Coast where a light was
16 left on, actually inside the turbine, provided
17 some -- you know, a light that shined through
18 this foggy night and birds came in and got hit
19 by the turbine. So, again, just turning the
20 lights off helps reduce bird mortalities,
21 especially during those low visibility nights.
22 Threatened and endangered species, so
23 these could be either federally-listed species,
24 under the Endangered Species Act or a state 82
1 listed species under the Illinois State
2 Endangered Species Act. There are no known
3 records of threatened or endangered species
4 within or adjacent to the project area. Again,
5 probably not a surprise, many of the species
6 that are listed as threatened or endangered are
7 listed because the habitats that they need to
8 survive are limited or have disappeared
9 altogether, in some cases. Again, the project
10 area's primarily cropland and not suitable for
11 the species. So no known impacts -- or no
12 impacts anticipated for threatened/endangered.
13 Bats. Bats are the other group or the
14 last group of sensitive species that the LWEG
15 mentions. Bats, again, have the potential to be
16 impacted by wind turbines, and wind turbines are
17 known to cause mortality to bats. There are two
18 federal listed -- actually federally and state
19 listed bats species that have the potential to
20 occur in Lee County: The Indiana Bat and the
21 Northern Long-eared Bat. There are currently no
22 known records of Indiana Bats in Lee County. At
23 least no publicly available records. They do
24 occur in other places in Illinois and so Lee 83
1 County is technically within the range, but no
2 known records. Northern Long-eared Bats, there
3 are records from Lee County, although the
4 records that are known are from west and south
5 of the project area, so more in the western and
6 south-western portions of the county. Both
7 species, both of those bats use woodlands.
8 Go to the next slide. So this will be a
9 little difficult for you all to see, but both of
10 the bats use woodlands during the summer, the
11 females migrate up to Illinois and -- for
12 instance, and they form their maternity colonies
13 under the bark of dead and dying trees;
14 occasionally, live trees, so females get under
15 the bark, they all group together, they raise --
16 they each have a pup, generally one pup and then
17 they all raise their pups together in this
18 colony. And so you need the woodlands for the
19 bats. So what we did, what we can do as a
20 desktop assessment start with and see what is
21 the potential for these bats to occur in the
22 project area is to assess the woodlands as
23 suited -- as to their suitability for bats. So
24 this is really largely based on the size of the 84
1 woodlands, and what we know about the home range
2 sites for Indiana Bats and Northern Long-eared
3 Bats. And so what we did is we break the
4 project -- we take the woodlands and we digitize
5 them in so we can measure the size, and then we
6 rate them, their suitability, based on their
7 size and -- or their connectedness to woodlands.
8 So if you take a look up here, you'll see that
9 the woodlands that are kind of the bluish color,
10 the bluish-greens, the largest block of that is
11 really west of the project area, not within the
12 project. Those are the largest woodlands, those
13 are woodlands that are more than 50 acres in
14 size. The red woodlands, the ones that are
15 shaded red are between 15 and 49 acres. Those
16 two groups are really what we'd call the
17 roosting and the foraging habitat. These are
18 the properties of the woodlands where the bats
19 are going to go and form their maternity
20 colonies and then that's where they're going to
21 forage for their food. They're going to feed on
22 the insects there. The purple-colored woodlands
23 were woodlands that are less than 15 acres, but
24 they're within a thousand feet of a larger 85
1 woodland. And that thousand feet is important,
2 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has data that
3 indicates that these bats will not travel --
4 will not cross a gap more than a thousand feet.
5 So if wood -- so if small woodlands are
6 separated by more than a thousand feet from
7 large woodlands, they're not connected and
8 they're not going to be considered suitable. So
9 purple wetlands are -- or I'm sorry, woodlands
10 are -- or woodlands less than 15 acres but also
11 less than a thousand feet, so we consider those
12 connected; and therefore, suitable. The kind of
13 yellowish -- or they're probably really hard to
14 see up there, but the kind of yellowish or
15 gold-colored woodlands then, these are woodlands
16 that are less than 15 acres and more than a
17 thousand feet from larger woodlands, so they're
18 unsuitable. So, we went through, rated the
19 suitability of all the woodlands, and then we
20 get an idea of how much bat habitat is there.
21 Want to go to the next slide. So again we
22 take a look at this in the chart, essentially
23 what we see is that those larger woodlands, the
24 ones where there's a foraging and the roosting 86
1 habitat, there's only, you know, a little over
2 21 acres of that kind of habitat within the
3 project area. By the way, I should mention we
4 looked at the project area and the one-mile
5 buffer of the project area as well because, of
6 course, the bats don't know where the project
7 boundary's at, so we wanted to know what's
8 outside their habitat as well. So what you can
9 see here is, of that foraging habitat, there's
10 only a little over 21 acres of that, much more
11 of that habitat outside of the project area. If
12 we look at those smaller woodlands, the
13 purple-shaded ones that really what we'd call
14 community habitat, they're connected, you know,
15 again, there's about 22 acres of that. So all
16 total what this means is there's only about
17 43 acres of suitable bat -- summary habitat for
18 bats within the project area, not -- you know
19 not a large percentage, I mean, and most of it,
20 again, is along the fringes. Much more habitat
21 outside.
22 So similar to the birds, there are some
23 measures that can be taken to reduce the
24 collision risk of bats and the project is 87
1 committed to doing some of those measures. The
2 first of those is that they have already taken
3 efforts to site the new turbines, the proposed
4 turbines, away from suitable bat habitat, which
5 reduces the risk to those bats during the summer
6 months. Secondly, and, you know, this is a
7 measure that helps reduce bat mortality, really,
8 during the active season of bats, anyway, the
9 turbine blades will be feathered below the
10 cut-in speed. So feathering the blades, turning
11 the blades, pitching the blades into the wind so
12 that they're -- they won't free wheel. That
13 cut-in speed is the minimum speed -- the minimum
14 wind speed that's required to get the turbine
15 blades spinning and generating power. So what
16 happens is that when the wind speeds are low and
17 you've got the blades and they're too low for
18 the turbine increasing power, the blades may
19 still move, all right, they could free wheel.
20 Now, while they're doing that, they could still
21 potentially cause mortality to bats. So by
22 turning the blades, you know, parallel to the
23 wind so they're not turning or they're turning
24 very slowly, you can reduce bat mortality just 88
1 by doing that. And so what the project is doing
2 is operating the project by feathering --
3 feathering the blades below the manufacturer's
4 rated cut-in speed during that activity season,
5 so from April 1 through October 30th. There's
6 really good research out there to show what this
7 does. So there's an inverse relationship
8 between bat activity and wind speed. So as wind
9 speed goes up; bat activity goes down. Which
10 makes sense, right, these bats are just a little
11 animals, weigh only a few grams, have a hard
12 time flying in high winds, and the insects they
13 feed on also have a hard time flying in high
14 winds. So as wind speed goes up, you get less
15 bat activity. So the problem for bats is on the
16 low wind speed nights. Also, then by -- so if
17 we feather the blades below that cut-in speed,
18 we can reduce -- the studies have shown we can
19 reduce overall bat mortality by anywhere from 35
20 to 57 percent. Now, if we're talking the
21 threatened/endangered bats, the Indiana Bat and
22 Northern Long-eared Bat, the mortality of those
23 bats is really low anyway across the project
24 because they're not very common. So if we can 89
1 reduce the bat number by even -- by, again, by a
2 minimum of 35 percent, you can significantly
3 reduce the overall impact to those species. So
4 I will mention that this feathering below
5 turbine speed is a standard practice that is
6 recommended by the American Wind Energy
7 Association. It's also recommended by the U.S.
8 Fish and Wildlife Service as part of the --
9 their guidelines for protecting or conserving
10 Northern Long-eared Bats as well. That's it.
11 JUDGE SLAVIN: Further questions, Mr. Lee?
12 MR. LEE: No. Thank you.
13 JUDGE SLAVIN: All right.
14 Questions, Mr. Forster?
15 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: No questions at this
16 time.
17 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Buhrow?
18 MR. BUHROW: No, no questions.
19 JUDGE SLAVIN: Okay. Mr. Pratt?
20 MR. PRATT: Almost every wind project that
21 we've done has asked for a report of bird kills
22 where it has to be reported to the zoning
23 office. Has there been any conclu -- and I
24 assume other wind farms have done this, too. 90
1 Have there been any conclusions from all of the
2 reports that have been collected? Do you -- you
3 know, do you see certain birds getting killed
4 more often? Is it an unacceptable number? Is
5 it -- you know, where's all this taken us?
6 THE WITNESS: Sure. So yeah, a lot, but
7 not all, wind projects do these
8 post-construction mortality surveys, so that's
9 where we go out and we look for dead birds and
10 bats under the turbines. So you know, your
11 question about the conclusions is, it varies by
12 site. It depends on where your site is located.
13 So these sites are in the Midwest, you know, in
14 general have lower bird and bat mortality than
15 sites out on the East Coast, they're sited on
16 these forested-rich house, and, again, it's
17 related to that habitat.
18 Regarding the -- which, you know, species
19 that you see more often, with birds it's really
20 the Nighttime Rating Past Wrens, those are the
21 songbirds. So these are just little songbirds
22 that they're migrating at night, they're in the
23 fall, and they can't see the turbines, and so
24 within birds that's the larger group where we'll 91
1 see the most mortality. With bats it's the
2 Migratory Tree Bats that we see the most
3 mortality with so that's the Red Bat, the
4 Silver-haired bat, and the Horny Bat, those
5 three species make up over 80 percent of all bat
6 mortality across North America at wind farms.
7 MR. PRATT: Acceptable numbers from your
8 position?
9 THE WITNESS: Well, acceptable is -- you
10 know, I'm not sure how -- I guess depends on how
11 you define acceptable, right? I think the
12 question we have to ask is do we see population
13 of bats for the species. So is the level of
14 impact that we see or mortality that we see to
15 migratory birds overall, a certain species or
16 the bats, do we think or do we know whether
17 those impacts will result in population impact.
18 And the answer to that question is we don't
19 know, for the most part. If they're threatened
20 or endangered species, we have really good
21 information on the numbers. So Indiana Bats,
22 for instance, because there's been so much
23 research done on Indiana Bats since the 1960s
24 when they were listed, we have a good handle on 92
1 what the Indiana Bat population is; and so we
2 know that, you know, if we were to lose this
3 many, it would have this affect. We don't have
4 that information really for any other bat or for
5 most birds. So in other words, we don't know
6 how many Red Bats are out there, all right. So
7 if we say, you know, the wind projects across
8 the U.S. are killing a certain number of Red
9 Bats, we don't really know what that affect is.
10 There's a lot of research going on trying to
11 answer that question, but, you know, the real
12 answer is we don't know the significance of
13 that. We do know that there are other -- you
14 know, it's important to keep in mind that while
15 typical wind turbines do result in bird and bat
16 mortalities, there are a lot of other sources of
17 mortality out there as well. And for bats,
18 particularly Indiana bats, Northern Long-eared
19 Bats and other bats in this group, you know, it
20 is the disease, White-nose Syndrome, a fungus
21 that's affecting the bats while they're
22 hibernating in caves is the result -- and the
23 greatest mortality. You know, that in fact, is
24 why Northern Long-eared Bats were effectively 93
1 listed last year, because in some places we've
2 seen -- in the East Coast we've seen populations
3 down 99 percent and due to White-nose for
4 Northern Long-eared Bats.
5 MR. PRATT: No further questions.
6 JUDGE SLAVIN: Thank you.
7 Mr. Bothe?
8 MR. BOTHE: No questions.
9 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Hughes?
10 MR. HUGHES: Several times you mentioned
11 that this is been -- I don't know the
12 terminology used, but it's basically been a
13 desktop approach to the studies based on public
14 record. You also indicated this was -- meets
15 Tier 1 and Tier 2, but there is a Tier 3, which
16 I got the idea was a feet-on-the-ground type of
17 study. Is there any intention of doing that
18 type of study, or is there any expectation,
19 because of the environment, that that would be
20 necessary.
21 THE WITNESS: So you're right, the Tier 3
22 studies are really the field studies, which
23 could be studies for birds or bats and things
24 like that. Our company has not been -- you 94
1 know, we have not -- we're not under contract to
2 do those studies at this time. And I can't
3 answer, I guess, whether the company is looking
4 at those at this time.
5 MR. HUGHES: Okay. And I kind of thought
6 since you aren't the one directed, that you're
7 being hired, that was going to be your answer,
8 but I just wanted to see if that was part of the
9 consideration. And I know in the petition that
10 the Petitioner has stated that they have
11 contacted or have initiated contact with the
12 Illinois Department of Natural Resources and the
13 U.S. -- the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services. Do
14 you get any of that information, or do you
15 help -- are you part of the coordination of
16 those contacts?
17 THE WITNESS: Yes, I am. Yeah, so there
18 were meetings held with both U.S. Fish and
19 Wildlife Service and the Illinois Department of
20 Natural Resources and I was in attendance at
21 both of those.
22 MR. HUGHES: Any specific or -- I'll say
23 it that way. Any specific recommendations by
24 either of those groups that would be pertinent 95
1 to this project or may take a little bit of
2 additional looking at on this project?
3 THE WITNESS: Well, the Fish and Wildlife
4 Service has general guidelines that are -- that
5 they just have out there for all projects, not,
6 you know, this one specifically. So when we met
7 with Fish and Wildlife Service that was really
8 what they told us was -- it was our general
9 guidelines --
10 MR. HUGHES: Okay.
11 THE WITNESS: -- for projects, nothing
12 specific. Uhm, the Illinois Department of
13 Natural Resources has now provided a comment or
14 a letter -- a consultation letter back. We just
15 received that letter last night, I guess, was
16 the first time I saw it for sure, just came
17 yesterday. So we're still -- we haven't had a
18 chance to look at that, yes. We're looking at
19 that response -- or looking at that and, you
20 know, we'll respond to that, maybe yet this
21 week, so...
22 MR. HUGHES: Thank you.
23 JUDGE SLAVIN: All right. Mr. Klahn?
24 MR. KLAHN: Is there anything unusual 96
1 about this Tier 1 or Tier 2 desktop approach on
2 this? It would be a similar methodology that
3 the Illinois Department of Natural Resources
4 would apply?
5 THE WITNESS: It would be similar, yeah.
6 I mean, so the Illinois DNR will look at roughly
7 the same groups. See the Illinois DNR only has
8 the authority to regulate certain -- you know,
9 certain species. So they would focus primarily
10 on the threatened/endangered species. But, of
11 course, they have interest in all the others.
12 MR. KLAHN: No further questions. Thank
13 you.
14 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Henkel?
15 MR. HENKEL: No questions.
16 JUDGE SLAVIN: All right. Mr. Kapraun?
17 MR. KAPRAUN: No questions.
18 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Burnickel -- Barnickel?
19 MR. BARNICKEL: No questions.
20 JUDGE SLAVIN: And Mr. Hickey.
21 MR. HICKEY: No questions.
22 JUDGE SLAVIN: Folks in the audience who
23 did not use the half sheets to sign up, but
24 would like this ask this gentleman a question or 97
1 more, would you raise your hand, please. All
2 right. I just saw the one in the front row
3 first, come on up.
4 Give us your name first and even the city
5 you live in is fine.
6 MR. BRESSON: Yeah, Mark Bresson, and I
7 live north of Compton.
8 When you were talking about the eagles, I
9 was wondering, did you ever ask anybody in the
10 neighborhood if they've seen many eagles or
11 anything like that? The reason I'm asking --
12 JUDGE SLAVIN: Well, just ask him one
13 question at a time.
14 The question is: Have you asked anybody
15 in the neighborhood have you seen any eagles?
16 THE WITNESS: We have not, yet, no.
17 MR. BRESSON: Okay.
18 THE WITNESS: If an eagle survey were to
19 be done, then yes, we would do that.
20 MR. BRESSON: Okay. The reason I ask, I
21 live within a half a mile of Willow Creek, and
22 there is eagles --
23 JUDGE SLAVIN: That's a statement. That's
24 a statement. If you got questions of this 98
1 witness, now's the time.
2 MR. BRESSON: Oh, okay.
3 JUDGE SLAVIN: You can testify later and
4 tell us about eagles. Just ask questions now.
5 MR. BRESSON: All right. I was just
6 curious if you ever talked to the local people
7 about it.
8 THE WITNESS: Yes, we do, when we do
9 surveys -- when we do the eagle surveys, yes.
10 MR. BRESSON: All right. Thanks.
11 JUDGE SLAVIN: Thank you. I saw somebody
12 else's hand in the back. You want to come up?
13 If you'll start by giving us your name,
14 just the community you live in is good enough.
15 MS. HEIM: Jane Heim.
16 JUDGE SLAVIN: Would you spell your last
17 name for us?
18 MS. HEIM: H-E-I-M. I live on Steward
19 Road.
20 I don't know if I'm considered within the
21 project, but I am a non-participating, and so I
22 do have some questions, but I do have some
23 things to say, too, and I don't know how to --
24 the protocol. 99
1 JUDGE SLAVIN: Well, the things to say
2 later.
3 MS. HEIM: Okay.
4 JUDGE SLAVIN: Now's the time to ask him
5 questions. See the difference is he's the one
6 under oath on the witness stand now. When you
7 have things to say, we'll put you under oath,
8 and you'll be on the witness stand.
9 MS. HEIM: Got it.
10 Okay. Did I hear you say that there are
11 no bodies of water within this project?
12 THE WITNESS: No. Not no bodies of water
13 altogether, there's no large bodies, no large
14 lakes, no large rivers. There are streams,
15 certainly, and farmland.
16 MS. HEIM: I have a 3 or 4-acre pond.
17 That is not considered a body of water?
18 THE WITNESS: Well, it is a body of water,
19 but not a large body of water, you know, when we
20 think about eagles.
21 MS. HEIM: Okay. And I guess that's all I
22 can ask right now.
23 JUDGE SLAVIN: Okay. Thank you.
24 MS. HEIM: Thank you. 100
1 JUDGE SLAVIN: All right. Mr. -- you may
2 step down, first of all.
3 MR. LEE: Judge, can I ask one more?
4 JUDGE SLAVIN: Oh, sure.
5 MR. LEE: That's all right.
6 R E D I R E C T E X A M I N A T I O N
7 By Mr. Lee
8 Q. Mr. VanDeWalle, do you have an opinion as to
9 whether there will be more or less environmental
10 impact with the fewer larger turbines than the
11 existing?
12 A. Well, regarding the, you know, birds and bats,
13 you know, fewer turbines -- uhm, you know, fewer
14 turbines, we would assume would be less
15 impacted, just fewer places for the birds and/or
16 bats to fly either into or go through.
17 Now, the turbines -- the proposed turbines
18 are larger, and they have a larger rotor swept
19 area, you know, the area that the birds and bats
20 would fly through and potentially get hit. So
21 the rotor swept area is bigger, uhm, but there's
22 fewer of them, so, you know, intuitively we
23 think that probably would be a lower impact.
24 The other issue is these are taller 101
1 turbines and the -- you know, there's some data
2 that suggests that those listed bats, again,
3 Indiana Bat, Northern Long-eared Bats, those
4 small bats, they don't fly very high. They tend
5 to fly within, you know, say a hundred meters of
6 the ground, let's say. So they fly lower to the
7 ground, and so while that doesn't put them
8 entirely below the rotor swept zone, they're
9 going to certainly be at the bottom of it, and
10 much of that will be there, that rotor swept
11 zone. So taller turbines may actually lower the
12 affect on those small bats, mainly. So, you
13 know, we don't have any real quantity data, but
14 intuitively we -- you know, we say that yes, I
15 think the impact will be less with fewer
16 turbines.
17 MR. LEE: Thank you.
18 JUDGE SLAVIN: You may step down. Thank
19 you.
20 All right. Mr. Chairman, I'm going to
21 call a halt to the evidentiary part of tonight's
22 hearing, but before I suggest to you that you
23 ask for a motion to continue the hearing, I
24 think the next order of business is probably 102
1 next meetings, I bet you'll agree.
2 Just to get some input, Mr. Lee, without
3 holding you to it, I mean, you're not going to
4 be stuck with it, you care to guess how much --
5 either how many more witnesses or how much more
6 time?
7 MR. LEE: Probably 15 minutes.
8 JUDGE SLAVIN: Really, okay.
9 MR. LEE: Yeah.
10 JUDGE SLAVIN: Folks here, we've got three
11 people want to testify. Of those three people
12 that are going to testify, do you have any
13 witnesses? If you have a witness, if you're
14 going to call a witness other than yourself,
15 would you raise your hand? If you're going to
16 call a witness other than yourself, like an
17 expert or your next-door neighbor?
18 Okay. Other than the three people who
19 have signed up to testify, are there people who
20 didn't want to use the half sheets, but now have
21 decided they want to testify? And I'm not going
22 to hold you to it again, I'm just trying to get
23 an idea how much time we got going, would you
24 raise your hands? One more? Okay. 103
1 Don't hold me to this, but I'm going to
2 guess two more nights is probably going to be
3 sufficient. What I'd like to do is suggest to
4 you that we go through next Monday, Tuesday, and
5 Wednesday, and we'll go through the key people
6 and see if anybody can't make those nights.
7 I can be here Monday. How about you, Mr.
8 Forster?
9 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: I can be there all
10 three nights.
11 JUDGE SLAVIN: Okay. Mr. Buhrow?
12 MR. BUHROW: All three.
13 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Bothe?
14 MR. BOTHE: All three.
15 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Pratt?
16 MR. PRATT: All three.
17 JUDGE SLAVIN: Mr. Hughes?
18 MR. HUGHES: Only Tuesday.
19 JUDGE SLAVIN: Only Tuesday?
20 MR. HUGHES: Yep.
21 JUDGE SLAVIN: Okay. Mr. Klahn?
22 MR. KLAHN: I serve with pleasure the
23 People of Lee County, so I'll be here.
24 JUDGE SLAVIN: Good one. 104
1 Mr. Henkel?
2 MR. HENKEL: So do I.
3 JUDGE SLAVIN: So all three, so, okay.
4 Mr. Lee, you and your contingent?
5 MR. LEE: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday are
6 all fine.
7 JUDGE SLAVIN: Uhm, I don't know how the
8 Board feels about proceeding one of the nights
9 without one of your members. I mean, that's
10 always a tough call, and I'm sure Mr. Pratt
11 (sic) wouldn't take offense if you wanted to go
12 ahead without him.
13 MR. PRATT: Mr. Hughes.
14 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: Mr. Hughes.
15 MR. PRATT: Mr. Hughes is the one that's
16 --
17 JUDGE SLAVIN: Oh, he's the one, sir,
18 okay, I'm sorry.
19 Gentlemen, Mr. Chair, tough call, right?
20 I know. There's no -- you've got a quorum
21 without Mr. Hughes, but...
22 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: Right.
23 MR. BUHROW: What topics are we going to
24 be covering then? 105
1 JUDGE SLAVIN: I don't know, I can't --
2 I'm not going to make anybody out there in the
3 audience tell me what they're going to testify
4 about, but I don't know what Mr. Lee's got left.
5 MR. LEE: Well, again, I don't mind
6 sharing, it's just basically Mr. Green just to
7 do a wrap-up, hit a couple of the scheduling
8 things and the consultations they've had with
9 the outside agencies. So I say 15 minutes; he's
10 telling me 5, so...
11 MR. GREEN: Without questions.
12 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: I'd suggest -- this
13 would be my suggestion, that we proceed on
14 Tuesday night and based upon the end of the
15 testimony there, as long as Mr. Hughes is here,
16 see what we need to do for whether we go forward
17 at that point. If he says 15 minutes and we
18 have three other people to testify, we may get
19 done.
20 JUDGE SLAVIN: We have four. The question
21 is whether you want to launch a Finding of Fact
22 right there, and I think probably Mr. Klahn
23 would probably like a little time to get ready
24 for a night of Findings of Fact. And I was 106
1 thinking if it's going to be that little
2 testimony, but again, it's up to you if you want
3 Mr. Hughes to hear, but you could go ahead
4 Monday night with that little bit of testimony
5 and then Tuesday night have all your members for
6 the Findings of Fact.
7 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: Then the other question
8 is before Tuesday night's meeting, could Mr.
9 Hughes get a copy of what the testimony was?
10 JUDGE SLAVIN: You're looking at the wrong
11 guy for that. There's a young lady right down
12 below me that --
13 ZONING ADMINISTRATOR HENKEL: Either that
14 or we could arrange to audio record it and
15 provide that to him, that would be another
16 option.
17 JUDGE SLAVIN: Okay. All right.
18 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: So we can proceed
19 Monday.
20 JUDGE SLAVIN: Well, I'm just suggesting.
21 Monday sounds like everybody but Mr. Hughes can
22 be here; and Tuesday everybody can be here. So
23 it sounds like that's a pretty good plan before
24 you. 107
1 So having said that, Mr. Chairman, maybe
2 you want to ask for a motion to continue to
3 Monday night.
4 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: Sure, I can ask that.
5 MR. PRATT: I make a motion we reconvene
6 Monday night to continue this.
7 MR. BOTHE: I second it.
8 JUDGE SLAVIN: 7 o'clock?
9 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: 7 o'clock.
10 All in favor?
11 (All those simultaneously
12 responded.)
13 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: All opposed?
14 (WHEREUPON, no verbal response by the
15 Board members.)
16 JUDGE SLAVIN: Sounds like to me the
17 meeting is continued.
18 CHAIRMAN FORSTER: Motion passed, it will
19 be Monday night.
20 (The hearing was adjourned at
21 9:10 p.m. and continued to
22 Monday, September 12, 2016 at
23 7:00 p.m.)
24 108
1 Now on this 14th day
2 of September, A.D. 2016, I do
3 signify that the foregoing
4 testimony was given before the
5 Lee County Zoning Board of
6 Appeals.
7
8
9
10 Bruce Forster, Chairman 11
12
13
14
15 Chris Henkel, 16 Zoning Administrator
17
18
19
20 Doris J. Kennay 21 Certified Shorthand Reporter Registered Professional Reporter 22 IL License No. 084-002725
23
24