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The critical battles that will decide whether the US can make an energy transition away from fossil fuels in time to avoid the most damaging effects of climate change, are being fought in humble settings far away from Washington, New York, or centers of media and power.
This week I was back in Meade Township, a community of a few hundred in the northern tip of Michigan’s thumb region, which has been a hub for wind development. Meade missed out on a wind project 10 years ago when local citizens, enflamed by ginned-up fossil fuel disinformation (“wind turbines cause cancer”) spread by trained out-of-town activists, turned down a reasonable wind ordinance. In the succeeding 10 years, Meade has watched as similarly sized neighboring Dwight and Chandler townships saw massive increases in local tax revenue, and none of the purported ills that swindlers claimed would come with “Obama’s Turbines”. Below, just a short clip from the hour or so of reasonable, cordial, and factual discussion – which sounds like it should be normal, but trust me, you could have knocked me over with a feather seeing this, after 7 years of observing the atmosphere of chaos, menace, harrassment, threats and abuse that fossil fuel operatives have managed to orchestrate at local meetings around the midwest. This – is what should be normal. Zoning Administrator Kevin Ross and County Commissioner Steve Vaughan argued convincingly for the new facility.
Graphs below: Meade Township struggles as local tax revenues cannot meet needs, and depends on largesse from state and federal taxpayers to survive.
Local revenue statistics also show that Meade Township depends on money from other Michigan governments to support itself. Only 47 percent of the township’s revenues come from local taxes, while 52 percent comes from other governments – primarily state and federal.
By contrast, Chandler and Dwight townships draw heavily on wind energy revenues. Chandler receives 83 percent of its revenues from local taxes – including wind energy revenues – while Dwight receives 84 percent.
Chandler, which has the fewest residents of the three townships, collected $292,896 in 2019, the latest year for which revenues were available on cleargov.com, while Dwight collected $256,878. Meade, with no wind revenues, collected only $117,167.
A few years ago, I spoke to Chandler Township supervisor Bill Renn, (along with several other local officials) and asked whether stories about loss of Real Estate values in wind communities were true.
Ultimately the measure was passed 4 to 1. The community can now apply for a grant under Michigan’s “ Renewable Ready Communities” program, which is a one time payment of $5000 per Megawatt, and would result in several hundred thousand dollars coming to the community, in addition to an estimated $500,000 per year in tax revenues, depending on the final design. Also discussed – revisiting the “Exclusionary” Wind ordinance that paranoid clean energy opponents crafted 10 years ago. This revival of civility is the result of Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s clean energy siting reforms of last year, which have radically empowered cooler heads at the local level, are protecting Farmer’s property rights, and already resulting in a large number of new solar, and soon, wind energy projects being permitted. There will still be some townships where “antis” fully drunk on the kool-aid and bought into the “globalist plot” view of clean energy, will dig in their heels. The law provides that in cases of impasse, a developer may appeal to the state-level Michigan Public Service Commission in Lansing, which has its own template for a workable ordinance. Going that route would commit generally underfunded rural taxpayers to unknown and uncapped legal expenses for proceedings which could last most of a year, and include evidence, testimony, depositions, cross examination, and all the other gambits lawyers can run up hours for. It’s a huge credit to the Governor, who gambled on the fundamental decency and good sense of local politicians, most of whom are conservative Republicans, and the courageous, entirely Democratic, legislators who voted on party lines for the reforms.
