Worry spreads among residents over proposed SJC wind project
ST. JOSEPH COUNTY, Ind. -- Some Southern Saint Joseph County residents got a knock on the door Wednesday from a representative with the international renewable energy project developer, UKA-Group.
The group was seeing if those community members may be interested in working with them on their proposed wind project in Saint Joseph County.
Residents like Millard and Val Clauss first heard about the project when they got a letter in the mail mid-September. After speaking with other residents and looking at local social media posts, the couple learned the proposed project may be anywhere from 5000 to 15,000 acres.
“To me, it’s not worth any amount of money that they might offer me to put towers on my farm… you know I think there’s a lot more value in this farmland in this area for food production than for energy production,” said Millard.
Millard and Val have lived on their farm in Saint Joseph County for nearly 30 years. Val is a retired schoolteacher while Millard is a generational grain farmer.
“I grew up in a little town, but I became a farmer's wife and I’m passionate about the land too. This is very good land through here, it is wonderful agricultural land, we have great soil, and I just can’t stand to see agriculture land destroyed and taken away. You’ve got to grow food,” said Val.
ABC57 was unable to get in contact with the UKA-Group for this story but did hear from them in September. A representative explained the project is still in early evaluation stages and it would be premature to share details.
When Millard and Val got that knock on the door from a representative, they didn’t learn many additional details about the project, but they told UKA-Group they were not interested. Millard said he’s heard his neighbors share a similar perspective. He explained it’s their knowledge of the land that makes them wary of this proposed project.
“Any excess subsoil that is left on the project, what are they going to do with that? I’m assuming that they’re gonna want to spread it over around the existing farmland… so in order to add fertilizer and lime to try to make that subsoil produce… it could take 10, 20 [years] to a lifetime to make that soil comparably productive to the existing topsoil now… it’s very important to me to be able to be out in the country here and have a pretty much unobstructed view of nature and the surrounding area, not have to look at a lot of man-made structures. To me, if I wanted that, I’d live in a city,” said Millard.