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The commission agreed during its special meeting in the boardroom of the administration building to keep the maximum setback for the tallest of utility-scale wind turbines at 3,300 feet. And after three hours of deliberation, the board was ready to make a recommendation on the wind turbine section to county commissioners with only one significant change regarding wind speed.
But unable to separate the two portions of the draft ordinance - wind turbines and communication towers - to make a recommendation, the County Planning Commission will hold a special meeting at 5 p.m. Tuesday in the boardroom of the administration building. The sole purpose of the meeting will be to consider changes to the communication towers section, the majority of which are based on state General Statute.
The planning commission is trying to make its recommendation on the draft tall ordinance with enough time that county commissioners can hold a public hearing and deliberate the new regulations for themselves before the nine-month moratorium on tall structures expires in November.
But while the planning commission may be happy with the regulations for wind turbines it has helped to mold, others are not. Tim Conboy with Acciona, a New York-based wind energy development company, said the ordinance was much too restrictive and would effectively stave off any such development in Carteret County.
"The draft ordinance, in its current form, is one of the most restrictive, burdensome and cautionary I have seen in my experience as a developer of wind energy projects," he said during the public comment session of the meeting. "In fact, if I approached life's risks and opportunities the way the proposed ordinance approaches utility-scale wind energy, I would never get out of bed in the morning."
Mr. Conboy said the rules set for setbacks, turbine spacing, shadow flicker, noise and maintenance went beyond the "reasonable standards for protecting public safety and minimizing adverse impacts."
"A local siting ordinance is just one of many hurdles a wind project needs to clear, so don't be misled by the belief that there are many large parcels within Carteret County that can support the proposed setback requirements," he said.
"If adopted in its current form, the ordinance's excessive and unnecessary regulations will significantly limit the potential for any economically viable wind farms to be developed within the county ... The proposed ordinance will send a clear message to wind farm developers that Carteret County is not interested in wind energy's economic development benefits and does not want to contribute to a clean energy future."
But Stephanie Miscovich, resident of the Down East community of Bettie, disagreed and said it seemed as though some thought the ordinance should compromise public safety for the sake of siting.
"Recent criticism of this draft ordinance seems to suggest that the planning commission should compromise public safety in order to accommodate the fact that all the safely remote places in our county might be unavailable to due military airspace or wildlife sanctuary restrictions," she said referring to comments made by Nelson Paul, who is proposing a wind farm of three 1.5 megawatt turbines for 33 acres in Bettie, in an e-mail earlier this week.
"This criticism is misguided," Mrs. Marcovich continued. "It is not the planning commission's responsibility to find an acceptable location for utility-scale wind turbines in our county if none exists. They are, however, responsible for making sure utility-scale turbines stay out of unacceptable locations. Which, I think, is exactly what I think you all are doing."
During the planning commission's review of the ordinance, much consideration was given to a recent change that would require expert certification that no debris from a wind energy facility would leave a proposed site during a Category 3 hurricane.
But commission member David Heath said he thought that was expecting too much of a developer.
"What other structures do we require certification that no debris will leave a site in the event of a storm?" he said. "That's the whole point of the setback - that if a turbine fell, it didn't fall on anything."
Commission member Robin Comer said he thought such certification was important in case the turbines one day became the electricity supply for the county, in which case the certification requirement would ensure the county had power during a major storm.
But Mr. Heath said that was thinking too far ahead. And the point of the ordinance is to protect public safety from the wind turbine structures, he said, not to protect the infrastructure the turbines may create.
In the end, the commission agreed the ordinance should use language requiring developers use manufacturer's guidelines and classifications for wind speed according to the model turbine proposed. They also agreed the ordinance should include language from the state building code that requires structures withstand 135 mph winds at three-second intervals at ground level.
The commission also agreed to remove language requiring a specific amount of space between turbines for large or utility-scale systems.
"I don't see why we need to get into this (requiring space between turbines) period," Mr. Comer said.
Having setbacks of up to 3,300 feet for utility-scale turbines, he said it wasn't the county's place to tell an engineer how the turbines should be arranged.
Mr. Comer moved to strike the paragraph from the ordinance and Mr. Heath gave the second. The motion carried unanimously.
With the wind turbine portion of the ordinance behind them, county planners will take on the communications tower section Tuesday.
A communication tower ordinance has existed in the county for some time, but county commissioners requested it be combined with wind turbines to create one tall structures ordinance.
The majority of changes to the communication tower regulations are based on recent changes to state General Statute. However, two county residents expressed concern that there was too much room for interpretation in the county's language that would severely impact business related to communication and radio towers in Carteret County.
Bob Chambers and Art Hill agreed to meet with county planning staff in the days ahead to better relay their concerns.
A PDF file of the draft tall structures ordinance, not including Thursday night's changes to the wind turbine section, can be viewed by visiting the County Planning Department Web site at www.carteretcountygov.org/departments/planningandinspection.htm.
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