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After about two hours of discussion, with comments for and against, the wind farm ordinance was approved by a vote of 24-2 with one abstention.
The ordinance, which would allow wind farms to be built in the county, sets a limit - no more than 30 hours annually - on the amount of "shadow flicker" that can affect the dwellings of people who aren't participating in a wind farm project. Shadow flicker is a phenomenon where sunlight streaming through a turbine's rotating blades creates a constant strobe effect.
State law requires developers to pay property taxes per turbine.
Shadow flicker, noise and safety were among the concerns expressed by some citizens among the more than two dozen attending the board meeting.
The ordinance also requires that there be a 1½-mile buffer zone around cities. The Champaign City Council had suggested extending that to 2½ miles, but that language was not considered by the county board.
Herb Schildt, chairman of the Newcomb Township Plan Commission, told the county board before the vote Thursday that the original language of the ordinance included a provision for a map overlay amendment.
He said it is important because "it ensures that a wind farm will be located where it is appropriate and where it is wanted" by giving neighboring landowners and townships the right of formal protest.
Map amendments are common in zoning, and Champaign County requires them for a beauty shop, barbershop, gas station, florist or shoe repair shop, he said.
"If it is good and proper to require a map amendment for something as small as a beauty shop," he said, "then it must also be good and proper to require a map amendment for something as large as a wind farm."
Alan Kurtz, D-Champaign, cited stories and studies about wind farms that he said mitigated or eliminated the concerns about noise, safety and shadow flicker.
He also presented estimates on property-tax revenues to be generated by 200 wind turbines over a 20-year period, based on data from Supervisor of Assessments Stan Jenkins. Kurtz said that all taxing bodies in the county would get about $59.4 million over that span, with the county itself receiving $5.88 million.
In addition, Kurtz said there would be about $36 million from wind farm lease payments to landowners, based on a lease of $9,000 a year for each turbine.
"This has become a nonpartisan issue for the benefit of the entire county," Kurtz said.
Voting against the measure were Larry Sapp, R-Mahomet, and Ralph Langenheim, D-Urbana. John Jay, R-Mahomet, abstained, explaining that since Mahomet Township voted to officially protest the county ordinance language as drafted, that it might be considered a conflict of interest for him to vote.
While the Mahomet Township vote to protest came too late to be officially considered, Newcomb Township had protested the ordinance, forcing the measure to get a "super majority" of 60 percent.
Sapp said after the meeting that his concern is that wind farms are based on tax subsidies and that government spending has to stop.
Langenheim also said the local wind resource "is at best, marginal."
He said, "All of us will be affected by a huge industrial complex" that will change the local environment forever.
The ordinance, as it is now written, is "no longer as safe or as fair as the original," he said. "This is unacceptable."
John Dossert, business development manager for Invergy LLC, one of three companies looking at wind farms in the county, said, "I think we have a strong ordinance we can work with."
The original ordinance, he said, was too restrictive.
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