Putting up towers and turbines, building roads between them and hooking them to the power grid can be expensive. Offering a little leeway on the front end in the form of tax relief - up to about $10 million until recently - has helped Oregon bring in the farms during the past decade.

As energy generators, wind companies also generate tax revenue for the counties where they reside.

In Umatilla County, at least three wind farms have been generating dollars since 1999. In total, the county has received about $2.5 million in tax revenue from these companies during that time.

But that amount has changed dramatically over the years. In defining the value of wind turbines and wind farms, the state has a steep depreciation curve, showing the value dropping to about 20 percent after 10 years.

ESI Vansycle, a 38-tower wind farm and one of the oldest in Umatilla County, was valued at $24.7 million in 1999. In 2008, it was valued at about $16.5 million. The county's tax revenue from that wind farm started at about $70,000 the first year and in 2008 it was down to about $47,000.

Similarly FLP Vansycle, better known as Stateline, a 126-tower wind farm built in 2002, originally generated about $194,000 for the county, and in 2008 made $165,500.

Eurus Combine Hills, a 41-tower facility, generated $114,000 in its first year in 2004, and about $74,000 in 2008.

BETC

The Business Energy Tax Credit , or BETC, is perhaps the most well known of the available tax credits. And it may be going through a change.

Though a lot of the wind development is new, Oregon Department of Energy spokesman Louis Torres said BETC isn't a new idea. Those types of tax credits have been around since 1980.

Up until recently, BETCs allowed a 50 percent energy tax credit for projects like wind farms. The maximum eligible cost is $20 million, so the most BETC credit a company can get is $10 million. Torres said wind farms can cost a lot more than that. If a wind farm cost $75 million to build, for instance, it would still be capped at $20 million eligibility, with 50 percent credit coming to $10 million.

Facing difficult economic times, the state Legislature made cuts to crucial programs.

"Even a successful program like the business energy tax credit came under scrutiny," he said.

The new BETC would reduce the tax break from $10 million to about $3.5 million, Torres said.

Along with budget woes, Torres said the Legislature also thought it was time to amend the program. With Oregon's commitment to provide 25 percent of its energy through renewable by 2025 will provide enough incentive to bring wind companies without the crutch of tax credits.

The BETC system only was meant to be temporary. It was meant to start these processes to bring wind companies to the area until the practice had established itself and the state no longer needed to entice wind companies with the lure of tax breaks.

The bill awaits Gov. Ted Kulongoski's final approval.

SIP

Another tax program to entice wind companies, on a more local scale, is the Strategic Investment Program. It's aimed to give a tax break to wind companies on the local scale and offset some of the steep depreciation.

The SIP evens out the amount of money a wind company pays in local and county taxes for the first 15 years of a project. A project puts its first $20 million in value straight onto the tax rolls and pays a community service fee equal to 25 percent of the tax savings, but not more than $500,000.

This helps the wind company because it lowers at least one part of the high front-end costs for building a wind farm, and it evens out the tax revenue for the county, making it a little more dependable for the first 15 years. After that, the wind company's value, and its resulting taxes, revert to the state's steep value drop-off curve.

Umatilla County got its feet wet with its first SIP on the Echo Wind Farm. It did face some hiccups in distributing a part of the SIP called the community service fee. It's a portion of the SIP agreed upon to go to the taxing districts that may otherwise miss out on tax revenue because of the agreement. Those districts include things like fire, cemetery and library districts.

School districts aren't included, and don't directly benefit from SIPs. That's because if a local entity, such as a wind farm or any other big business, contributes more tax dollars to a school district, it doesn't mean that district gets more tax dollars overall. The state evens out the funding. So, for example, if the state allocates $10 per student, the schools get $10 per student whether or not local entities contribute $3 or $7 of that $10. If local entities contribute more, the state contributes less so it evens out.

In other places, such as Morrow County, the groups have split up the community service fees according to their allocated percentages.

But in Umatilla County, with the Echo Wind Farm, county commissioners wanted to try something different, a bit of a mix between the new and the old. It wanted to set up a community fund, like it had companies do in Milton-Freewater, Helix and Athena and Weston, with the projects built there over the past 10 years.

Community funds

Dave Lynde is the secretary for the Athena-Weston Educational Resource Enhancement board, or AWERE. It manages a community fund paid for by FPL Vansycle, which runs the Stateline wind project. (It's now working on Stateline III, and has changed its name from Vansycle to NextEra.)

The county gets the money and the six-member board - made up of a representative from Athena (Lynde), a representative from Weston, the school board superintendent, Umatilla County Commissioner Bill Hansell, a representative from the wind company and a member at large - decides where to use the money in the community.

The board first started managing money after FPL Vansycle wind farm's first year, in 2003. The first year the board started off with $50,000 and it has received $25,000 each year since. It will stop receiving money in 2012 - 10 years after the wind farm started.

Lynde said his board came up with a simple requirement for projects funded by AWERE.

"It has to be something you can touch," he said.

He said the group wanted to avoid paying operational costs for programs or matching funds for grants. As a result, citizens can actually see, and touch, many of the projects AWERE and in turn, FPL Vansycle, have funded over the years.

Off the top of his head, Lynde listed multiple projects AWERE has paid for, including the Athena City Library, the reader board in front of Weston-McEwen High School, electricity and water outlets for food vendors at Caledonian Games and the Triangle Little League ball fields.

AWERE has helped cities, the school district, the fire department, the ambulance service, both city libraries and high school seniors working on community service projects.

"This money has definitely been a maker of dreams in my mind," Lynde said.

But he said he is worried about the future of these kinds of community funds - Helix and Milton-Freewater each have them, too - with SIPs coming into play.

Since the SIP, and its division of the community service fee, officially approves the SIPs, Lynde said he didn't know if groups such as AWERE will exist after their contracts run out.

When the county divvied up the Echo Wind Farm community service fee, through a great amount of effort, it managed to get most of the taxing districts to hand their share to a community fund. It involved months of negotiation. Reluctant groups weren't against the idea of a community fund, they were concerned over giving tax money that could benefit their constituents and programs.

The SIP situation will prove interesting, Lynde said, and the special taxing districts will face a huge decision.

"What do you do as a special taxing district?" Lynde said. "Do you keep all that money or keep a portion of it to keep PR up?