NORTH LARIMER COUNTY — Lisa Billings and her neighbors in the Red Mountain area of north Larimer County were thrilled when Wind Holding LLC missed its deadline last summer to start work on a wind farm on nearby Maxwell Ranch.

“This is great news,” said Billings, president of the 54-member Greater Red Mountain Protection Association. “A lot of people are really concerned about this.”

That was in July, and Colorado State University Research Foundation — which handles real estate matters for the university — gave Wind Holding 60 days to bring its contractual obligations up to date. When that Sept. 25 deadline passed, CSURF decided to give the developer one more chance — until Oct. 31 — to cure its defaulted contract or CSU would find a new partner to develop the $500 million project.

Billings and her neighbors are holding their breath and hoping the project first announced in March 2007 may still fall completely apart. And it’s not because they aren’t fans of alternative energy.

“We all agree it’s a good idea to have alternative energy,” said D.L. Roberts, a GRMPA member whose family helped pioneer the area and who has extensive nearby land holdings. “Solar would be a lot more hidden and probably (cost) a lot less to maintain.”

But solar is not what CSU is pursuing in its quest to build its Green Power Project on 8,000 acres of the 11,000-acre Maxwell Ranch about 23 miles north of Fort Collins. The project, announced by former President Larry Penley, is to develop enough wind-created electricity to power the entire CSU campus and sell excess electricity to an electrical provider such as Xcel Energy.

Violating will?

Roberts, who knew landowner Fred Maxwell before Maxwell died and left his ranch to CSU in the 1970s, said the wind farm idea violates the spirit of his will.

“My biggest concern is what Grandpa Maxwell wanted done with his land,” Roberts said. “He was pleased to leave his land to a land grant college so it could be used for range management and cattle breeding research. He wanted it to be left in its condition as much as possible. I just feel they’re really violating their agreement with him.”

Plans for the Green Power Project call for up to 100 wind turbines or more to be sited across the ranch, which sits on mostly high ground just east of U.S. Highway 287. Ironically, the area is often battered by winds higher than the 65 mph limit when turbines must be disengaged because they can’t turn fast enough.

“To say the wind is ferocious up here is an understatement,” Billings said.

Each of the wind turbines would approach 400 feet tall and the entire array would generate up to 200 megawatts of electrical power. At peak demand, CSU currently uses about 16 megawatts of power. It’s estimated that the excess energy could produce an additional $30 million in revenue for CSU over its 25- to 30-year life.

Scheduled for completion by 2015, the project also calls for a 230-kilovolt transmission line to be built to a substation in Ault, about 35 miles away.

Nina Jackson, another GRMPA member, said the project would ruin the views of area residents like herself. “I would be within a mile of several turbines,” she said. “My view would be completely obliterated by wind turbines.”

Jackson said CSU and Wind Holding have done little to minimize the impact on their lives. “They always say they need at least 100 (turbines) to be able to get a return,” she said. “That’s where the problem comes in.”

Neighbors also worry about the turbines’ effect on migratory birds, mountain roads that might be destroyed by giant cranes and other heavy equipment needed to erect the turbines, and their own future property values.

“People bought here because they thought the Maxwell Ranch would always be open space,” said Roberts.

Financing is problem

Bruce Morley, CEO of Wind Holding, would not speak to the Business Report for this story but did e-mail a statement as to why the project has not moved forward:

“The CSU wind power project has been delayed by the international banking crisis… At the beginning of this year, our German bank sponsor, HSH Nordbank, withdrew from the U.S. In the interim, we have been working diligently to secure replacement financing, now close to fruition. The deadlines in our lease with CSU Research Foundation are self-extending by events beyond our control, such as the international financial crisis.”

Morley said CSU should stand by the project, which he said will have multiple benefits. “It is CSU which stands to benefit the most from this project, which will earn more than $40 million in new research funding for the university and provide a state-of-the-art green power project for CSU’s world-leading smart-grid technology. Larimer County will also see $20 million in new tax revenues.”

Bill Farland, CSU’s vice president for research, said the Green Power Project does not violate the spirit of Fred Maxwell’s will. “We’ve spoken to (neighbors) quite frequently about that,” he said. “One of the first things the research foundation did was to go to the (state) attorney general and get a reading on the will. The will talks about research but it does not specify that it would be agricultural research. There is quite a range of research activities we can do there.”

Farland said those activities include ag research on grazing cattle in the presence of wind turbines and technological research around tying the farm into an electrical smart grid for power distribution.

Farland said he believes that as the lease holder and developer of the project Wind Holding is responsible for allaying neighborhood fears.

“We’re not anywhere close to having a final decision on (turbine tower placement),” he said. “That’s up to the developer. But I can tell you that Wind Holding and EDAW, their engineering group, have modified some of the placement of the towers to address that issue.”

But neighbors of the proposed project say no amount of modification will make it palatable. “Yes, there’s a certain amount of NIMBY (not in my backyard) here, but this project just doesn’t make any sense,” Roberts said. “It’s just absurd. All the way around, it’s just a bad location.”