Jon Backman for the WJBC forum

The ongoing hearings before the McLean County Zoning Appeals Board regarding the proposed Invenergy, Inc., wind farm in and around Carlock, Illinois, represents far more than a localized dispute among some townspeople, farmers and corporate executives in a Central Illinois town. At its core, the fight is about nothing more and nothing less than the industrial revolution that has consumed Western civilization for the past 100 years. And the outcome is preordained.

The Invenergy project will proceed. The Zoning officials, or perhaps the County Boards of McLean and Woodford County, may require some minor modifications to the project. They may even force the corporation to choose another location. But over the next several years, this wind farm, and hundreds like it, are going to built in Central Illinois and in other similar areas throughout the United States. The need for such alternative energy sources to replace oil is simply too great, and the dollars involved far too large, for these projects to cease. And they should not do so. The real question, therefore, is not whether the Invenergy project should proceed, but instead what terms and condition governmental bodies should impose on the corporation that will profit from it.

The opponents of the Invenergy project are right to start their fight in the zoning forum. Hopefully, the zoning officials and county boards will listen to what the opponents have to say, and will modify the conditions of the special use permits - such as the required distances between the wind turbines and individual homes - so as to minimize to the extent practical the harm to town residents. But regardless of what modifications occur during the zoning process, some people are going to prosper greatly from the payments that the corporation will make for the use of the land, while others are going to suffer as the wind farms damage the value of their property and of their quiet communities.

So the question turns to what happens next. Sadly, in far too many communities - including Ellsworth, where another corporation’s wind farm project has devastated local property values - the answer is nothing. When obtaining their zoning permits, the wind farms promote the wonderful economic benefits that their projects will bring to the area, and promise to be good neighbors to all residents. But then, once they have their permits, they ignore the hundreds of individuals who suffer, in many cases unexpectedly, as the construction and operation moves ahead.

It does not have to be this way. We cannot avoid the fact that some people will suffer from the wind farm projects, but we can ensure that the wind farm companies adequately compensate the damaged individuals for their losses. No reason exists that a farmer who happens to own the specific property on which the company will place its turbines will earn hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue from the project, while a simple family with a small home adjacent to the wind farm will lose tens of thousands of dollars of property value from the same project. County officials can and should insist that corporations obtaining permits for wind farms agree to a legal process whereby individuals whose property values are damaged will be compensated for this loss.

Many Americans, including the majority of conservative Central Illinoisans, reacted with anger when the Supreme Court ruled that a city could take an individual’s home and give the land to a private developer. But at least in that case, the homeowners were receiving compensation for the taking. The wind farm situation, where no compensation for damaged homeowners is offered, presents a far worse scenario. We need not, and must not, tolerate it.