After eight year fight, Wayne turbine has another small stumble

WAYNE — Rob Burke's eight-year battle to install an electricity-generating wind turbine on Hamburg Turnpike – a process filled with lawsuits and disputes — suffered another setback Thursday with the delivery of a mismatching part, a mistake that made assembling the device impossible.

Components for the windmill delivered Thursday morning to the Wayne Auto Spa included a pole on which the turbine was to be mounted that didn't match manufacturer plans for the concrete-slab base.

"I could get angry about this, but that would not change the situation," said Burke, the Wayne Auto Spa owner. Burke has tried to install the turbine at his business as an energy-saving measure since the summer of 2006.

Eight years ago Burke and a partner re-launched the carwash and oil-change center and invested in a number of green technologies to improve operations. They put up solar panels to supply some electricity and recycled used motor oil, which helps heat some of the building. Soapy carwash water that was once poured straight into the Pompton River now is filtered before it is flushed into the municipal sewers.

It was also during that summer eight years ago that Burke told a reporter he wanted to build a 50-foot wind turbine to expand his green footprint.

"There's enough wind here to justify a wind turbine on that flag pole," he said then.

He wanted to make the turbine a township landmark.

A string of Planning Board denials and lawsuits delayed the turbine's construction. After a lawsuit settlement in 2011 cleared up the litigation, Burke won the right in negotiations with officials to build the 49-foot windmill. It features a vertical blade construction rather than the more typical propeller-like blades.

Three 10- to 12-foot-long blades of turbine, painted kelly green, sat still on Thursday, locked in a fenced-in yard.

Despite his long and sometimes bitter history with township officials, Burke says his relationship has improved with many of them.

In the intervening years he has transformed his property to include a chicken coop with 27 egg-laying hens and garden patches to grow vegetables. He said he donates the food he grows to Eva's Village, the Paterson charitable institution. This summer he has sent three shipments of food and is harvesting a fourth.

Burke plans to tear up unused blacktop to expand the gardens and lease some land for Eva's Village to build a greenhouse. The lease would be $1 a year.