Harvest arrives before debris is cleared from Cedar County wind turbine fires

Lightning has struck the 2 turbines on the farm 3 times

On Aug. 15, Sally Freeman received a call from a neighbor.

“Your wind turbine’s on fire again,” the neighbor said in the 5 a.m. call.

By the time Freeman looked out her window at the family farm near Mechanicsville, most of the turbine blade already had burned.

Her parents, Steve and Teresa Weets, agreed in 2012 to an easement with Acciona Wind Power to install two turbines on the family farm in Cedar County. But within the last 18 months, both turbines have been struck by lightning — and now, one of them twice.

The strikes left fiberglass, dust and other debris strewn over at least 240 acres, almost a third of the farm’s land. And with the fall harvest underway, the family’s frustration with having the damaged turbines removed and the debris cleaned up is threatening their bottom line.

“We're trying to figure out what's going to happen to that corn,” said Freeman, 31. “We don't know if it's going to have to end up in a landfill, or if there is some type of place to go salvage it, or a different market to put it into. I hate to have to haul that much corn to the landfill, especially a year like this year where we're looking at really good yields.”

Explosives or crane?

After the landowners waited for months, the wind power company removed the foundation of the first turbine. An Acciona North America spokesperson said that first turbine struck was a metal tower, which is easier to remove from the farm.

He said “conversations are underway” with the landowners on how to remove the second foundation.

“That's going to help us determine what the next steps are and how to dismantle that tower,” the spokesperson said. But removing that tower is more complicated because it’s made of concrete — not metal.

“It makes the removal a bit more complex. So that's something we're looking into to figure out,” the spokesperson said. “... How we do this in a safe manner that both our employees and our contractors do it in a way that is also satisfactory to the landowners?”

Freeman said her family repeatedly has requested Acciona use a crane to remove the second tower — rather than explosives to knock it over, due to concerns that explosives will lead to more debris.

But Freeman said Acciona has refused, saying that using a crane isn’t safe.

Acciona, headquartered in Spain, has operations in North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Oceania.

The Acciona manufacturing plant in West Branch ceased operations in 2013 and was later bought by the Nordex Group, a Germany-based global wind turbine manufacturer. Nordex aims to restart production of turbines there in 2025.

Worried about contaminated corn

The scattered debris on the farm has become more embedded in the corn as time goes on, leading to questions on how the harvest will unfold to avoid potential contamination and damage to farm equipment.

“It's interspersed within the cornfield, stuck on top of the corn plants in places,” Freeman said.

Freeman said it is hard to tell where the debris stops, due to how tall the corn is, but estimated “at least” 240 acres have been affected because wind has scattered the debris. Although “the bulk” of the debris is on her parents’ farm, some fiberglass and other materials made it onto a neighbor’s property and into a creek, Freeman said.