County to weigh wind rules, seeks public input

Interested residents can help shape the final version of McKean County’s wind energy ordinance at a public hearing to be held at 6 p.m. Thursday in the Grange Building on the Smethport fairgrounds.

Hundreds of homeowners, landowners, seasonal residents and more have loudly voiced their opposition to Swift Current Energy’s proposed installation of 60 to 100 windmills, each 500 to 650 feet tall, in Keating, Norwich and Liberty townships.

Now, 18 months after the project was first disclosed, with at least one meteorological (met) tower application pending in Norwich Township and 1,471 signatures on the change.org/blackcherry petition to stop Swift’s Black Cherry Wind project, McKean County commissioners have gotten involved.

At their regular meeting Sept. 9, Route 6 resident Christina Deyarmin asked commissioners, “What is the county planning for the solar and wind farms they’re putting in McKean County, disrupting our wilds?”

Commissioner Marty Wilder stated then that the county had been working on ordinances for any wind or solar arrays proposed here, and that the proposed wind ordinance was complete and ready to be advertised for public review.

The proposal includes protections such as clear drinking water safeguards for wells and springs; requires independent studies; baseline well testing; noise and shadow flicker protections; strict setbacks from homes, wetlands and public lands; and even mandates fire suppression and ice-throw systems.

A legal notice in this newspaper alerted county residents that the draft measure was available for public inspection and would be further discussed at the Oct. 9 meeting.

“This is not a final document,” Wilder stressed, stating the meeting was scheduled for commissioners to “receive input from county residents and others interested in the wind turbine proposal. We invite anyone interested in this matter to read the document” — available on the county’s website and at the McKean County Courthouse in Smethport — “and provide input at our public meeting.

“We … may want to change the ordinance based on that input,” Wilder said.

A consistent framework

Counties can adopt an overall ordinance to back up provisions already adopted in its constituent townships, or to provide a unified framework for areas with limited or inconsistent regulations.

The jurisdictions reportedly in focus for the Massachusetts developer’s Black Cherry Wind project — Keating, Norwich and Liberty — moved quickly in fall 2024 to adopt protective ordinances that regulate the construction, operation and decommissioning of wind energy facilities.

As Swift Current representatives pushed back, calling these measures “de facto exclusionary” and threatening to “break” local ordinances, concerned residents Steve Simcox and Brian Bischoff got heavily involved.

Swift representative Joey Shannon has said, “The (Swift) team has continued to express concerns about ordinances of this nature as they relate to the requirements of the PA Municipalities Planning Code (MPC) and private property rights. We have continued to highlight the long-established Pennsylvania land use principle that a municipality is not permitted to totally exclude a legitimate land use from its boundaries.”

Meanwhile, Simcox and Bischoff have spent thousands of hours researching ordinances and actions taken by other municipalities and grassroots groups, such as Save Our Allegheny Ridgelines (SOAR), that have successfully resisted wind energy projects in their backyards.

Simcox and Bischoff said they have formulated model ordinances designed to withstand legal challenges from developers unconcerned with residents’ feelings about their proposed projects.

Key among these provisions is a “severability clause,” which prevents an entire ordinance from being thrown out because of a problem with just one aspect of it.

Laura Jackson, president of SOAR, a nonprofit committed to preserving Pennsylvania’s natural landscapes that has stopped several wind projects in the commonwealth, said, “I have to say (Brian and Steve’s) ordinance is the strongest one for Pennsylvania that I’ve ever read, so I’m really impressed with what you guys did.”

Simcox said, “We want to give special thanks to the solicitor (Anthony Clarke) and the commissioners for allowing Brian and I to be involved in crafting this ordinance. It was encouraging to see leaders not only listen to concerned residents, but also act on serious concerns that could put people and resources at risk.”

‘So many loopholes’ 

Bischoff explained the pair’s process, starting with some basic education from SOAR and comparisons to a so-far-successful measure implemented in North Collins, N.Y.

“Laura actually educated us that a lot of people recycle what’s out there already,” Bischoff said. “And what’s out there already isn’t strong.

“There were so many gaps, so many loopholes that these companies can exploit. Steve and I said, ‘We’re just going to have to start from scratch and develop our own.’”

They dove into their thousands of hours of research into people’s concerns with, or the side effects of, these projects — such as shadow flicker, noise, property values and ecological impact — “then just addressing them just, step by step, one by one. Taking them one at a time.

“The big thing we kept going back to was the Pennsylvania Constitution, Article 1, Section 27,” Bischoff recalled, “where it says we have the “right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania’s public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.”

While not the exact same ordinance that Simcox and Bischoff researched, the county’s proposal incorporates much of their work and insight.

As for the county’s solar ordinance, Wilder said, “We’re working on it,” adding that “there are other things on the horizon — battery plants, geothermal — tons of things on the horizon that we need to, and are in the process of, considering.

“The wind ordinance took quite a while to put together and know what we wanted to do. We’ll be doing something very similar for solar,” Wilder said.

When the county ultimately adopts its finalized solar ordinance, it will not affect the Clermont Solar Farm, which comprises 681 acres in Sergeant Township. A project of Energix Renewables, the American subsidiary of a publicly traded Israeli company, the installation would be “grandfathered in,” or allowed to proceed under the ordinances in effect at the time the project was approved.