Construction work begins on wind farm near Tarkio
Project expected to provide power to more than 40,000 homes
Project expected to provide power to more than 40,000 homes
TARKIO, Mo. — Construction has started on a $300 million wind farm with 73 turbines in Atchison County.
Iberdrola Renewables, a Spanish-based company with offices in Portland, Ore., announced late Friday that work has started on Farmers City Wind Project near Tarkio. The entire project spans about 25,000 acres on the properties of more than 50 different landowners. The project will generate 146 megawatts of electrical power when fully operational in 2009.
“This is a community that seems to welcome wind power, and we’re delighted to be there,” said Jan Johnson, communications director for Iberdrola.
This is Iberdrola’s first Missouri project.
The project’s output is expected to provide clean, renewable electricity to more than 40,000 average American homes annually, Ms. Johnson said. However, the actual footprint of the turbines and associated facilities will use less than 2 percent of the total acreage. Landowners can continue using the remaining acreage for agricultural purposes, Ms. Johnson said.
The Atchison County Development Corporation and county officials worked for about 18 months with Iberdrola to make this project a reality.
The combination of favorable wind conditions and the availability of transmission lines were another important factor, said Richard Baldwin, the development corporation’s director. The project was made possible in part by the use of the enhanced enterprise zone that will allow some partial tax abatements.
During construction, Iberdrola will have about 200 employees working on the project with a small staff on site after it becomes operational, he said.
Once the project is up and running, the combined annual payment for all tax entities is estimated to be about $600,000, and that figure will grow each year, said Marlin Logan, Atchison County presiding commissioner.
“I expect to see several more wind farm projects in Atchison County’s future,” Mr. Baldwin said.
Another company already is looking at a project that could be located between Tarkio and Fairfax, Mr. Logan said.
Gamasa, another Spanish firm with offices in Pennsylvania, will construct the wind turbines for this project, Ms. Johnson said.
Marshall White can be reached at marshall@npgco.com.
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Oh, wonderful! Farmers City Wind Project has the physical capacity to act as a counterforce against the copious volumes of hot air blown from the mouth of Sam Graves and his family members in Tarkio and the other Republican blowhards of NW Missouri. Just ask the lone physics major who graduated from Missouri universities last year. Taxpayers, beware! Sam "The Sham" Graves and his RNC trogs in D.C. have probably written legislation so that Graves receives hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars of taxpayers' money in exchange for being one of the 50 landowners providing land for the Spanish wind power project. Viva los dolares! I-yi-yi, arriba arriba!
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