Max Thompson, a land agent with JCG Land Services, works at his desk in Apex Clean Energy’s Winding Stair Wind office in downtown Dysart on March 2. Since last fall, Thompson and his colleagues have been reaching out to area landowners in Tama County regarding Apex’s new wind energy project. –Photo by Ruby F. Bodeker

More wind turbines are in the works for Tama County.

If all goes to plan, those who live and own land in the rural spaces of Tama County’s northeastern quadrant from roughly Buckingham in the north to the outskirts of Elberon in the south can expect to get to know land agent Max Thompson as he works with Apex Clean Energy on the new Winding Stair Wind energy project.

Thompson, a land agent with the company JCG Land Services out of Nevada and contracted by Apex, recently opened a development office for the newly formed private company Winding Stair Project at 306 Main Street in downtown Dysart

“We started reaching out to landowners last fall and we’ll continue doing that this year,” Thompson said.

With the help of his colleagues JCG land agents Jimmy Buckingham and Tobby Craig, Thompson will be handling all of the landowner interactions in Tama County for Apex by presenting the project as well as explaining the lease terms and payment plans.

Winding Stair Wind logo.

Winding Stair Wind – which uses a graphic of Traer’s iconic winding stairs as part of its branding – is a project of Apex Clean Energy based in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Apex operates utility-scale wind and solar facilities across North America.

According to a project profile fact sheet distributed by Apex for Tama County, the project is expected to generate up to 210 megawatts of energy from approximately 50 to 70 turbines which equates to “enough power for over 76,000 U.S. homes.”

Landowners with wind facilities on their property will receive annual lease payments, according to the project sheet, that will continue for the lifespan of the wind farm.

Drew Christiansen, a public engagement manager with Apex and a former member of the Minnesota state legislature, told the Telegraph via a text message exchange that Tama County was chosen for the project due to its “suitable topography, strong wind resource, and the availability of transmission lines to transport the energy.”

While only in the early stages of outreach in the county, Christiansen said an “informal gathering of landowners to talk more about the idea of wind and what it would mean for [the landowners], their families, and the community at large” is set to take place on Tuesday, March 22 at the Traer Memorial Building beginning at 6 p.m.

A second informal landowner meeting is also being planned for sometime in April in Dysart with larger community events also in the works.

According to a Winding Stair Project wind energy lease term sheet obtained by the Telegraph, the development term for the proposed project could last up to seven years while the term of the operation is planned to run for 30 years.

Payments under the lease agreement can be made for development, operations, meteorological equipment, transmission and access easement, installation, laydown yards, as well as substations, switchyards, and battery storage facilities.

Tama County wind energy permitting process

Any proposed wind energy installation project in Tama County must receive a conditional use permit from the county’s board of adjustment to allow wind energy conversion systems which include wind turbines.

According to Todd Apfel, zoning director for Tama County, landowners with property within 1,000 feet of any proposed wind turbine would be notified ahead of any board of adjustment meeting requested by Apex for a permit, something that Apfel said has not happened yet.

The Salt Creek Wind Farm project – which appears to have no discernable connection to the Winding Stair Wind project – cleared the Tama County permitting process at a board of adjustment meeting on December 9, 2020, by a vote of 4-0.

At that December 9, 2020 meeting, the board approved 60 conditional use permits for Salt Creek Wind within a 25,000 acre footprint.

According to previous reporting by the Tama-Toledo News Chronicle, once Salt Creek Wind had recruited enough landowners for the wind farm’s footprint to take shape, the company applied the setback and regulation guidelines laid out in Tama County’s Wind Energy Conversion System Ordinance to narrow down where the turbines could be placed. The ordinance dates back to 1998.

While the current Winding Stair Wind project is only in the initial stages of exploration, Apex has been laying the groundwork for what it hopes will be another successful wind energy project in Tama County – meeting with not only landowners but also local community groups and stakeholders such as the Dysart Development Corporation.

As for the landowners meeting set for March 22, Christiansen said there is no set agenda.

“It’s really just an opportunity to break bread with landowners in our boundaries’ area of interest and talk through the opportunity,” Christiansen said.

In addition to the project in Tama County, Apex is currently developing two similar utility-scale wind projects in the Upper Midwest, Thompson said, including Big Bend Wind in southwest Minnesota and Great Pathfinder Wind in Boone and Hamilton counties in central Iowa.

Should the Winding Stairs Wind project come to fruition, it would make the third wind farm in Tama County. The Vienna Wind Farm near Gladbrook was built in 2012 and features 20 turbines within Tama County and several more in Marshall County. Salt Creek Wind meanwhile is expected to begin construction on their wind farm in the central portion of the county later this year. Between 40-60 turbines are planned for Salt Creek Wind depending on the size of the turbine that is decided.

The total collection of turbines in Tama County would still be far less than the more than 200 turbines present in Poweshiek County, even if both the Salt Creek Wind and Winding Stairs Wind projects install their maximum projected numbers.