Freeborn County took another step toward building a 200-megawatt wind farm Tuesday morning.

The Freeborn County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a conditional-use permit allowing Wisconsin Power & Light to move forward on building a transmission line that will carry the power generated from the 200-megawatt Bent Tree Wind Farm.

After the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission approved the project Oct. 1, the transmission line was one of the last permitting steps in the wind farm project.

“I’ve always said, in my simple mind, that you need three things to have a wind farm: land, you need wind and you need transmission capacity. This, if you will, gives that transmission capacity,” said Freeborn County Administrator John Kluever.

It shows the cooperation of various private companies and government organizations to get to this point.

The original transmission line was about 18 miles long and stretched from near Manchester to the Hayward substation. The line will now only be four miles long, and will connect to an existing line.

Kluever said completing the use permit and cutting 14 miles off the original line length are successes.

“This has more moving parts than anybody can imagine in terms of government agencies, private companies that all needed to come together to get this done. That doesn’t always happen,” Kluever said.

Freeborn County Planning and Zoning Director Wayne Sorensen said the four-mile route started as an unlikely scenario.

This marked the final county approval needed for the Bent Tree project, Sorensen said. He said he’ll finish the building permits for the turbines in the next few days.

During the planning, the public and the planning commission noticed the existing line owned by ITC Midwest went to the same location. However, Sorensen said ITC was not legally obligated to comply.

The Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator, a regional nonprofit group that oversees the availability of energy, also had to oversee the planning.

This, along with a great deal of concern in the community, caused what Sorensen described as the perfect storm of obstacles and one of the more difficult permits he has worked on.

Rather than going through a bonding company, Sorensen said the performance bond of $30,000 will be handled between the county and Madison, Wis.-based WP&L, a subsidiary of Alliant Energy. That will go to fixing roads or tiles if they’re damaged during construction.

Sorensen also said a four-mile line, as opposed to 18, will save Alliant money during construction.

The commissioners also changed the setback distance for the 160-kilovolt line from 150 feet to 100 feet from any occupied structure. Two houses wouldn’t have made the 150-foot requirement.

Both homes now meet the requirement. Sorensen said research showed any effects from the electro-magnetic field from the line wouldn’t reach past 60 feet. He also said the effects of the line are comparable to what’s given off by a microwave or hair dryer.

The transmission line will run from a collector station north of Manchester on 270th St. to Highway 13, where it will run south to 263rd St. It will then run east to meet up with 725th Ave or County Road 73 where it will then run south for more than a mile before it moves east about a half mile through a field to a substation.