I am a bit staggered by willful and intentional destruction of a neighbor’s property that several folks in our community have initiated.

When a person signs for industrial wind turbines on their property, they are destroying the value of their neighbor’s home property within the surrounding two-plus miles. Home values drop 20% to 60%-plus for those within those two miles. By now, this is well documented and well known. Signing leases now is an intentional choice to destroy a neighbor’s home value and pure greed. Any research besides that which the wind companies themselves fund and promote will render clear loss of neighboring property values, some to the point of being abandoned.

This leaves homeowners in some situations with no option but to sue the lease-holding landowners to recoup some of the lost value. In many cases, homes right next to a large hog operation are purchased by the hog operation because of the loss of value, but in this case, a large segment of the county’s homes will lose great value. Will the wind companies and signing leaseholders purchase these homes at full market value to rectify the loss of home value? (Although no money replaces a home that a family has had for generations!) Nothing like forced lawsuits of neighbor against neighbor to divide a community.

Keep in mind, lower home sales will eventually mean less money going into local schools and businesses — with a county having millions in school bonds, the county will need county tax money to pay for these bonds. Eventually, everyone else in the county picks up the tab for the decrease property values within the wind farm, and all that follow. It has been observed that communities that bring in wind turbines shortly after experience a decrease in school enrollment of 7% to 17%. That is another thing that will make it difficult to cover the costs of the county’s school bonds.

If you think that, living in small towns or within the larger communities, you will be unaffected by rural industrial wind, think of the taxes you will have to pick up to cover these and so many other costs associated with industrial wind. (And even if you got some of the energy produced from these, which you don’t, your rates would be going up significantly — as in Iowa, with up to 25% rate hikes.)

Industrial wind in this isn’t a “done deal” as the wind companies would like for you to think. The county will lose businesses, customers, friends and a whole lot of money if they come. Keep in mind, whether you approve or not, Mr. Trump is working to remove tax subsidies for industrial wind turbines because of their unreliability and property value destruction. When that money goes away, we would be stuck with unoperational, archaic technology, the county will be responsible for figuring out how to remove it at the taxpayers’ expense, or we can all watch these 500-foot monstrosities sit and rust while these vastly foreign companies that have control over all the contracted land disappear with our federal money!

April Johnson

Crawfordsville, Indiana