Tough to mitigate towers' impact on landowners, project manager says

MONTEREY — Can the turbines be moved?

The short answer, according to Highland New Wind Development's project manager, is yes. But it won't make much difference to the neighbors' views.

Highland's Technical Review Committee asked for information from the developer about whether the 19 towers were situated in the best place for both efficiency and to mitigate impacts to neighbors.

HNWD's project manager, Heidi Lestyan of Antares Group Inc., explained the rationale for where towers were sited on Tamarack Ridge.

"Primary factors that determine the 'buildable area' of this section of the HNWD project site include: required setbacks from property boundaries and public roads, the border between Virginia and West Virginia, the slope of the land, and the requested setback from the existing 69 kV transmission line," she said. "Other considerations were the project's intention to use open pasture land rather than forest, and to the extend possible, to use the existing road as the turbine and construction access road."

The wind power production potential is found by plotting those constraints, she explained. "The area of Tamarack Ridge is a narrow clearing, ranging in width from approximately 100 feet in width at its narrowest … to roughly 600 feet in width at the setback boundary near turbine 9t. Given the relative narrowness of the clearing and the ridge's geographic orientation roughly perpendicular to the direction of the prevailing wind, the turbines on this portion of the site are arrayed in a linear fashion, placed no closer than 2.7 times the rotor diameter from adjacent turbines."

Lestyan said that although some of the turbines can be moved back, "the relative impact of this movement to the Goodall view shed would be minimal."

Lestyan included a simulation to show that moving some towers would lower them a little bit, but most of the tops, including all blades, would still spin visibly above the tree line above the Goodall home.

Monday, the TRC accepted the explanation and agreed moving towers would not make much difference.