A massive wind farm in the Lomond area of Vulcan County is now before the Alberta Utilities Commission.

Reeve Jason Schneider says a German company wants to put up 83 wind turbines, each about the size of the Calgary Tower.

"The towers are going to be staggered over about 24,000 acres of land so it's quite a large area that they'll be in but each tower itself will take up about three acres of land by the time the access road and everything goes into them," he says.

He says there has been some opposition expressed from area residents.

"The change to the prairie landscape, there'll definitely be a change there and I think that's one of the concerns that has been raised is it's not going to look like a flat prairie anymore with 83 towers that are roughly the size of the Calgary Tower sticking out," Schneider says. "There's definitely concerns, anytime you're building a project of this scale in an area like that there are concerns and I'd say a lot more questions. I'd say questions about how things work, what happens if this happens, we've fielded a lot of questions and ultimately the AUC is the one that will take a look at all of the concerns that are submitted and then they can make changes to the project or ultimately deny the project if the concerns, they feel, are valid and can't be mitigated through other measures."

Once the commission makes a decision, expected this summer, it'll come back to the county council.

"Their time frame is about summer before they'll make a decision whether they'll approve this project, deny this project or make them make some changes, at that point it comes to the county for the local approvals which address things like access roads and haul routes and vegetation control and fire mitigation plans and things of that nature," he says. "At this point we get updated by the project owners but as far as Vulcan County's approval, there really hasn't been any."

Schneider says the wind turbines near Carmangay area are about 1.8 Mega Watts apiece, the ones being proposed near Lomond are 6 Mega Watts each.


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