Earthtechling- The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission is scheduled to hear testimony and take action today on the developer’s avian and bat protection plan, which outlines the company’s plans to monitor and minimize the impact on area wildlife. The commission has to approve the plan as a condition of the site permit it issued last summer.
It’s unlikely to be the last word on the wind farm’s wildlife impact, though. AWA Goodhue has also agreed to work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) on an “incidental take permit.”
While bald eagles are no longer considered an endangered or threatened species, they are still protected under the 1940 Bald Eagle Protection Act.
The permit would let federal officials add conditions to the project in exchange for legal protection in the event that eagles are killed or disturbed by the wind farm. The Goodhue project would be among the first in the country to apply for such a permit.
What’s in the plan?
In its wildlife protection plan, AWA Goodhue describes several steps it says it will take to reduce the risk its turbines will pose to bats and birds. They include:
- Siting turbines whenever possible in open agricultural fields and away from streams or wooded areas;
- Minimizing lighting on towers and other structures to avoid attracting or confusing birds and bats;
- Providing funding to set up a county roadkill disposal site to keep eagle-attracting carcasses away from turbine areas.
The developer also offered to maintain at least a one-mile buffer between any turbine and the nearest eagle nest — half the distance that federal wildlife officials have recommended. The number and placement of active nests has since been a point of contention, with citizens like Hartman documenting and reporting several previously overlooked sites to wildlife officials, who have confirmed some of them.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) raised a long list of questions and complaints last month about AWA Goodhue’s original protection plan document. The January 12 letter accuses the developer of failing to collect and improperly excluding data from its bat surveys so that the results were “misleading.” It says a DNR employee in December observed an adult eagle sitting in a nest the developer’s study marked as “inactive.” And it criticized AWA Goodhue’s claim that it couldn’t predict the collision risk for bald eagles because of alleged “eagle baiting” by the project’s opponents.