Home Jobs Employment Media Contacts Tours Video Gallery Photo Gallery Event Registration Calendar Generation Portfolio Buy power for resale
Energy Insider on Wind farm reclamation
“You reclaim the area so it looks as nice as it can be,” Basin Electric Power Cooperative spokesman Daryl Hill says. “You don't want to disturb any more land than you absolutely have to because this is good productive land.”
Basin Electric Power Cooperative - June 11, 2010
Originally broadcast by KFYR TV
Reported by Jacob Kaucher
Watch the video at this link: Energy Insider: Wind farm reclamation
Friday's rain means workers are home instead of working to get rid of the piles of dirt at the PrairieWinds wind farm. But all summer long, 35 people will be working extended shifts to get the land back to normal. Back to the way it was before the 82 wind towers went up.
“You reclaim the area so it looks as nice as it can be,” Basin Electric Power Cooperative spokesman Daryl Hill says. “You don't want to disturb any more land than you absolutely have to because this is good productive land.”
The dirt piles were created because access roads and crane walks needed to be created to get the towers into place. More land was dug up to lay wires underground to transport the electricity the turbines produce. The trick now is to get it all back and ready to be farmed. All that will remain in the end are access roads to each tower.
“The land is graded so that it can be seeded right up to the edge of the road. And the farmer can work right through that or right over that,” Hill says.
When it's all done the land around each turbine will look like normal fields. A farmer has already planted crops on this plot of land near the north end of the wind farm, where reclamation is finished.
“The proof is in the pudding. You can see that this stuff is right back to where it was, except for the road,” Hill says.
And if all goes according to plan, all fields near the wind farm will look similar - planted with crops - by this time next year.
Headquarters
1717 East Interstate Avenue
Bismarck, ND 58503-0564 USA
Phone: 701.223.0441
