My brother-in-law and I own some farmland together and we were recently approached by an energy company that wants to lease some of the land to build some windmills. Currently, the land is used for farming (we rent out the land to a farmer, we don’t farm it ourselves). The farmer grows corn and beans, no cattle or anything.
Has anyone here been involved with this kind of project? What’s the going rate for the lease? What is the typical term of the lease? Do I need to add some extra liability insurance, in case of windmill accidents, or would that be covered by the energy company? Only part of the farm would be used for windmills – would they be very disruptive for the rest of the farm?
We just got the letter yesterday and my B.I.L. is planning on contacting the company today, so I don’t know yet how much land they want or what lease term they would propose.
There are a lot of those around here (north central Iowa). I’ve heard (can’t confirm) that the lease rate here is $4,000 per year per windmill. I’ll ask around and see if anyone can confirm that.
They will all require an access, so if the farmer will lose field space to the roads you’ll have to consider that. Also they will destroy anything planted around the construction area which would also be of concern for the person renting the land and you as compensation would be required.
When an oil company wanted to plant an well on my grandfather’s land they came in and made a mess for a little while. Once the well was in and pumping, the oil company regraded and replanted that area of the pasture back to it’s original state. Besides the little dirt path and new gate in the fence, you couldn’t even tell they’d been there. Just make sure that the contract holds them to whatever reclaimation or remediation you feel you need. After that, I don’t see any downside.
There will be ongoing noise and visual impacts once they’re in place. As noted, there will also be periodic maintenance, so there will need to be roads and occassional traffic. There will also be limited impacts on birds and bats. There will also be some transmission lines needed, so keep that in mind.
Also, there will be significant short-term impacts on the project area (lots of earthmoving, traffic, noise, etc), but this should be largely remediated once construction is complete.
As long as you can live with these impacts and you feel the compensation is fair, I think wind farms are excellent neighbours.
A base starting price would be to calculate the acreage taken up by the actual towers (including space around it where your tractor can’t get to plow, seed, etc.) and any access roads they need, and any space for electrical wire pylons to and from the towers, and then to figure the going rate for leasing that amount of acres.
This is only the base acreage – it does not take into account the visual & auditory impact they would have on your enjoyment of your land – that’s worth something.
There are lawyers who specialise in exactly this process Fer crying out loud go and talk to one before you even think about entering into a contract. If you don’t know of any then your regular lawyer should be able to refer you. Is she can’t then a the very least she can handle the obvious questions regarding liability.
Lawyers, we may not like them, but they do exist for a reason.
Funny, I’ve never even seen the land. My brother-in-law did all the work tracking down land, checking it out, having it inspected. We just provided half the money to buy the land.
That said, I’m pretty sure it’s a farm in the middle of lots of farmland, so I’m not really worried about bringing down the neighborhood or anything.
Oh, no doubt, we’ll definitely have all this reviewed by our lawyer or a specialist. I was hoping someone had been through this before on this board and could offer some experience.
Ther was a TV item about the people on an island near Kingston/Trenton(?) in Lake Ontario who are protesting the fact that their island is becoming saturated with these things.
Allegedly they are harmless, but latest government standards there say they should be at least 1000 feet from the nearest house. The deep noise the blades make can be disruptive?
Just be sure the location is far from your house - and your neighbours’, for good community relations.
Here in Wyoming minimum distance from windmill to the nearest residence was a quarter-mile, because of the noise. That was recently changed to half a mile.