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Crews in Bow Island working on the Whitla Windfarm (Photo by Colton McKee)
Wind Farm Zoning

Cypress County looking for more information before allowing zoning for wind project

Oct 4, 2019 | 1:50 PM

Cypress County, AB – Cypress County Council wants some more information before they make a zoning decision to allow a $250 million wind farm to go through.

Now they will take two weeks to look at both possible environmental impacts and what will happen to the wind turbines if they need to come down.

If approved, the change would affect several properties south of Irvine.

Reeve Dan Hamilton says the developer EDF Renewables has been working directly with the landowners and says from his understanding almost all are on board.

Issues of what happens to the proposed 48 towers in the future was a major concern with abandoned wells on everyone’s mind.

“The county, we’ve made the request to find out what’s going to be the reclamation on everything. There’s a lot of metal and concrete and stuff that’s going to be used for this. So in 25 years who cleans it up?” Hamilton continued “The company right now says they are going to be cleaning it up we just want to know what processes are in place to make sure. Somewhat like the abandoned wells. That took a long time before that was put in place so we’re hoping to see this put in place before a lot of this goes up.”

Cypress County Council will meet again to discuss their findings on October 16th.

If the project is able to go through, it is estimated to be a $90 million construction project.