GLENDIVE — In a packed hearing moved to a Dawson County courtroom last month, Lindsay rancher Scott Eaton approached the podium to argue that a proposed wind farm will lead to serious changes that people are already seeing elsewhere. It was part of a months-long series in Dawson County as as the government gradually inches closer to determining what the future of wind development could look like in the county.
“People are starting to wake up and realize it’s a problem,” Eaton concluded his speech with.
For the first time in the public hearing on proposed zoning meant to restrict wind farms, applause came from the audience. Previous testimony from those who had advocated for the wind farm had been met with silence.
Montana has seen challenges to wind energy before, but nothing like what’s in Dawson County or its surroundings currently. Two different zoning proposals, previously anathema to the Republican eastern Montana counties, have been proposed to commissioners, including one led by nonparticipating landowners looking to place height limits on structures of 199 feet, with aggressive two-mile setbacks for nonparticipating landowners.
And while Montana’s wind energy potential ranks second in the nation, development might be stalled by landowner resistance.
Both proposals could put an end or severely restrict the proposed $1.8 billion energy project that’s been in the works for several years because the proposed wind turbines will be around 575 feet tall including the blades, according to the developer. It’s a fact that stands true even as much of wind development’s opponents dive into misinformation. Wind energy ends up being visible, standing out in the farm lands of eastern Montana.
Prairie and McCone counties’ landowners, which are also sited for NextEra Energy’s 770 megawatt Glendive Wind, have in recent months also put forth their own resident-led zoning in hopes to stymie wind development, though none are as far along as Dawson County’s.
County commissioners have been relatively hands-off in restricting wind development in those counties thus far, with Dawson County Commissioner Dennis Zander previously stating the commission was not interested in zoning in April, citing private property rights. Nonetheless, Dawson County will make a resolution of intent on whether to adopt the first of the resident-led zoning proposals, this week.
NextEra, who owns one of the largest gas fleets in the U.S., has offered concessions in their wind project to counties through development agreements. That includes a one-mile setback for nonparticipating landowners and the lights on the turbines to only be turned on as planes fly by. Whether that will be enough remains to be seen.
Lead developer Ross Feehan told the Gazette previously that some of the floated options for zoning could easily be a “project killer” and questioned what zoning will do for communities in the long-term. He said he wants to continue to work with the communities and not in isolation as a developer.
“We hear significantly from landowners who are part of our project, who have voluntarily participated and signed up for our project,” Feehan said.
He submitted 30 letters of support to the commissioners at the public hearing.
“They see the economic opportunity that comes with it, and now see some of what has been proposed, and are very concerned, very concerned that that economic opportunity would be stripped away from them,” he continued. “And to be clear, that’s a long-term generational opportunity. It’s an opportunity to keep the family farm in the family’s name, to save for retirement, to put money toward education or health care.”
The setbacks are some of the most generous offered for a wind project in the nation. For comparison, oil and gas wells can be just 330 feet from a property line in Montana. Alan Anderson, a renewable energy attorney with NextEra and professor at the University of Kansas school of law, cautioned against zoning.
“When we do zoning, we have to recognize that zoning inherently takes away people’s property rights to some extent,” Anderson said. “So, we have to be careful with that. It’s important that a county does that based on good engineering and science. Otherwise, what they’re doing is taking away people’s property rights without good reason for doing so.”
From state to county
Trying to regulate and potentially force out wind development has been mainly seen in bills at the state Legislature, rather than the county level.
Just this past session several bills looked to heavily restrict wind development by setbacks, bonding requirements, additional taxation, zoning law and height restrictions. Nearly all bills failed, rarely making it out of committee in the Republican-majority Legislature. Three of the failed bills were sponsored by Republican State Sen. Bob Phalen from Glendive. Supporting the Dawson County zoning, he told commissioners at the September public hearing Montana’s government couldn’t be relied on for not messing with the county allocations with the project.
One of the wind energy bills that passed placed setbacks on wind development and was relatively in-line with industry standards — stating if a wind turbine meets a certain height it has to be 1,500 feet away from an occupied residence. It got nearly unanimous support in the Legislature.
“My idea for sponsoring the bill was let’s try to have something on the books that is actually workable for the industry and is reasonable, so then every two years we don’t have people trying to legislate wind energy out of existence,” Republican Rep. Katie Zolkinov of Billings told the Gazette. “And that’s not very predictable for the industry.”
Zolkinov, a described “energy agnostic,” said a common talking point when hostile wind bills are introduced is that there are no state regulations on wind energy. She hoped the bill would address that, while also still welcoming industry in Montana, though she realizes people on both sides of the aisle likely thought it was either too much or not enough.
Already Wibaux County east of Dawson County has implemented a countywide zoning policy to regulate a proposed wind farm. The 53rd smallest of Montana’s 56 counties, the zoning policy is a rare exception where not even the state’s largest counties have countywide zoning, including Yellowstone, Missoula and Gallatin. Wibaux County commissioner Darin Miske was quoted in the Montana Free Press saying wind turbines are invasive and devalue land, though a recent study found property values stay the same after development finishes.
As of September, developers were still in talks with Wibaux County about a road-use agreement for the wind project. Still, the project seems to have yet begun its planned 2025 construction date. AES, the developer, declined to update the Gazette on the status of the project. Wibaux County commissioners did not return a Gazette inquiry.
Zolkinov, who previously worked on bills on reforming city zoning to boost Montana housing development, said counties face more of a philosophical question currently.
“It just comes down to how much do people believe in property rights?” Zolkinov said. “Because if I’m a landowner, and I’m following the laws and the regulations, it’s my right to put something up.”
Clearwater
It wasn’t long ago when the commissioners of Prairie and Dawson likely saw NextEra’s other project, the Clearwater Wind Energy Center, be fully built in neighboring Custer, Rosebud and Garfield counties after a decade-long effort by multiple companies. It’s the largest wind farm in Montana after years of development of smaller wind farms in Montana.
Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte cut the ribbon on the project in September last year.
“We’re ramping up energy production in Montana with our all-of-the-above approach, including wind, oil and gas, solar, and hydropower,” Gov. Gianforte said in a press release about the ribbon cutting.
Gianforte has stuck to the “all-of-the-above” language with his new energy task force, even as some Trump appointees have begun referring to their energy policy as “best-of-the-above,” referring to only fossil fuels.
“We’ll continue to welcome investment in Montana to make energy more affordable and reliable across the region,” Gianforte said.
The Custer County government was approached by project developers in 2018, back when the wind farm was planned by Orion Renewables. Jason Strouf, a Custer County commissioner for 10 years, said while they encountered some landowners who didn’t want any related traffic from the wind development, the commissioners never saw a large group form in opposition like there’s been with Glendive Wind. He described what he saw at the time was mostly individuals expressing their own opinions about the project.
“These property owners that agreed to participate in the program were exercising their personal property rights just as those that had different opinions were expressing their own opinions based on their property rights also,” Strouf said. “Nobody stood up to try to inhibit or prevent the project from developing.”
Commissioner Strouf said they had to collaborate with wind farm developers to teach them unspoken traffic rules, but outside of those concerns expressed by the community, that was the most he saw in continuing conflicts as the wind farm developed.
The largest project Custer County had seen in decades, Strouf said Clearwaterhas offered continuing tax relief to residents. Additionally, the county is just about to receive its final allocation of $6.2 million in impact fees from the development, with that going to a nearly finished senior center in Miles City.
“We’ve got close to a 20% population of seniors, so they’re going to be the immediate beneficiaries,” Strouf said. “But everybody that ages into that category is going to benefit too.”
The development of Clearwater was before a new bill was signed that will go into effect next year offering immediate property tax relief to residents.
“If the wind farm doesn’t develop, then those taxpayers don’t have an opportunity to see that benefit in regards to their tax responsibility,” Strouf said.
New resistance
Ric Holden, a rancher and consistent opponent of wind energy who attends nearly every meeting regarding wind energy in Dawson County, said in the past he was an advocate for wind energy. Then, he found out about the Glendive Wind Project last October. Another resident told him they were going to put a wind turbine right in front of his house.
“Then a group of us started making calls to landowners out in the hills, started getting concerned, and we started calling our neighbors and asking them, ‘Are you signed up for this?'” Holden, a former candidate for the Eastern Montana House seat, told the Gazette following the September public hearing.
“Are you supporting us? Do you want this around your property? Because it’s a violation of our property rights,” he said.
To resolve that property right violation, Holden helped gather the signatures of nonparticipating landowners for the citizen-led zoning proposal. He’s since taken ads out in Glendive’s paper displaying the height of the proposed turbines, spoke out on conservative talk radio misstating recently that Glendive wind was zoned against in Prairie County, and expressed concern about another proposed wind project considered for Dawson County by Heelstone Renewable Energy.
Holden points to a hillside visible in the evening light from a Glendive parking lot.
“Instead of you looking at that sunset right there, you’d be looking at this,” pointing to his poster board showing a wind turbine and comparing structure heights. “And right now it would be red flashing lights. That whole hillside is gonna be red flashing lights.”
NextEra is planning to turn off their red lights at night, while Heelstone Renewable Energy has yet to fully determine siting.
In 2020, as the Clearwater project was still being discussed in Custer County, roughly 75% of Republicans supported wind energy development, according to a Pew Research Center study. That support has dropped to 48% in June this year amid a more antagonistic environment to renewables spurred in large part by President Donald Trump, who has made claims that turbines cause cancer on-shore and kill whales off-shore. Trump himself was previously supportive of wind energy seemingly until the sight of an off-shore wind turbine near his Scottish golf course in 2011.
Despite claims of a national energy crisis, in August, the federal government killed a wind project getting off the ground in Idaho and another nearly complete off-shore wind farm on the east coast. In September, Laramie County commissioners in Wyoming, one of the nation’s most dominant states for oil, gas and coal production, voted 3 to 1 to shut down a proposed wind energy project, with one commissioner stating she didn’t want to sacrifice natural Wyoming beauty with the project.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has announced hundreds of millions for investment in coal and has opened up federal land in states like Wyoming and Montana in a second attempt to resuscitate declining coal interest. This follows an earlier-than-planned sunset of tax credits for wind development to July 4, 2026, pushed ahead by several years.
Ken Toole, a Montana public service commissioner from 2007 to 2011, told the Gazette that wind energy has become politicized over time to the point where it’s become detached from current economic and environmental needs. Some of Montana’s oldest wind farms were built as far back as 2006.
Toole said that at some point wind energy became another part of the larger culture wars surrounding climate change and environmental groups’ initial support of wind energy before it was co-opted by larger utilities as economically viable. Climate change wasn’t mentioned a single time by wind energy’s proponents or opponents during the September public hearing.
“We’re in the political era where all kinds of political norms are disappearing and being challenged and being ignored,” Toole said. “And so the traditional view of Republicans as being for property rights and fiscally conservative and let business have as much reign as possible are all out the window.”
Toole said agricultural communities resisting wind are fighting another income source for farmers and ranchers who are already stressed because of existing economic factors. The zoning could give the appearance of a state largely hostile to development.
Executive director of the Miles City Chamber of Commerce John Laney is largely ambivalent about wind energy, but has been a steadfast supporter of Glendive Wind even as the resident-led zoning proceeds.
“I think in Eastern Montana, especially when we can get a boost to our economy, we have to take a look at how the end justify the means, and I look at this as a positive,” Laney told the Gazette. “We have been afforded things that we normally wouldn’t have gotten had it not been for ClearWater. I want to project to the people in Dawson and Prairie county that, maybe it’s not 100% what you want, but the things that come along with it might make it more amenable to you.”
He said neither of the proposed Dawson County zonings fully serve their purpose. NextEra recently submitted a letter to the Dawson County Commissioners from a telecommunications company that said the height restrictions could impede development of cell towers.
“This is a very interesting thing for the people of Dawson County, because they’re going to be the front runners.” Laney said. “Whatever they choose to do is probably going to become a best-case scenario. And then it becomes practice. Dawson County does it this way, then others think we should do it that way.”
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