Fort Indiantown Gap has won a five-year battle against a proposed wind turbine project in Hegins, Schuylkill County.
Philadelphia-based project developer Doral Renewables LLC was collaborating with Schuylkill County-based Rausch Creek Land L.P., which owns the land, to construct an 88-turbine, 175-megawatt wind farm at the location, which is about 15 miles from the military installation.
However, the 8,000 to 12,000 acres needed for the project were in proximity to where military personnel conduct helicopter training exercises.
That led Fort Indiantown Gap officials to oppose the wind turbine proposal, stating it would severely hamper the installation’s ability to conduct flight training and risk the safety of their personnel, and could potentially lead to the federal government closing the base and moving training operations elsewhere.
Nick Cohen, president and CEO of Philadelphia-based Doral Renewables, told LebTown in June 2022 that installation of the proposed $300-million project would not negatively impact the Gap’s ability to train service personnel since the wind turbines would be located 15 miles from the Gap’s base on coal-rich land known as Anthracite Ridge in Schuylkill County.
“We hired military experts who are very familiar, intimately familiar, with the operations at Fort Indiantown Gap and also with the clearinghouse rules,” said Cohen at the time.
Read More: Gap continues to lobby behind the scenes against proposed windmill project
During an interview this week, Col. Timothy Zerbe, a Pennsylvania National Guard aviation officer, said military research showed that the turbines would have “wiped out” about 44 percent of the military’s ability to conduct low-altitude training for its helicopter pilots.
Revisiting what transpired during the past two years, Zerbe said a lot was happening simultaneously with the project proposal as Doral Renewables looked to advance it.
He said Doral Renewables filed a wind energy siting ordinance permit with Hegins Township officials to be in compliance with the Schuylkill County municipality’s code.
“That process happened in that time (mid-2022) that you are talking about,” said Zerbe. “The township opposed their filing, saying, ‘We’re not okay with this,’ essentially. So they (Doral) started an appeal process.”
While that was happening, Zerbe said FTIG personnel were educating federal officials, including higher-ups at the Department of Defense and that agency’s siting clearinghouse, about their concerns if this project was approved.
The DOD’s clearinghouse exists to provide a timely, transparent, and repeatable process to evaluate potential impacts and mitigation options related to alternative energy production.
“They said, ‘Where are you at? What are your concerns?’” Zerbe said of their education efforts, including discussions FTIG officials had with the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installation Energy and Environment. “She said, ‘I see what you have going on here. It seems pretty ominous. We need to think about it.’ So they took that information back and started processing it with various entities within the Pentagon, so the Department of Army, specifically.”
During that same time, Zerbe said officials with the Gap’s Army Compatible Use Buffer (ACUB) program began discussions with the landowner about purchasing the land via a conservation easement.
ACUB is a conservation-based program like the commonwealth’s farmland preservation initiative that preserves land in perpetuity. One difference is that properties eligible for ACUB must reside within a buffer zone in proximity to military installations.
For FTIG, that zone runs roughly away from the installation and follows the Swatara Creek as it flows to Ono, which is where the buffer zone ends, according to one Gap official.
The state department of military affairs’ website says the ACUB program is “designed to minimize development that is incompatible with military training activities by utilizing permanent conservation easements, fee-sales, or other interests in land from willing landowners. In the case of conservation easements or similar agreements, the landowner retains ownership and rights to use the land for the purposes specified in the agreement.”
“We leveraged a program called ACUB, so we met with the landowner, and ACUB is a mutually beneficial, mutually agreed upon agreement where we look to conserve lands and the landowner retains those land rights,” said Zerbe. “They still own the land and we just create what we call an easement.”
Zerbe said negotiations with the landowner were conducted over the past two years, and that process prevented military officials from speaking officially about the turbine project until now.
LebTown enquired this week about financial compensation to the landowner for selling their development rights and was told that while an agreement has been signed by the respective parties, the payment amount is still undetermined. LebTown also asked if payment is based on a set dollar amount like the farmland preservation program, which in Lebanon County is $2,500 per acre.
Mason Hepner, an environmental specialist with the DMVA’s Bureau of Environmental Management, said that the price per acre in this program is based on third-party appraisals.
Daryl Valley, environmental manager with the Bureau of Environmental Management, said the program is a DOD initiative that was created in 2004 by the federal government and approved to be administered at FTIG beginning in January 2013.
“Each military service has their own land conservation program and ACUB is the army’s version of that land conservation program,” said Valley. “By extension, the Army National Guard is able to request creation of an ACUB program and then work under that program.
“With this program, we’re required to offer the landowner compensation based on fair market value as determined by a licensed appraiser, a third-party appraiser.”
He added compensation for each project is determined by acreage, its current use, and potential future use of the property.
It was stated there were partner organizations, including the Ward Burton Wildlife Foundation, that made the ACUB possible, meaning there were multiple funding sources.
Zerbe said ACUB was created to help avoid two words the military has mostly removed from its vernacular: eminent domain. He said ACUB works because it is an initiative that requires landowner cooperation.
“We don’t do that anymore. It is very rare for the military, as an arm, to go after eminent domain, where they take land, away essentially, right?” said Zerbe. “That’s not what we’re about with private citizens. This is a vehicle with a purpose behind it. It has to have a conservation use, a compatible use. … There has to be a nexus of a premise of conservation or an impact that’s meaningful to (military) training.”
Zerbe noted that an official decision was never rendered by the DOD in this matter since an ACUB agreement occurred first.
“It was just by happenstance, if you will, that we were working an official (DOD) decision and then we repped ACUB and we may be able to work with the landowner for mutual interest to get to an agreement,” said Zerbe. “And by virtue, ACUB overtook her decision by a sense of there’s no decision that needs to be made.”
The decision by the landowner, as Zerbe recounted, to preserve the land and the Gap’s ability to conduct training exercises led Doral Renewables to “retract their filing to erect wind turbines in that area.”
Concerning a specific timeline of events for this project over the past two years, Zerbe said it is hard to pinpoint when negotiations started and when they concluded given the delicate nature of those ongoing talks.
Throughout this process, Gap officials were in talks with Doral Renewables, who was willing as noted in LebTown’s 2022 article to reduce the number of wind turbines by half.
Zerbe said that despite a proposed reduction by Doral Renewables in the number of turbines, the project was still problematic.
“The problem was that where the density of the wind turbines were, so where he was cutting them off, I call that the spur. There was a spur to the south and a spur to the west. The turn radius … you have an obstacle that is say 500 feet high, I need to have at a certain speed enough time to be able to turn safely,” said Zerbe.
Zerbe noted that fewer turbines would still have reduced available air space by 25 to 33 percent, meaning officials would have had to find other locations for about 700 of the 900 sortie missions that are currently conducted annually at the Gap.
Zerbe noted the disagreement led to contentious debate with Doral Renewables representatives, who relied on the testimony by plane pilot experts who are not trained in the intricacies of helicopter aircraft movements.
“We brought the assistant secretary of the army up here to physically see the land that we were talking about and actually fly it with her so she could see it herself,” said Zerbe. “At some point, you have to put a price tag on the safety of your pilots and your crew members.”
Doral Renewables officials countered that windmills can be part of a battle area, but Zerbe said his retort was that the army would likely destroy those obstacles first so that they could maneuver safely in that zone.
Despite their disagreements, he added that the military worked with Doral Renewables to find a workable solution.
“While these two years that we were in waiting, we actually were in mitigation negotiations with the developer,” said Zerbe. “We looked at many, many ways to try and mitigate, to get compatible use with a wind turbine in that area. You just can’t ignore a 500-foot wind turbine that is sticking out in the air and an aircraft flying (near there).”
Zerbe said the Gap even offered Doral Renewables during those negotiations an option to install solar panels instead.
“We’re not against green energy, right? We have a solar farm here at the Gap,” said Zerbe. “We proposed in mitigation that maybe they should look at alternative green energy beside wind turbines that wouldn’t have the same impact. It’s not just the obstacle sticking out in the air, it’s the turbulence and noise created by a wind turbine.”
Zerbe added the turbulence caused by the wind turbines would have jeopardized safe landings and use of that airspace, putting the safety of those training soldiers in jeopardy.
Zerbe said the Gap’s land mass is limited and that the military has to rely on willing community partners to continue their training mission, which has been happening for 40-plus years.
He noted that losing the ability to train on off-site parcels would have impacted employees from a tri-county area, including Lebanon, Dauphin and Schuylkill counties. He said one-third of his employees live in the Lebanon Valley.
“These residents, we are the people. We make up the people who use this (facility) as their life blood,” said Zerbe. “Fort Indiantown Gap is almost the center of gravity for our National Guard let alone national training.”
Recognizing the economic impact of FTIG, Lebanon County Commissioners crafted and sent a letter on March 3, 2022, to the DOD stating their opposition to the wind turbine project.
Read More: Local Defense Group promotes vitality of Fort Indiantown Gap and the Lebanon Valley
They cited concerns about the negative impacts the project would have on the operations of Fort Indiantown Gap, the community, navigable airspace and the environment.
LebTown asked county commissioner chairman Bob Phillips for an official comment on behalf of his colleagues concerning the proposal being axed.
“After this much time has passed, I am glad that common sense prevailed so that the vital nature of the work that’s performed at the Gap can continue to come first,” said Phillips on Wednesday. “They defend our country and prepare our troops, and that what’s important.”
LebTown asked Gap officials if they knew of any other plans for wind turbine projects in the works by Doral Renewables or other companies near the installation. Zerbe said he did not, and that this specific location had been targeted since it has optimal wind generation. He added there are no other areas where guardsmen train with that kind of wind capacity.
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