How much farmers get paid for wind turbines on their land in Nebraska
How much farmers get paid for wind turbines on their land depends on the project, and for the Grande Prairie wind farm in Holt County, Nebraska, the answer is a combined 2,000,000 dollars a year to landowners hosting its 200 turbines, according to the World Resources Institute. Each turbine is rated at 2 megawatts, the Omaha Public Power District states, for a total of 400 megawatts, enough electricity to supply 120,000 homes in a year. The utility bought test power starting in October 2016 and completed its full purchase agreement on July 1, 2017.
The World Resources Institute states this as a range, not 2 disagreeing figures, so both ends are drawn from the same source.
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| Local property taxes | 1,800,000 to 2,200,000 dollars a year |
The project also pays between 1,800,000 and 2,200,000 dollars a year in local property taxes, and its community fund distributes 80,000 dollars a year to local projects, both according to the World Resources Institute. It created 25 permanent maintenance jobs, paying above the county average salary, the report states, along with a temporary construction workforce of 350 workers over an 18 month build. A BHE Renewables community relations manager said the construction workforce added 7,700,000 dollars to the local economy, the report states.
One landowner hosts 13 of the 200 turbines himself
Mike Zakrzewski, a Holt County farmer who chairs the local landowners association, hosts 13 of its 200 turbines on his own land, according to the World Resources Institute. Dividing the reported 2,000,000 dollar collective landowner payment evenly across all 200 turbines, an estimate this site calculated rather than a figure any source states directly, works out to about 130,000 dollars a year for the turbines on his land alone, a number that would be wrong if individual contracts actually pay turbines differently.
The one landowner is Mike Zakrzewski, chairman of the local landowners association, who hosts 13 of the project own 200 turbines on his own farm.
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| All turbines | 200 |
| Held by one landowner | 13 |
It's a ridiculous amount of money into our local economy and continues to and will for the 20-year span of the project.
Mike Zakrzewski, farmer and chairman of the Holt County landowners association. Source 4.
He told the World Resources Institute that the jobs the project created are well above the county average in salary, and let several young men and women return to Holt County for their careers.
Why federal paperwork calls an American project Italian owned
The project is wholly owned by Berkshire Hathaway Energy, an American company, but Flatwater Free Press reports it is listed on a federal disclosure registry as land under Italian foreign interest, because of how the rule reports a foreign investor stake in the ownership chain. The same registry records 50,000 acres tied to the project, a bigger number than the approximately 45,000 acres the operator and the utility state as the project own footprint, because the registry counts the full easement acreage across every participating landowner rather than the ground turbines actually occupy.
We're all still farming and grazing that 50,000 acres, right up to the turbines and we share the access roads.
Mike Zakrzewski, farmer and chairman of the Holt County landowners association. Source 4.
The true disturbed footprint, per his own estimate, is closer to about 125 acres.
Before it could connect to the federal transmission grid at all, the project first had to clear a full federal Environmental Impact Statement, filed as EIS 0485 by the Department of Energy Western Area Power Administration, which issued its Record of Decision on April 28, 2015, more than a year before the turbines started producing power.