Opponents claim Scout’s electronic campaign was misleading

Caroline Rogers, who lives on County Road 905 where dozens of the 650-ft. wind turbines are planned as part of Scout Clean Energy’s Nimbus Wind Farm, said she feels Scout’s campaign to garner public support for people to lobby the Carroll County Quorum Court (QC) against any restrictions on the wind turbines has been deceptive. In particular, Rogers mentioned Scout opposing setbacks from neighboring properties or a one-year moratorium on construction of the facility.

“This is not Scout’s first rodeo,” Rogers said. She is one of the leaders of the opposition to the $300-million project that would require no county oversight of the construction and major county road improvements to transport wind turbine components to hilly sites on narrow gravel roads.

“They have met opposition in lots of counties,” Rogers said. “They watched Carroll County and the QC to see what the hot points were, which are zoning and private property rights. Mass text blasts and color 8×10 mailings were sent to Carroll County residents to ‘take action to tell the Quorum Court no on zoning’. Zoning has never been a part of our discussion nor of the QC.”

Not everyone contacted by text message was pleased; Rogers said some people felt it was an invasion of privacy that Scout had accessed their cell phone numbers. The return address of the mailings was “Carroll County Property Rights” with a P.O. Box in Green Forest. The mailer directed people to visit carrollcountypropertyrights.com. When you went to the website, the Scout logo was at the bottom. That website is no longer in operation.

Rogers said while Scout has made a big deal about texts and emails sent in support of the Nimbus project, her group, Stop Wind Farms AR, has submitted 1,376 signatures of county residents opposed to the Scout Nimbus Wind Farm that would be sited on 9,000 to 14,000 acres.

“The Scout emails seemed to impress the JPs, but we have gotten far, far more signatures from people who knew what they were signing,” Rogers said. “These are real people. About six hundred of them we have met face-to-face. How many petition signatures are enough?”

Rogers said the email letters presented against the moratorium at the QC meeting appear to contain personal contact information received via the text or mass mailings against zoning. She said there was a 13-page privacy notice with text that was so small it was hard to read but gave Scout permission to save people’s personal information for up to ten years.

“The question is, what is Scout doing with that information?” Rogers asks. “It looks like some people’s information was used to craft letters to the QC asking JPs to oppose the one-year moratorium on wind development.”

Richard Williams, a former county judge who lives on a cattle ranch on CR 905, said he feels people were tricked into giving out their private information. He is concerned about the potential for damages to county roads from the project, turbine fires and drying out the land around the turbines.

“What do you do when you want to dry something out?” Williams asked. “You use a fan. These turbines are actually huge fans. Richard and Linda Mullen’s farm in Union City, New York, was contaminated by the Rexville Fire March 28 from a wind turbine a mile away. I spoke with Linda for forty minutes on the phone.

“The Mullens have a custom beef and dairy farm. The fire contaminated their fields with sharp fiberglass fragments from burnt and broken blades. They can no longer cut hay for sale or use grass for cattle. They now have to buy hay from elsewhere for their cattle.

“The wind company that was supposed to be paying $80,000 a year in property taxes has not paid a dime and has destroyed the county roads. There is a $1-million surety bond by the company, but the wind company won’t release it. The county got bids from some road companies to fix the damages, but the lowest was an estimated $1.35 million. Those are real numbers.”

Williams also points to coverage of the Callaway Livestock Auction in Kingdom City, Mo. “The wind turbines there are drying out farms within ten miles,” Williams said. “They had an auction of cattle at the Callaway Livestock Auction that lasted 24 hours straight. People in the area are having to sell their herds because the turbines are drying out the land. These wind companies falsely say that turbines are compatible with ranching. But now people in this area have no grass, hay, or water for their animals.”

He is also concerned about deforestation. Williams estimated of the 9,000 to 14,000 acres on the ridge where the wind turbines will be located, about 75 percent are mature hardwoods that are 75 to 100 years old.

“As stated by President Biden a few months ago, with climate change we need to plant more trees due to the fact that our forests are the air filters for our environment,” he said. “In that case, why eliminate all of these air filters? Most of these trees will probably just be pushed down and burned adding more pollution to the environment.”