Angela Usrey, a founder of Concerned Citizens of the Ozarks, sent a press release with a copy of the lawsuit against Nimbus and Carroll County Judge David Writer saying that for more than a year, area residents have presented the Carroll County Quorum Court (QC) with multiple opportunities to adopt reasonable restrictions on the $400-million wind turbine development. Suggestions included appropriate setbacks from property lines, their homes and county roads, and requiring fire protection systems, noise limits, and actions to protect against pollution and protect water rights.
“The majority of the members of the QC, however, have refused such requests because they claim the county would be interfering with the property rights of the few landowners who have signed the Nimbus/Scout lease agreements,” Usrey wrote. Those JPs have ignored the property rights of the remaining residents who will have to live with these massive industrial wind turbines almost in their backyards.”
Usrey said her group doesn’t believe Writer’s claims that this is the only way the county can protect the roads from being torn up by Nimbus/Scout and the taxpayers having to foot the bill to fix them.
“Judge Writer had the authority to impose reasonable weight and use restrictions on the county roads,” the press release states. “These roads have filled the needs of Carroll County citizens for decades, some over a hundred years. It’s surprising there have not been weight and size limits put on them already. Instead, Judge Writer and the county sided with a big corporation against its own citizens.
“This lawsuit has been filed by our attorney, Matt Bishop, to protect the rights of Carroll County citizens from their own government’s overreach and from a foreign-owned business more interested in greenbacks than green energy.”
Usrey wrote that the agreement gives Nimbus/Scout almost unlimited power to widen, lengthen and change grades of county roads as it wishes and for its own benefit, and so much more.
“Nimbus/Scout can run utilities along and underneath the roads, tow cars and trucks without permission of the owners, and even develop new roads and require the county to maintain them afterwards,” she wrote. “The agreement even purports to grant Nimbus/Scout immunity from liability for the harms it might cause area residents from its activities. By this agreement, the county and Nimbus/Scout are trying to take away the property and personal rights of the citizens of Carroll County and give them to a foreign-owned, multibillion-dollar corporation.”
Usrey said most of the proposed 30 wind turbines along the tops of ridges of East Carroll County would be almost 650-feet tall, taller than any man-made structure in the state—and ten times higher than Christ of the Ozarks. Opponents are concerned the project could disrupt drinking water supplies, cause a reduction in property values, harm tourism, create the potential for turbine fires that could spark forest fires, and cause physical harm to people, livestock and wild animals including eagles and endangered species of bats.
Usrey said the 15 landowners who agreed to grant Nimbus/Scout the right to construct wind turbines on their property waived any claims they might have for harms they might suffer including personal injuries, damage to their underground water systems and water aquifers from blasting, and from stormwater runoffs, noise and chemical pollution.