County Judge David Writer is misleading the public about the proposed Road Use Agreement (RUA) between the County and Scout Clean Energy/Nimbus Wind Farm. It’s a bad deal and Judge Writer should not sign it.
At the end of the Carroll County Quorum Court meeting on September 17, Writer pointed out that the public, including Scout, has a right to use county roads to access their land—whether the land is owned outright or leased. In this, he is correct.
He went on to say, however, that the only way to protect the county roads is to sign the RUA, because Scout can tear up the roads to build their 650-foot industrial wind turbines and the county would then have to fix them back at taxpayer cost.
This is misleading. Under Arkansas law, as County Judge he has the authority to prevent Scout, or any other commercial company, from tearing up the roads. He has the power to impose weight limits on all county roads to prevent them from being torn up by overweight loads or even empty trucks. In fact, it is surprising there aren’t weight limits on the county roads already.
Judge Writer says the county is not playing favorites and is not getting in the middle of private contracts between private citizens. But the Road Use Agreement does exactly that. It underwrites Scout’s use of Carroll County roads. It imposes on the county obligations it doesn’t have already, and it exposes the county to liabilities it doesn’t need to have.
You can access a draft of the Road Use Agreement and read it yourself by clicking on this website: stopwindfarmsar.org
It’s a bad deal and Judge Writer should not sign it.
George Caudle
Carrollton