Nov 19, 2021

Planning commission approves county commission CWECS suggestions Thursday

Posted Nov 19, 2021 3:53 PM
Reno County Public Works Nick Gosnell
Reno County Public Works Nick Gosnell

By NICK GOSNELL

Hutch Post

SOUTH HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The Reno County Planning Commission approved the recommendations of staff on Thursday, as they were directed by county commissioners, to both effectively prohibit wind development in the currently zoned areas of the county and to allow for regulatory oversight of any other potential wind development in what were previously unzoned areas.

"The planning commission approved everything as presented," said county planner Mark Vonachen. "Essentially, what they are doing is zoning the rest of the county, but they're only zoning it for the wind turbines, CWECS."

This approach is the one that was asked for by the county commission.

"Staff expressed concerns about zoning the rest of the county for one particular land use," Vonachen said. "I think the planning commission concurred with that reasoning. That was the directive, really, from the county commission is to consider something like that and so, we went through that process and they recommended approval of that. They felt like commercial wind land use is a pretty extreme type of land use and we need to be able to have an ability to review something like that."

Given that the meeting lasted just over two hours, there is a lot of public testimony to be put on the record correctly before action can come to the County Commission. It is Vonachen's goal to get the subject on the agenda at the first meeting in December, which would be the 14th.