The last 2
posts dealt with my efforts to determine if MidAmerican is paying the correct
amount of property tax at their Pocahontas county location. I’m concerned that
the wind project is undervalued, and don’t think they are. Several posts on this
blog cover my effort to check on only one of their Iowa locations. What if
their other projects in the state are similarly undervalued?
According to
the newsletter I receive from MEC (a parcel of my farm has an MEC turbine on
it), The utility has 13 other project sites in Iowa with 5 more in the planning
stages.
I came up with a large number in Pocahontas County for a potential
property tax shortfall ($92 million). Let’s use a more conservative estimate of
$50 million, Check my Sept. 10th post for the calculations.
$50 million
x 13 existing projects and 5 “yet to be built” projects comes to $900,000,000
in assessed value potentially missing from the tax rolls annually. If so, that would take the
luster off the utilities
announcement last summer that they would build an additional $1.9 billion in
wind projects.
In addition,
very little gross revenue from Utility owned wind projects stays in Iowa’s
rural economy (experts generally estimate as little as 1%) . Most wind projects
in Iowa are not owned locally. This link from the Iowa Wind Energy
Association estimates “Iowa landowners with wind turbines on their land
receive more than $16 million dollars annually in lease payments.” Sounds good,
but if we figure that $16,000,000 is only 1% of gross revenue, then $1.6 billion
is exported out of rural Iowa yearly to companies like MEC.
Am I the
only one that thinks Iowa could be doing a better job with our wind opportunity?
So, not only are we not retaining much value from wind in our rural economy,
but Iowans don’t seem to have a transparent process to determine if their
schools and counties are receiving the correct property taxes from wind.
Stay tuned!
