Local Impact in Benton County, Indiana - Steelhead Americas - video Dailymotion

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00:00When we first heard of renewable energy projects, namely wind in our county, we were skeptical and

00:14we weren't sure. We didn't know a lot about it, but we took a chance and listened to what the

00:22developer had to say and tried to learn. We have since been pleasantly surprised and it's been a

00:30great asset in our community. We don't have a doctor's office in this county. We don't have a

00:35hospital. We're 30 miles minimum each direction to get to a hospital. So the wind farms, when they

00:42first came, one of the first things that we did as a county council was put in paramedics and we

00:50couldn't afford them before. It benefits the whole county. We've collected like roughly $42 million

00:56since 2009 and over $25 million that's gone to schools. And if we didn't have this AV from the

01:02wind here, I don't know where we'd be. We'd be broke where we'd be. We'd either be broke or our tax would

01:07be so crazy that people wouldn't live here. We had concerns about real estate and whether or not it

01:13would hurt the real estate values. Real estate's just been great. And of course, you know, the wind

01:19turbine usually brings between $700 and $800 more an acre that land will bring because it's got

01:24turbines sitting on it. If you know anything about farming, it can be great one year and the next

01:29year you're losing money. It's just another source of income and that helps keep the family farms

01:38together, I think. I think when I look at the turbines, of course, I think about, you know,

01:43it's bringing in income. I think about that. I think about how it helps the county. And I think

01:50about how we can contribute to the energy grid and still have our farmland. You know, it's just like

01:59farming does. It honestly is. That's what it is. It's a wind farm.