EverPower Wind Holdings wants to build 70 wind turbines in an 80,000-acre area in Champaign County just east of Urbana and about 40 miles west of Columbus. Each turbine would be about 490 feet tall. In all, the turbines are expected to provide enough electricity to power about 42,000 homes. EverPower hopes to start construction late this year.
Before that can happen, however, the company has to account for the bats.
Surveys by EverPower and others over the past several years found female Indiana bats, Seymour said. That means that a colony of the 3-inch flying mammals nests there. It's likely, she said, that 50 to 100 female bats return to the area each spring.
Because the Indiana bat is a federally listed endangered species, any project that could harm it must go through two closely linked processes.
First, EverPower must put together what's called a habitat compensation plan that explains how it intends to avoid harming the bats or destroying their habitat. That could include turning off the turbines at certain times of the night during the summer, placing turbines away from woods where the bats are likely to nest and making sure that construction doesn't disturb those woods, said Michael Speerschneider, director of development for EverPower.
After that, Fish and Wildlife will evaluate the plan and determine whether to issue an "incidental taking" permit, which would allow harming a certain number of bats each year. That number depends on how many Indiana bats biologists think could be affected without jeopardizing the survival of the species in that area, Seymour said.
" Taking includes killing, harm, harassment or alteration of habitat that impairs breeding, feeding or resting," she said. "It's not always mortality."
via www.dispatch.com
