In the rolling hills of Southwest Wisconsin, one can drive down Highway 151 and look out their window to see cattle grazing in a pasture, a farmer and their family working together to produce a crop or even, if they’re lucky, maybe a bald eagle flying in the air. They also may see some wind turbines here and there. Who would have thought that, just outside of Platteville, a company is proposing the construction of the second-largest industrial wind system in the Midwest?
Pattern LLC has representatives approaching and encouraging landowners to sign a 60-page, 40-year lease contract to put a wind turbine on their property. As of the beginning of March 2021, these representatives are about 50 signatures away from having this wind system come to our area.
This system would include at least 170 industrial-scale turbines constructed across Iowa and Lafayette Counties, with heights of around 650 feet which would require at least 250 square miles of the Driftless Area.
With turbines constructed at this height, one could view them from the outskirts of Madison to the bluffs of the Mississippi River.