But even without direct financial influence from polluting industries, anti-wind misinformation is transforming local politics in towns and counties across Iowa. In Fremont County and Page County, activists brought lawsuits this year against their county boards to fight wind ordinances. In Tama County, organizers of an anti-wind group gathered more than a thousand signatures to successfully put a measure on the ballot last year to increase the number of county supervisors from three to five, to bring “additional viewpoints” to the county board; the measure passed easily last year. In Madison County, where lawmakers passed a moratorium on new wind development in 2021, local politics has become all about wind opposition.
“In 2018, the county supervisor candidate who ran openly opposed to further industrial wind development won most of the votes, and in 2020, both the Democrat and Republican candidates who ran openly and unequivocally opposed to this each won their respective primaries,” board supervisor Heather Stancil told the Des Moines Register in 2021.
Iowa is a big state, with 99 counties and a significant, decades-long foothold for the wind industry; it’s going to be tough even for the most dedicated activists to derail the renewable energy transition underway. In Palo Alto County, the Board of Supervisors voted last year to put only minor changes in place to that county’s new wind ordinance, despite the passion of the anti-wind activists who livestreamed the meeting.