Iroquois County board asks zoning panel to start process for solar, wind and battery ordinances

The Iroquois County Board voted Tuesday to request zoning text amendments and ask the county’s Zoning Board of Appeals to hold public hearings on draft commercial ordinances for solar, wind and battery energy storage facilities.

The action directs county staff and the Zoning Board of Appeals to follow the draft ordinance language reviewed by the county’s planning committee and to begin the public hearing process required by state law. Committee members said the step is meant to ensure the county complies with recently enacted state standards while preserving local protections where the law allows.

County planning staff summarized the draft rules presented to the committee, which include application fees and completeness requirements, coordination with local fire departments, setbacks and landscaping buffers (including evergreen buffers), noise limits, decommissioning plans and required financial assurances tied to an agricultural impact mitigation agreement. The drafts also add a conditional-use pathway for each facility type in agricultural zones and include road-use and decommissioning agreement requirements.

Planning committee members reported two substantive technical elements in the drafts: (1) decommissioning financial assurances must align with the agricultural impact mitigation agreement and be approved by the county board, and (2) proposed requirements for aviation safety lighting and aircraft detection lighting systems (ADLS) that, if permitted by federal authorities, would reduce lighting impacts.

Committee discussion also referenced the state’s 2023 legislation implementing standards for renewable projects (cited in the meeting record as the state statute enacted 01/27/2023) as the driver for moving forward with a local text amendment. Committee members said the ordinance language attempts to preserve locally available protections while conforming to state requirements; planning staff said the goal was to have ordinance language in place by May 13 and to allow applications submitted before that date to be processed under applicable transitional provisions.

The board took separate votes on three draft text amendments—one each for commercial solar, commercial wind and battery energy storage facilities—and each motion passed on roll call. The motions instruct the Zoning Board of Appeals to schedule and publish public hearings on the proposed ordinance language and return recommendations to the county board after the hearings.

What the ordinances would require in practice depends on the final text adopted after public hearings; the drafts discussed at committee level included: application filing and performance fees (drafts referenced an application deposit in the several-thousand-dollar range and performance/security amounts capped at draft figures), landscaping and buffer plans, noise and lighting mitigation, road-use agreements, and coordination clauses for local fire departments. Committee members emphasized that some technical items (for example, ADLS lighting) may require federal approval before they can be mandated.

The board’s action does not adopt any ordinance; it places the draft ordinances into the public-review process mandated by the county’s code and state law.

Votes at a glance: the county record shows separate roll-call approvals for each of the three zoning text amendment requests; the motions were moved and seconded at committee and carried by roll call at the board meeting.

The zoning board’s upcoming public hearings will be open to public comment and are expected to follow the statutory notice and publication schedule. The planning office will post hearing dates and the draft ordinances once they are scheduled.