#30 How Wind, Solar, and Energy Investment Can Transform a Rural County

We're going to be putting in solar panels over a couple, you know, some acreage there. There's going to be some matriarch underneath the panels. There's going to be about 2200 acres. And how many turbines? Uh, there will be close to 200 plus. So, you need like specialized trucks just to be bringing stuff in. Everything's big. Trucks are big. Are we talking so big that it like breaks the roads in order to bring stuff into the town? It it absolutely does tax the roads. There's no doubt about it. Now, with just one coming down, you know, you might think about, but we're not talking one. We're talking about hundreds just bringing in stone and hundreds bringing in concrete because you got to remember if you've got this 100 plus foot tower with these big blades spinning, there's a big hunk of concrete in the ground that keeps that thing stabilized. So, it's a major construction. Warren Brown, 1981, Richard L. Page Sailor of the Year is back, but this time we're talking about community development. And my understanding is you were just told by a lawyer to take your name off of public map records so people can't find your house. How does a man who's working in community development get a message like that? You know, I'm not sure how that all comes about, but these these projects are very emotional. Which project in particular? So this would all be based off wind and solar. So you have you you've attracted a wind and solar installation into your county. I would say Hartford or the Blackford County attracted wind and solar based on our geolog or our geographic positions. So we have good wind there and the Midwest has good sun obviously. Take a look at all the stuff we grow. So we are favorable for wind and solar. They've put one year's worth of meteorological testing through the towers that they built and they proven this is a good place to locate these. So these are big companies going around the country looking for places where they can install giant wind and solar parks. So big big big this are all right. These are all commercial wind and solar. They're not small ones. Uh you're talking anywhere from uh 100 megawws to 250 megawatt type projects. And and how do you get a county or municipality ready to attract one of these companies? Before I got there, the county kind of prepared themselves in that they developed ordinances. So, if these kind of projects come here, here's the ordinance that they have to follow. So, there was already a foundation on how this had to happen when I got there. And how do how do you do marketing? Do the companies reach out to you or do you go try to find companies? By the time I got there, the companies were there. Because when you're doing all this research to make sure that you're you have ordinance in place, the companies have already caught wind that you're preparing. Yeah. Well, that really does give them a good heads up. If I got an ornice there, obviously, you know, you can come and talk to us. Okay. And how do the people in the town react to a big win in Solar Park? You know, that's kind of funny because it's kind of changed through the years I've been there. I've been up there now six years. Uh when I first started working on this with them, uh there was hardly anything. Just the guys who were signing up, they were signing up. They were happy they were going to be able to diversify and how they fund their family. Uh, but when we get to the part where we're really close to building these things, I mean, it's going to be real now. So, you know, the really real piece of it, we're going to be putting in solar panels over a couple, you know, some acreage there. There's going to be some acreage underneath the panels. How many acres? There's going to be about 2200 acres. Okay. So, that's that's quite a bit. 2,200 acres of solar panels. Yes. All right. Two different projects. Gigantic. It's pretty big. Yeah. And how many turbines there will be? And and because not everything is done yet, there's still two that we're working with. Uh there will be close to 200 plus 200 wind turbines. And these are huge. These are very tall. Yeah. They're the the full size. They're the biggies that you see on TV and the biggies that you see at other places at these big wind farms. So you need like specialized trucks just to be bringing stuff in. Everything's big. Everything's big. Trucks are big. Are we talking so big that it like breaks the roads in order to bring stuff into it? absolutely does tax the roads. There's no doubt about it. Now, with just one coming down, you know, you might be, but but we're not talking one. We're talking about hundreds just bringing in stone and hundreds bringing in concrete because you got to remember if you've got this hund plus foot tower with these big blades spinning, there's a big hunk of concrete in the ground that keeps that thing stabilized. So, it's a major. What road do they choose to come in on? Because if you have farmers and you have community members and it's going to bust up the roads, do you have to tell them which roads to come in? A route. So, they develop that route themselves. Then they come to the county and they say, "This is what we'd like to do." So, it within a wind and solar project based on our ordinance, which is pretty much standard operating procedure in Indiana, you're going to have some documentations they have to do. First they got to come in and they got to actually apply. We we want to do this here. Uh so you got to go through the BZA. You've got to go through special exception because these are agricultural zoned properties. Well, there's a special exception that our ordinances have in that county saying that you can do wind and solar, but you got to go through the special exception. Is wind and solar classified as agricultural? No, but they build on agricultural land. Land. Is that because it's cheapest? That's because it's available and it's open. It's open. They can't build in cities. It's just this is just too massive of projects. These big commercial things are just too big to be in a city. And our ordinance says they have to be so far from city boundaries. Yeah. I mean, 2,000 acres is a lot of acres. Well, they they probably rent it over 20,000 acres for the wind. Now, the wind sounds like, oh my gosh, you're taking 20,000 acres out of production. That's not true. Oh, because animals can still be on it. Well, so can your farming. you still grow farm. So let's say that in a 100 acre plot there's one turban. Well, you still have 99 acres you farm. They take up about an acre. Okay, now that's an acre with all the stuff that goes along with it other than it's just sitting there. So although they sound like there's a lot of land taken up, they run a lot of wires. Everyone's got to have a wire to take the electricity away and take it to the station and everyone's got to have a fiber there. So all this stuff's hooked up through fiber. There's a fiber line to each and every turbine. So just for connectivity, just to keep track of it, monitor it, stuff like that. Yes. Okay. And and so is it it sounds like it's not that invasive. It's basically like a telephone tower that's going in. It's it's big. It's big. It's bigger than that. But and and there's some things that people have concerns about. Now, none none of the concerns that people have brought up that I just not be interested in. Well, of course I am because I'm not an expert in these. I've got to do my own investigation. We have to learn a lot. We have to talk to other counties. We have to talk to other people. For example, uh, one of the things that was brought up is these big wind turbines, they're going to kill a ton of birds, bats, and migratory. I've heard Donald Trump say that the windmills kill birds. And I think it probably does kill some. So, you know, you can't not know that what happens. But the data that I've actually seen and the farmers that I've actually talked to in this area that have had wind turbines on their property for 12 years now, I've asked them about that and uh it it's that's not negligible. It's not the major killoff that what people say it would be. It's not they would see all the dead birds all over the place if it was happening, right? They would well they would go out and see them because they're out in the fields every day. They would see things left. Now, you got to be there pretty quick. Yeah. Yeah. Because coons, possums, whatever, they're going to come and get that stuff. Uh, but they say they don't see very much of that at all. Then the other thing about it is when you start talking about this now, you got to take a look at the whole picture. So, what does kill birds? How do the birds population get impacted? So, wind turbines, well, do they kill a few? Well, they may kill a few. Uh, cars hitting them. I'm I'm sure you've all had a windshield incident with a bird scares a devil out of you. Cats, kitty cats are probably the biggest menace towards a bird population in the United States. They kill the most. Like about a billion a year. Whoa. Um, so is do we still want birds or bats or anything migratory killed by these towers? Well, no, we don't. But it but you're saying it's not a huge I don't think that the downside for that is so big that it should rob communities from the availability of getting investment they normally couldn't get. What do you say to somebody who says well this we're not going to benefit from this. This is a corporation bringing in solar and wind turbines and they're going to make all the money and how are they how does the community actually benefit from this from a project like this? You know, we could say that about every economic development project. So any factory, you know, a factory doesn't come and necessarily support your little brings jobs. Brings jobs. So this way these things do this is number one, there's investment there. So that's real money. Now they do have to buy some property because they have to put on a substation and a conversion station. So this stuff's all DC coming to it. So we convert it to AC. Then we put it substation, sticks it up on a grid. All that investment is taxable, both personal and the property. Now, they lease most of their land, so there's not a lot of land increase on it, but they do have to pay property taxes because the value of that land goes up because of what's being used for. So, the county gets more property tax dollars. There's a bigger Yes, we have this big investment and that all goes to the property tax base. Okay. So each individual in the county will pay a little bit less because they're going to pick up part of the burden. So is it possible that the county is gonna bump it and just take the extra or do the citizens actually save money on their property taxes? Yeah. See, you can't do that because you can only set a levy how much money you talk through based on what the state of Indiana state board of accounts allows you to do. So we've got to present to them our budgets and then they got to say, "Hey, this budget's good and that's how much you can levy. That's how much you can actually take off the property tax. So when we have this other big entity going to be paying property taxes, it's going to reduce what the individual property tax owner is going to have to pay because they can't just take the extra. And this is all the citizens of the county. Every citizen in in the county that we're working in that I work for. Yeah. Uh will benefit from that. Well, that's pretty cool. So all the citizens in the county, their property taxes are going to go down. They should go Yeah, they absolutely will go down. We've had we've had a independent financial company by the name of Baker Tilly out of Indianapolis do the analysis on that and it's going to come down. Wait, let me let me understand this again. The city has a fixed budget. City the city the county they both have fixed budgets. They both have fixed budgets. They submit those. They submit it to the state and the is that is that is that so that the state can have some control to make sure that counties and cities aren't gouging their citizens or is that because the state wants to keep track of what why why do they have to submit that to the state? Well, I'm sure it depends on what side you're looking at it from. So the the state certainly wants to have control and really I don't know anybody that wants to gouge the citizens. Everybody that I know that ser serves in public office, they they don't do that because they make a ton of money. None of these guys have got a secret account over, you know, in uh Switzerland, Switzerland or someplace. They do that because they really love their community. But why do you have to submit? Why does a city and a county have to submit so there is transpar and and approval so that they know that you're only taking what you need? It's accountability. It's accountability. Total transparency. When the citizens hold the county and the city accountable, isn't that the point of voting and being part of a city? Exactly. Another layer of accountability. Mhm. So, yes. Okay. I'm not And that works too. I don't I don't understand why you'd submit to the state. I don't seem to like that part, but let's go with that. So, you submit a fixed budget and when another a new tax source comes in because someone developed the land and now they're going to pay more in taxes, you have the same budget. So, now the amount that the citizens pays goes down because a lot of it's coming from the new source. Yes. That's what's happening. That's what's happening. Okay. So, a lot of people don't understand that, which is okay. Uh, I don't understand how my car works. So, we all have different things, right? Yeah. That's Well, that's why we're talking and we're understanding. You know, I I go to a doctor because I don't even understand how my own body works sometimes. So, the older I get, the less we all have things that we we have to do. But, but what So, what would be if you're a community member, then I'm still trying to understand who would be angry about this and why. Well, I I got to tell you what, I don't understand all of the emotions behind it, but but there is a tremendous amount of emotion of people against these projects because they think that it's going to do long-term damage or so that what they say. The data that I've seen that I just look up and look at and I I try to do a good job with that because I don't want to take anyone's one side. I don't take the wind and solar people at their word. I don't take the anti- people at their word. I kind of try to see what what I can find out to be the real data. The real data. And when they tell me that uh farmland will not be farmable for 85 years because wind turbines are on there, there is not one report I've read by independent or academic papers that support that. Uh there's not huge soil contamination by uh stuff leaking out of solar panels. Solar panels are solid. There's not a fluid in there. It's solid state. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what what that leaking is, but I've I've not seen that anywhere reported by anybody. So, some of the things that they bring up, I don't I don't see supported independently. And I do I do a lot of research. I use AI to do the research because I can't look up every ge Google website. So, you give them a lot of questions and you go out both ways. Tell me the pros about this. Tell me the cons about this and I try to find out. Is there any way that it would tear up the city or the county? I guess just these like if the trucks drive in 200 giant, you know, giant windmills peace load hundreds and hundreds of trucks. Yeah. Yeah. So, two separate issues. They could crush the roads. I could see that. Do the Do the companies pay for the roads? Yeah. So, let me I'll finish on the the negatives of just having them there. I haven't found a lot. They're ugly or they're beautiful. Yeah. You know, depending on how you see it, beauty is in the eye of the holder. I've talked to guys that say, "I just love watching them." If you're the enemy, I hate them. I've got people that say that have told me that if you can see one, the vibration it gives off will crack the plaster in your house. Well, I've walked up to one on a windy day and put my hand on the base and I couldn't feel anything. the data doesn't support it. Now, let's go to the roads. There's three agreements that the companies have to sign with the county. They have to sign an economic development agreement. They have to sign a road use agreement and a decommissioning agreement. So, the economic development agreement, it decides things like tax abatements, economic development payments, a lot of different things, things you can, you can't do, who pays for what. For example, I work, you know, I represent the county on this. So, we hire lawyers, consultants, financial consultants. We don't pay for anything. County does not pay a penny for any of this. In these agreements, they agree that we can because we don't need them if they're not here. So, why should we pay because they're here? So, they're funding all of your costs to service their your side of the of the deal. Yes. And the contracts that we sign with the attorneys and the financial adviserss and other consultants, they work for us. They don't work for them. They actually send their bill to us. We filter through them and they pay them. We don't pay anything. So to the roads, yeah, these things are definitely going to do uh damage to the roads. The roads have to be reinforced or strengthened and then we have to come up with an agreement what how they're going to repair them. So for my county, for Blackford County, what we do is we have we've got an agreement with them that if they even damage 100 ft of that road, they have to repair from intersection to intersection. One one mile. You damage that road, you repair that whole mile. Why is that? Well, because I think the people in the county deserve better than a patchwork looking bunch of roads. So if they break a 100 feet of road, you don't want them to come fix 100 feet of road and then have new asphalt for 100 feet, but not on both sides of the county road. That's right. You got the whole road up. If some bits of it are getting damaged, the other bits are almost damaged and so we might as well clean the whole thing up. Let's not even take a chance. Yeah. Right. If you're on that piece of road, you fix the whole mile. That's right. Oh, how likely is it that one of these trucks would actually damage one of the roads? Oh, I think they damage. Not Not likely. They They definitely do. They do. Like, can you see it? Oh, yeah. you can start seeing the breakdown. Our road superintendent and we also have another uh company that uh we hired but gets paid for by the the companies that actually does inspections on a regular basis. So, we've got eyes on these roads. And when we started it, there was a preconstruction inspection where they actually go out and physically inspect everything, signs, uh tiles, coverts, bridges, and then they also videotape everything. It's like when you get a rental car and they make you walk around it, right before you drive it away so you can see all the dings and stuff before you drive it. This is what you're saying. They go audit all the roads and everything. Go, here's the condition and here's video and photos and everything. So, anything from this point forward that's on you solar company like you got to fix all this. Yes, that's cool. And what we do is we don't trust that they're going to have to do this. We make them put that up in a security bond. So that money is actually locked up. They prepay. So even well it's locked up to where only our county can draw on it. They could go ahead and go bankrupt and walk away from this thing today. We could fix every road. Do you have are there companies in the county that fix roads and so they're kind of landing contracts? Is that or who's who's fixing the roads? We have to have companies that can do it to our standard. There's some some close to us. There's some in the area but there's none actually in our county. We do try to push them to everybody that's local that can do anything for them. For sure. It just brings more uh liquidity and capital flows into the county whenever possible with job creation. We try to do as much as we can in county. So if they need electrician for maybe a building, let's use a local one. Uh if they need somebody to help clear snow, let's hire some local. So have you on this particular project, have you had any roads that needed to be fixed already? Yeah. Already? Did they fix it? They are in a process of it. Is it is it a pro? Do you just call them and say, "Hey, you broke this one. You know, you should should they have already fixed should they have already known to fix it in Are they Are you kind of the Are you the filter to they're waiting for you to tell them they violated?" They have their own guys that actually look at the roads, but we have two sets of eyes that we put on the roads. We have the company that we hire to inspect them, plus our road superintendent. He's phenomenal. He is absolutely He knows these roads better than anyone. Uh, and then we have a meeting every week at the same time and all the people come in where he can give them a report or he can go ahead and just call them up or he can send an email to them. He started seeing some potholes starting to develop on one road. At the meeting he told him that this looks like it's, you know, could be a safety hazard. These potholes are starting to develop. They have 48 hours to fix those and they said in the meeting we'll have those fixed. Now, he has to agree because he's our subject matter expert on roads on how they go about fixing that. They can't just tell him, "Oh, yeah, we're just going to pack some gravel in that and that'll do it." They have to fix it to the standards of the county. So, it seems like at the end of all of this, the county should have better roads than they did before or at least equal to what it was before, hopefully better, because if they're repaving from intersection to intersection on a bunch of different intersections, then by the time they get all this stuff in, the roads should be better, right? Pardon? I I absolutely believe they will be. When when we worked with the county and the county negotiated these contracts, they did that for the betterment of the residents of Blackford County. Wasn't because we were trying to do some favor for these companies. We want to hold them to a professional standard. You leave Blackford County better than you found it. So, how else does this benefit the citizens then? They get a a cut on their property tax. What else? What else is this going to help them with? Well, like I told you earlier in the EDA agreement, we have economic development payments. Right now, we're about $27 million. That's brand new money that's going to come directly into the county over a 10-year period because it's paid out every year once they turn things on. So, there's different mechanisms on when it starts, when it stops. It gets released at certain times. It gets released in a certain way that's agreed upon in that agreement. So, that's brand new money that the county can't raise any other way. So that's net $27 million going to the county to the county to do anything they need to do with it because and hopefully and of course your your goals anytime you're dealing with uh municipalities is that things are going to be done truly to benefit the actual residents right uh in my position I've not done one thing that I haven't considered how it's going to impact the residents now do does do I think everyone will agree with it well no do I think everybody's going I hate it. Well, no. There's going to be both on both sides. But nevertheless, my strategy that that is the county strategy is to move this project forward because the county wanted it and let's get it done to the betterment of the individual uh resident. Now, they may not see that and they may not like the looks of that. Uh I I'll give you for an example. People will say that if you build these here, my home value is going to go down. Okay. So, I guess if anything industrial was built near you, there is the possibility that you may have a decrease in your personal property at your residence. Now, the studies, and I just read one that just came out, and I share all this stuff with the with the with the commissioners because that's who I really deal the most with on these. And what the what the uh results of that study showed was that for the first couple of years, it looks like you may see a decrease. Not always necessary, but there overall you'll see a slight decrease for a couple years. Then you're actually going to see after that an increase. So let's just say for example, easy numbers. I start with a $100,000 house. Within the next two years, I might see $95,000 is what they value that. So, I may have lost five grand because of the solar panels. Yeah. So, you might lose 5%. But then after those first couple years, it may go up to 110. So, not only will you gain back what you've lost, but you'll also see an increase on it. Why will it go up? I don't know exactly the reasoning behind that. I can just tell you what this study showed. And it's not the only one. I've seen other studies that show I also have talked to other counties who have these and I will tell you like for example one county that I talked to my peer he said there was one township in his whole county where the overall assessed value of the county went up only one township can you guess where that township is no idea it's within the wind or solar project so their property values and it's been there for several years actually went up So, so they might see an increase in property values over a few years. 27 million is pretty good. Seems like you throw those into some annuities and get recurring revenue for their county for a pretty good while, right? You know, I think the guys in the county have a lot of wisdom on this. Well, they get to pick. You don't pick that. I I don't No, I don't get to pick anything. I work for them and and what all the stuff that all the work that I do going through these contracts and working with the companies and working with the attorneys, we have to submit everything to the to the elected officials. Nothing happens outside of their view. So you don't get to decide and the elected officials do that part. They decide everything. I can go ahead and go through this, bring it to them with recommendations on what's going on. If there's questionable things or things I need advice on, how they want to go about, they communicate with me really, really well. There's a really good communication between them. So, we really have a good idea what we're looking for. And what we're looking for is the best we can get for the county. Period. That's that's just the bottom line. Everything is based on the residents and the quality of life. How do we increase their quality of life here? So, in your experience, it seems like wind and solar for municipalities and counties is basically only net positive. Is that fair to say? I mean, I haven't really heard a negative that's outside the emotion of it. Yeah. And the just I don't like the looks of them. And I'm afraid because there's going to be change now. Not everything's going to look alike. Status quo doesn't happen. you're now going to have this new investment. I really can't find a negative that would cause me to say county, I recommend you don't do this. Now, that's not and I do that. Um, if we can just take a quick sidebar here on carbon capture storage systems. I've done research on them. Also, my recommendation to the county is that they do everything they can to avoid having that happen in the county. Now, what is that? That's that's a very unpopular in some circuits. So, these ethanol plants, they create a lot of concentrated carbon. Okay. CO2. Yep. So they get this concentrated CO2, then they super concentrate it, and then they normally have to truck truck that off for it to be dealt with appropriately. Well, there's a plan now to where you can just drill a deep hole. Oh, okay. So you can go ahead and put a well in there, maybe three, five, 10,000 ft. Depends on the geology of the place. And you pump that stuff underground. That's not good. You don't put it underground in containers. You pump the gas. Is it a gas? Well, it's a probably a liquid because it's concentrated CO2. Uh you just pump that down. Now, you have to have a certain type of geology in the structure of that shell to get to handle that and we do. H how do they guarantee that it doesn't seep into groundwater and whatnot? Well, pretty much what the studies have shown up till now is it is pretty safe to go down in that shell and just kind of reside there unless there's a mechanism that it finds available for it to come to the surface. It just so happens that this area of the country, especially central east central Indiana, was part of the gas boom in the 1800s. So, there's a ton of gas wells. I don't know how deep they all are. Oh, okay. But of all the studies that I read, the number one thing it says is beware of gas wells. Because if you have a deep gas well and now you've got this pocket of concentrated CO2 and it finds that well path of least resistance I go up. What's the chances of these old steel or iron or whatever they were made of well casings going down there for natural gas now being rusted out after a hundred years of being in the gravel beds and our water flow and our aquafers rusting it. Pretty good. Yeah, pretty good. Almost all of them have water. So, where would the gas go at that point? Or where would that CO2 go at that point? Well, it would go out in the aquifer. Well, that would do bad stuff. That would be bad. That would be bad. Now, according to the what what bad would happen if a bunch of CO2 got into the aquifer into the water. So, my understanding based on what I've read is it does something called like a acification of the water. It acidifies it. CO2 is an an acid. So what it does is as it goes through the gravel bed, it liquefies the heavy metals that just set inertly in they dissolve the gravel beds. So you poison your water. Acid dissolves the heavy metals. So if the heavy metals get put into the water and they start to flow, now we know what the end of that is. Yeah. There we go. Now, according to the 1974 uh Safe Water Act, they shouldn't be able to build them with these things the way they are. Every one of those wells would have to be retired completely. To find them is almost impossible and it's extremely expensive. So, you've got to do all sorts of testing. You've got to go out and do visual observation. Uh take drones up and take certain kinds of uh videos so that you can try to identify them. But what if you miss one? Yep. Then you're you've poisoned your water well. Is is that worth it? No. Now, see, there's where I see the risk way outweighs the benefit. Now, here's the for that kind of project. For that kind of project. So, so there are companies that are looking for counties to accept their carbon deposits. Well, is that what that's going on? The actual areas that ethanol plants actually sit on. Yeah. They want to be able to do it right there. Yeah. It's the cheapest because you don't have to truck it. Yeah. Right. You just can pump it down. Well, we've got we've got a uh ethanol plant, no Alexandria. We have an ethanol plant in Portland. We have an ethanol plant in Randolph County in Winchester. What are they doing with all their car CO2? Well, right now they truck it out. They do. Oh, okay. Because they have no choice. Yeah. But if they can get this done, they can pump it underground. Yeah. Now, here's the big caveat. Now, we're just talking about uh aquafers in normal areas. You know, you you think, well, that could be maybe very isolated, but we sit real close in and in Blackford County, the TA River, which is an ancient river before the ice age that starts all the way down, I think, in the Carolinas, comes up through Virginia, West Virginia, through Ohio, through Indiana, through Illinois, and ends up in the Mississippi. So, it would have been the largest river in the United States before the ice age. Now, it's still north. Yes. It flows up and then back down. Oh, so crazy. But that's what it is. I have a big study on it that we've looked at. It is one of the largest aquifers in the country. So, let's say that we have any river. Let's take a look at Mississippi or let's go local. Let's go take a look at the Wbash River. It's right here in Indiana. How many contributes go into that? And how far away are they to get to that? Well, let's just say one of these CO2 capture systems is by one of those little bitty fingers. Yep. It may be years before you can identify the damage it's done. So, what I'm saying is this. Unless you can do it right, go to places that don't have these big aquifers. Yeah. Don't have even if they went under a big aquifer could be safe for years and years and years and years and years. What I'm saying is if you have gas wells, discount that place as not being a good place to do the projects. Yeah. And it's just companies wanting to do it cheaper. I mean, you can truck it. There are solutions, just more expensive. More expensive. And what well the other thing is if they can do this in their area then they have a certain ecological uh footprint that they are leaving which means they can sell their ethanol uh internationally for example Canadian they won't buy it unless you're doing you you know you're a green company. You've got to show them that you're doing all that stuff. But to be a green company you got to dispose of your carbon locally. Yeah. Well, pretty much you got to go ahead and pump it down there because it's like one of the because you're not creating more trouble for the environment because you're trucking all that stuff out of there. Yeah. Right. So, I think you just got to weigh that. So, that's a project that you would recommend not doing in I did recommend for them not to do it. None of those are going on right now. No, but they don't get permitted locally. They get permitted nationally from the EPA. Whoa. So, I feel so strongly about that. I actually got a hold of our senator's office and asked g provided him this information and asked him to take it to Washington and not permit them here. Not that I don't want to see our local people benefit. I do. We're already doing solar and wind. I mean doing things I don't think we need to take this kind of risk. I only bring all this up to tell you I don't think wind and solar has that kind of risk. We could we may just not like it for the sake of not liking it, but I don't believe it's going to it doesn't carry the environmental risk at not nothing that I could find it does not. Do do you feel that it helps a county to have wind and solar to be a little independent from the grid in a way? Well, if it came down to that, could it be? Right now, the grid is like a great big water pipe. First spot that gets turned on, that's the one that gets the water. It's going to get put onto a substation in Blackford County and hit the grid. So if people are pulling from it in that substation, it's going to be pulled there. Otherwise, it's going to go up on a grid and go wherever it goes. Sure. Uh you know, they they can't control where it goes. They can't say, "Oh, this all going to No one's controlling where we don't know where it goes." That's how the grid works. Electrons are funny animals. They just go wherever the the call for it is. So the bigger the call, the bigger the draw, more goes there. And then of course they can measure and they can buy their substations. They can go ahead and adjust things. But one of the big reasons towns are looking for power, it sounds to me, is for data centers, AI data centers, because AI is going to suck up all the energy is what everybody's saying. Do you think do you think data center have data centers been shopping around? Have you been contacted by any data centers are shopping around and the state's already contacted about every county that could qualify for one? So there's several things you need to have for data centers and Bifford County has those. I'll be shocked if they don't come here for real. Uh because you have is the wind and solar helping the fact that you're gonna have What about to stay on data centers for just a second? We'll hit nuclear uh data centers. Uh we need to have an ordinance in place for that so the county can go ahead and deal with them like they would any other business like this wind and solar. we would have to have a mechanism in place to where we don't have them come in and like for example during construction tear up our roads and not have to fix them. We we need to be able to protect the county. We need an ordinance in place for that. Nuclear, we've already been contacted by uh the desire to maybe put a small modular nuclear reactor in in Blackford County because we have that ability. Plus, investment spurs investment. They're seeing this electricity production and so therefore they think that this is a good place to produce electricity. You're pro electricity. You're a pro electricity county. I think everybody's pro electricity. They should be. You go turn the lights on it don't work. Or or if you turn your your water on and you don't get clean drinking water out of it. Or if you pull the handle on the commode and it doesn't go clockwise in the northern hemisphere, you're upset. Yeah, that's right. So yeah uh you know how much power do you need to have and I'm I'm curious if you think about this how how much power does the citizens need and then if you start cing data centers you don't want the data centers to suck all the power from the citizens so how much extra power would you have to need to accommodate a data center yeah data centers take now right now so that's what I've learned so far today we don't know what might be tomorrow and it also depends on how big they build let's say we wanted a gigawatt data center like what Elon keeps talking about because Elon's always talking about the gigawatt data centers. Yeah. Right now they're 750 megawatt to a gigawatt. 750 megawatt. I don't know. I don't know. I haven't brushed up on my megawatts and gigawatts recently. How many households is like a a hundred megawws or what? Like how do I think about this? I think like a gigawatt can take care of about 200,000 houses. 200,000 houses is a gigawatt. No, I think I'd have to go back is Yeah. Yeah. Let's ask GP I'll ask GPT and I'll I'll be right back with you guys. You guys keep going. Okay. So, so the bottom line is I I took a look at a study that was done by the US Department of Energy. So, we're taking a look at 2025 and they're projecting where we're going to be at 2035 and there's going to be a big shortage. Uh we've electricity. Yes. Because we've already kind of shot oursel in the foot in that we've decided that coal can no longer be safely used. When you shut down coal plants and you don't convert them to like a natural gas or some other source, that electric that source of electricity goes away. You're losing electricity. So in the state of Indiana, it's very anti-ele electricity of them. It is. So let's just shut things down without replacing them. Well, with that still happening, you're going to be making less electricity. But between 2025 and 2035, with or without data centers, with data centers, a much bigger difference, your demand's much bigger. So, what's going to happen? Well, you're going to continue to experience more rolling brownouts and blackouts. So, when the temperature gets to be 100° and every air conditioner's kicked on or all of a sudden in Indiana, not that our weather changes like this, we're sitting there 10 below zero and every heater's blasted, uh, you're going to use electricity. It's all there. California is already experiencing rolling brownouts. Well, so is the East Coast. Yeah. So, we know it's only getting worse. It will only get worse. Energy consumption's rising. So in the state of Indiana, state of Indiana produces 50 gawatts of power. Now Blackford County is going to be making one gigawatt with the solar and the wind. With the solar and the wind, which means 2% of the total electrical production in the state of Indiana is going to come out of Blackford County. That's awesome. They are now a player in that game. Yeah, that's real. which means you will have other companies that are requiring resources. How many houses Austin waiting on GPT? Okay, we don't know yet. Okay, so the other thing about Blackford County, it it is it is a prime location because the resources there are tremendous. They have that Taz River we talked about, big water. They've got all this electricity plus the panhandle pipeline that comes out of the Texas panhandle area. That natural gas pipeline cuts through the northeast corner of Blackford County. So there's a lot of gas. You have natural gas, too. Resourcerich. We've got we've got an answer here. By the way, one megawatt. So let's just start with one megawatt. Okay. 930 homes. One megawatt. One megawatt. It's about a thousand homes. Think about that. So times a,000 to get to a gigawatt. Yeah. Is 100,000 homes. No. Would you say a thousand homes? A million homes. It's a million homes. Yeah. A gigawatt should be a million homes. gigawatts a million homes. I mean, a little less, but yeah. Whoa. 900,000 homes. According to Chad GB, according to Chad GBT, well, they really thought about it. So, that's, you know, calculations. We're in the game as a player. The wind turbines and solar are going to produce enough power for almost a million homes. That's incredible. Okay, so let's just let's go into crazy land here. What would need to happen for all power in the county to be free since you're producing it right there? How many houses are in the county? So, now I've got to go back and remember. Do we have like um Oh, like 2500 to 3,000 houses. Okay, that sounds a lot less than a million. Yeah. So, we we're a population of about 12,000 people there. So, you're going to make enough electricity for 900,000 and there's about 3,000 homes. And there's about 3,000 homes. Yeah, there's not going to be any free electricity. That's about.3% of the power generated could generate power for all of the houses in the county. You're producing 300 times more energy than the county. The households need now this is barring factories and industrials commercial. Yeah. And all all the cities. Still though, but still but still so we'll be an exporter. We'll be an exporter of exporter of electricity. But the b but the bottom line is we'll go back to roads because we we started on we didn't finish. But the bottom line is there will be investments that try to come to Blackford County because of this. Yeah. Uh I don't disclaim the emotions of being against something. You you don't even have to explain it to me why people are people. They they they have emotions about things. Uh I think we have to consider them respect them. However, is it overwhelming that their point of view is such that we should not build because the data supports a detriment? And I don't see it. Yeah. I see nothing really the bulk of everything is positive. We need investment. There's no way for us to make that kind of money. Um well, even if electricity needs are growing in in 10 years, even looking dystopianly, if there's going to be rolling brownouts, you already said whoever's closest to the electricity production gets it first with the spigots. So if you're in the county and there's rolling brownouts, you will probably have less brownouts because your wire is closest to the electricity production. you probably have a much more stable platform to be able to pull your electricity from. For sure. Which what happens to property values when that's happening. Well, live in a county with a lot of brown outs versus a county with a little bit of brown outs or none. So, the future I think looks really bright for Blackford County. Totally. Really bright. Whether they take a data center or not, if they take a small nuclear reactor or not, I still think it looks positive for them. Sure. Because you still have a lot of resources there that's going to draw other things. Wait, do we talk about these nuclear reactors? No. Uh, how you said they're modular. So, these are small nuclear reactors. How big are these things? Are these Americanmade nuclear reactors? They are. Well, I will put it to you this. The ones that I've looked at and investigated, they are USmade. Actually, the and I can't remember, and I apologize. I can't remember the name of the company, but there's a company now in the state of Washington that's relocating their world headquarters to Indianapolis because they believe Indiana is going to be a center for production of electricity based on their ability to build small nuclear reactors. Wow. How much power does each modular reactor create? I think the average, now there's going to be different sizes, different types of mechanisms and everything. There's two big pieces to this. I think it's about 250 megawws and and again we said so 250,000 houses a thousand houses to a megawatt. So if it's 250 megawatts 250,000 houses it should be able to power. And how big is this reactor? Well they're about one quarter the size of like a nuclear reactor you three mile island. Most people have no idea. I don't know how big that is though. So it's pretty good size. So it's really a lot smaller. 20 acres. You can build these on 20 acres. 20 acres. a modular reactor on 20 acres. Yeah. And that's still a good buffer and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's not it's not edge to edge a building or something. You just that's the footprint you need to to install one. U I've got a report that I I'll share with you that I shared with the commissioners about this because if this company comes here, they're already looking to build one in Indiana. They have a location. They're going to build one. Uh and and they they So Indiana is getting nuclear power soon. It is. Does it already have nuclear power? Not in Indiana. Oh. So this is kind of a I mean we've been waiting for this since like the 60s it feels like. Well yeah of which president said that they were going to build a thousand nuclear reactors. Carter Carter thousand he wanted a thousand nuclear reactors in America by the year 2000 didn't happen. Didn't happen because because things like three mile island which I I got to say I I'm not opposed to them saying let's wait till we get this stuff to where that doesn't happen. But now it's good. Well these small nuclear reactors are kind of like the ones that we have in submarines and aircraft carriers. They've been in act They've been in act They've been active for 70 years. We got a lot of data. Got a lot of data. And don't they bury them like thousands of feet under the ground? It's like kind of Not that I know of. That's uh they're they're they're on top. Yeah. But they don't put the reactor down below. I don't know how these things that they're talking about building use spent nuclear rods. So not only do they get suck the rest of the power out of these spent nuclear rods, but now when they're done, they're done. They're inert. So we have no nuclear rod storage problems. No waste. No nuclear waste. We we serve or very little or minimizing minimal minimal nuclear waste. Yep. We do away with we do away with an issue we really don't have a good solution for. That's pretty awesome actually. So will the county investigate one of them or not? I know the state of Indiana is okay. State of Indiana is really actively looking for places that have the ability to put these in. Man, I just have a dream where we have nuclear reactors all over the country and everyone gets free electricity. Like that seems to me like something the government should be helping with is let's just power everything. I mean, we know China, you can look up videos and photos of China building solar solar plants literally over a mountain. Like imagine a whole mountain encased in solar cells. Like that's happening in China. China in the last 6 months has produced 10 times more power solar power than the rest of the world combined. like they are investing heavily into electricity because they see what's coming and it just seems to me like this is a this is exciting actually. I mean I know nuclear has downsides but but electricity not having electricity has downsides. So I don't know about this free electricity thing. Oh I know. I don't you know I think that conversation should continue to happen. However, um but brownouts let's at least get no brownouts. Let's get no brownouts. Let's get some stable electricity to where we can grow, a new factory can come in and the residents don't have to pay the price. Let's make sure that we take really good care of the people who live there. U and that's what we've done with the wind and solar. I I think we've done a really good job with that. U and hopefully if we get a data center, if they decide to bring one, we'll get a really good deal with that. If they bring a small nuclear reactor, get a really good deal with that. and it'll absolutely uh try to uh make the EPA understand that this is not a good place to do carbby capture. There we go. That's awesome. Well, I think it's a good place to wrap this portion of the conversation. And lastly, you don't get to pick any of this, right? You're the operator. You get assigned to these things. You aren't the decision maker on whether any of this stuff comes in. You're just the guy executing it and making sure it's done in the county's best interest. Yeah. I kind of like to refer to myself as like the gun the hired gunslinger. I just go out and try to execute the county's policies and the county's desires. The decision's already made. You're just making sure that the decision is as good as it can be. Yep. And and I and I can't do anything on my own. I always got to work through the elected officials. Sure. As it should be, right? I I guess now that you've been through the process, I'm curious. Do you think every county across the country could be thinking like you are? Or is it the case that this is actually so difficult that you need to you need to have somebody who's going to try really hard to get this done correctly without damaging the county and not fixing the roads, for example. I will tell you economic development in rural Indiana, and I would say probably true in rural United States is a most difficult job. These have been very difficult to do. Very difficult to do. Is it because you're fighting against the companies? It's just because the complexity of it and your complex your inability to have that level of experience because we've not done these things in this area of the country before. We're just now doing them. Yeah. Everyone's your first time. For you to learn enough to make quality database decisions requires a lot of effort, a lot of research, a lot of conversations, a lot of talk. A lot of people that have felt good about it, a lot of people felt bad about it. Uh it just required an awful lot of prep work for you and then to make sure that your consultants are the best you can find and they can give you good guidance and I think we've done that. Um, so yeah, I I feel confident that we've done a good deal for uh Blackford County. It's like the road use that we were talking about. Yeah, they're going to break the roads and they're going to fix the roads and they're going to do it on our standard and we're going to hold them to it. We worked for years on putting these contracts in place so that the county didn't suffer and they benefited. The county will benefit and those people will not suffer. Now, do I say that there sometimes a road might be broken till it can get fixed? That's a possibility, but not long term. Yes. Not long term and not a big permanent thing. Very temporary. And we'd be able to keep people moving. That's cool, man. And the citizens aren't paying to fix it. The other guys are. And we got to And we want them to improve it. We don't want them just to take it back. We want them to improve. Yeah. Improve. Yeah. Yeah, I guess are there looking back on all the contracts that you've done, are there any moments in the contracts where if you hadn't have been so thorough where you could see how the the community could have kind of been destroyed a little bit if you hadn't have stuck up for it so hard? You know, I think that always exists in any type of economic uh negotiation that you know they are going to fight as hard as they can to make sure their bottom line is there. I I mean I think but like were there moments where you looked at the contract and it's like wait a second that number if if I just signed this contract which somebody in my position rightfully might do if they weren't researching every line if I just signed it the county could lose $100,000 the county could lose a million dollars. Were there any moments like that? I I I think not so much that I could quantify it for a specific amount but that the county would not be as good off as what we could have been if we went in a different direction. Okay. Well, it's such an asymmetrical situation because these solar companies, they're doing a bunch of these deals and like if you keep doing these deals and these contracts and you've installed a bunch of these and but every county you're going to, it's their first time, their first time, their first time. I mean, that's that's a typical situation if you're going to go buy a used car. That salesman has sold hundreds of cars and the average American buys like one every couple of years or something. So, he's just going to know where the edges are a little bit better than you. So, it does take diligence. It's really amazing. And you know what? There will be times where they really want to stand on a mountain for something. Well, you know what? We can stand on this mountain. You either do it our way or walk. That's right. Because we don't have to have you. That's right. We would like to have investment and we would like to benefit the community. We'd like to benefit our residents, but not at any cost. Well, it's a breath of fresh air because I think generally speaking, the further away uh government gets from its people, the more easily it is to take advantage of them. And so to talk to somebody who's in local government where you know these roads, you grew up around here, you're it's like I can hear that you actually care and I can totally see how someone goes to Washington in the federal side and you can quickly get disconnected from whatever you're trying to do. And so the the the execution of local government in its in what it does actually seems like a more pure version of like what government is supposed to actually do because if you take advantage of your citizens, you live amongst the citizens like they're going to get mad at you and there's real recourse there versus the alternative. So it's a breath of fresh air. It's fun to learn about. Well, they're going to get mad at you anyway. Very. So for for those things, you know, you you sit and talk and you have conversation about it. I can tell you this. I go to bed every night and sleep really well knowing that I've been part of a team that has done their best, their absolute best to benefit Blackford County and those residents. The these guys and gals, the people that I've worked with on this, whether people up there agree or disagree, it's okay with me. What I have witnessed with my own two eyes over my six years doing this job has been they care. They care passionately about the residents. They care passionately about the service they provide. So yeah, I think we've done a really good job in trying to bring something positive overall, the big picture positive to help uh benefit every resident. Well, every resident think that they won't. Uh do I wish they would? I do. But that's just, you know, that's part of life, too. Yeah. Uh the big picture wise goes, I think this is going to benefit them greatly long term. We've already talked to people who have been interested in coming to Blackford County. Whether that happens or not, it's so hard to tell because these these projects are so complex and so difficult to do. Not only that, they always want incentives. They always want this, they always want that. So, um, yeah, I think that they've done a really good job and they've really cared and I think that is refreshing. I'm not sure every county has that. I'm not in every county. I know this one does. That's good. And I know this guy. I care. I don't know if you want to move to North Carolina and live in the county that I live in because that sounds awesome. Well, and as the United States moves into this age of AI and, you know, billions and maybe trillions of dollars are going to get dumped across the country. I I do I do wish every county and every municipality would think the way that you're thinking and try as hard as you're trying. So, it's it's really been a pleasure hearing from you. The average investment in a data center is what 1 to three billion. True. Now, you take that and put that on your tax base and see how that reduces anyway. And who knows, someday they might do away with uh property taxes anyway, and that park's mute. The bottom line is whatever we do, does it truly benefit the county? Yes or no. If no, walk away. If yes, pursue it as hard as you can and do the very best you can to bring it to the county for the benefit of the county. That's great. Thanks for being here, Warren. That was great. Pleasure. All right. See you everybody.