The Wright County Board of Commissioners took the rare move of continuing its regular Tuesday meeting this week to Wednesday morning because of the complexity surrounding the on-going issue of construction of a satellite ground station in Rockford Township.
A resolution that would have ordered stoppage of the project which would locate ground satellite communication equipment on private agricultural land in the township, reportedly within approximately a mile of the Buffalo Airport.
Commissioner Nadine Schoen has been leading the push for examination of project which has been on a fast track since this spring. Schoen and other commissioners have questions regarding the public safety and overall impact of the project.
Despite a good deal of local opposition the project has continued to move forward without much scrutiny because of what Wright County legal officials have called “federal pre-emption.” The issue is a federal statute that is said to be able to pre-empt action on a county, local or state level. Throughout Tuesday’s discussion, Commissioner Schoen said she had been in contact with federal officials that she indicated seemed to feel that the project might be in a gray area of the “pre-emption clause,” though there was limited documentation from any given agency.
The Tuesday meeting ended with direction from the County Board to have, with the permission or cooperation of the land owner, to examine the site later that day to measure how much ground had been moved. The hope was to determine if there was more than 500 cubic yards of soil moved so far, the action would be in violation of the current county ordinance, which could give officials the authority to force the company doing the work to go through the conditional use permit, or, CUP process. The board agreed to resume its meeting on Wednesday morning.
During the Wednesday session, the board learned that county officials were unable to investigate the site Tuesday as the owner was not at the property, and wouldn’t be available until next week.
The board voted 3 to 2 against the original resolution to order stoppage on the project, but then voted unanimously to direct engineering officials to further examine the site as soon as possible and report findings back to administration in order to implement action to initiate the CUP process if the project was found to be in violation of the standing ordinance.
