Corporate representatives, local residents and concerned students gathered at the Holmes Student Center on Tuesday night to discuss a proposed wind-power facility for DeKalb and Lee counties.

The project would put 136 wind turbines on land near the village of Lee that would provide electricity for an estimated 36,000 homes. Forty-eight percent of Northern Illinois’ electricity comes from nuclear plants. The remaining percentage comes from coal.

Fears of an energy crisis like the one in California have become an incentive to develop renewable energy. One of the few options open to Northern Illinois is to build wind turbines, and Florida Power and Light is trying to make wind power a reality here.

“We’re the largest builder, owner and operator of wind facilities in the United States,” FPL representative Dirk Andreas said. “About 50 percent of everything that gets built in the U.S. we’ve done.”

FPL has facilities in several states, including Wisconsin and New Mexico.

“In addition to wind, we own the two largest solar plants in the world out in the California desert,” Andreas said. “And we own 29 hydroelectric facilities in Maine.”

Tuesday night’s presentation was hosted jointly by NIU’s Committee for the Preservation of Wildlife and the Sierra Club.

Both organizations support the proposed development, but not all of those who attended were proponents.

“One of my issues as a farmland owner in that area is the aesthetics,” Shabbona resident Mel Hass said. “When I look at the land that they take and the amount of power they produce … It’s giving up too much land for too little power.”

Representatives from FPL raised and alleviated some other concerns.

“Some of the early turbines out in California had a problem where they were killing a lot of birds,” Andreas said. “We don’t have that problem because there’s no place for birds to land and the blades only turn about 20 revolutions per minute, so they’re fairly slow. They’re almost hypnotic.”

Other concerns were about the turbines holding up against high winds.

“I believe the turbines are designed to withstand winds of over 100 miles per hour,” FPL representative Bill Blackmore said.

There will be a countywide meeting to discuss the issue in two weeks.

“I plan to attend, personally, and I plan to bring plenty of people with me from our group,” said Renee Kopulos, president of the Committee for the Preservation of Wildlife.