A cluster of wind farms sit in Wyoming County. In Arkwright, permits have been approved for a much-debated wind farm project. P-J photo by Greg Bacon

ARKWRIGHT — Now that the permits have been approved, the turbines propelling the Arkwright Wind Farm project are picking up speed.

Bryan Lyssy, senior construction manager at EDPR, the firm running the project, attended Monday’s Arkwright Town Board meeting to give an update on some of the construction aspects.

First, all trees that were intended to be felled, have been. The chipping process of said trees is ongoing. It’s been taking slightly longer than anticipated due to some of the rainy and muddy conditions.

Within a few days of the meeting, the crews are going to be mobilizing their civil equipment to begin the installation of limited access roads that will be used to construct three calibration meteorological towers. One will be a permanent tower and two will be temporary towers. One access road will be able to reach all three towers.

However, in order to get those towers in, there will be some construction work being done on Meadows Road.

“We’re going to need to do some improvements on Meadows Road, to bring it up to standards so it does not get overly worn down, and then (we’ll be) constructing a single access road off of that area,” said Lyssy.

“Meadows Road, we do have some residents on there, so make sure the roads stay so they are able to get their cars in and out of there,” said town Councilman Roger Cardot.

“That’s why, one of the first things we want to do is bring it up to a better standard, because we’ve already seen the tree clearing, with the limited frost in the ground, they took more wear and tear than we had anticipated at this time of year,” explained Lyssy. “So we did bring in some extra gravel to fix what was already starting to rut up, and we’re going to bring it up a little more to support the heavier construction.”

The firm is also conversing with the International Energy Agency to contract for civil construction aspects, including access roads and turbine foundations.

Finally, EDPR is working with Chautauqua County to get the final use permit for Center Road. As soon as that permit is authorized, equipment will start to roll in.