Wind and Solar Leasing in Clarke County, Iowa

A two-year, six-hearing path from moratorium to ordinance

Clarke County's Board of Supervisors imposed a construction moratorium on new commercial wind turbines in the unincorporated county effective June 12, 2023. That moratorium didn't end quickly: it ran through six separate public hearings on proposed ordinance amendments and multiple rounds of drafting, including a reported pause on amendment work in August 2025, before the Board finally adopted an updated commercial wind-energy ordinance and formally lifted the moratorium on October 1, 2025 -- a process that took two years and three and a half months from start to finish. That length of deliberation is itself a signal: this wasn't a rubber-stamp process, and the ordinance that emerged reflects genuinely contested tradeoffs between wind-lease income for some landowners and setback/siting concerns raised by others.

What the new ordinance actually allows

The ordinance adopted alongside the moratorium's end caps total commercial wind-farm development at 400 acres countywide -- a hard ceiling, not a per-project limit. It further confines where that development can happen: the only area the ordinance identifies as viable is Madison and Troy townships, near the Madison County line northwest of Murray, reportedly because that's the only location where the local electric grid can currently accommodate new turbine interconnection. Outside those two townships, a commercial wind project is effectively foreclosed under the current rules regardless of a parcel's wind resource.

Within the eligible area, turbines must maintain a 2,000-foot setback from any property line, except within a 2-mile buffer around towns and public land where different rules apply -- and even the 2,000-foot standard setback can be waived if the adjoining property owner signs off. For a buyer specifically pursuing wind-lease income, the practical takeaway is that geography inside Clarke County matters enormously: land in Madison or Troy township, especially land adjoining a willing neighbor able to waive setback, is in a fundamentally different position than land anywhere else in the county.

• Countywide cap: 400 total acres of commercial wind-farm development, not per-project.
• Eligible area: Madison and Troy townships only, near the Madison County line northwest of Murray, tied to available grid interconnection capacity.
• Setback: 2,000 feet from any property line outside a 2-mile town/public-land buffer, waivable by adjoining-owner agreement.

Solar is a separate, still-unresolved question

Don't assume the wind ordinance's resolution tells you anything about commercial solar in Clarke County -- it's governed by a separate moratorium the Board of Supervisors adopted effective December 16, 2024, intended to give the county time to weigh land-disruption and other siting concerns raised about utility-scale solar before any project could proceed. Private and residential solar installations are unaffected by this moratorium. As of this research pass, we could not confirm whether the solar moratorium has since been lifted, extended, or replaced by a permanent ordinance the way the wind moratorium was -- treat commercial solar development on a Clarke County parcel as an open question rather than either a blocked or available path, and confirm current status directly with the Zoning Administrator before factoring solar-lease income into a purchase decision.

It's also worth knowing that the Board of Supervisors imposed a separate, temporary moratorium on data-center construction in June 2025 -- a third large-scale-development category paused around the same period as the wind and solar questions. Taken together, this is a Board that has repeatedly reached for a moratorium as its first move when a new category of large-scale development proposal arrives, which is useful context: a moratorium here shouldn't automatically be read as permanent opposition, but neither should the eventual outcome be assumed to favor development without direct confirmation of where the county's rulemaking currently stands.

What to verify before relying on wind or solar income here

1. Confirm with the Zoning Administrator whether a specific parcel falls within Madison or Troy township, and whether the countywide 400-acre wind cap has remaining capacity.
2. Ask directly about the current status of the December 2024 commercial-solar moratorium -- lifted, extended, or replaced -- before assuming a solar lease is available on any Clarke County parcel.
3. If a parcel is near the 2,000-foot wind setback boundary, ask whether an adjoining-owner waiver has been executed or would be needed for a specific project layout.
4. Ask whether any other large-scale-development moratorium (data centers or otherwise) has since been adopted that could affect a planned use not covered here.