Wind and Solar Leasing in Des Moines County, Iowa

The Big River Wind project: scale and timeline

AES Corporation's Big River Wind is described in the company's own project materials as a 140 MW wind energy project spanning more than 12,000 acres of privately-held agricultural land in Des Moines County, with AES serving as long-term owner and operator of the completed facility and a targeted operations start in 2029. AES maintains a local project office at 602 Main St. in Mediapolis, inside the county. A project of this footprint necessarily involves lease or easement agreements with numerous individual landowners across the county's agricultural land -- turbine-pad leases, access-road easements, and often separate "good neighbor" payments to landowners near turbines but not hosting one -- though this page does not have county-specific per-acre or per-turbine payment figures verified from a primary source, and any figures circulating locally should be confirmed directly against your own contract rather than assumed from general industry ranges.

Because the project's decommissioning plan reportedly anticipates the land returning to agricultural use (or another use consistent with the land-use policies in force at that time) once the project's operating life ends, a landowner should read that provision in the specific lease offered, not assume the general project description guarantees particular decommissioning terms for an individual parcel. Get any lease reviewed by an attorney experienced in Iowa wind-lease agreements before signing, and separately confirm with the county Land Use Department whether your specific parcel falls within the project's current footprint or any expansion area under review.

The county's rewritten siting ordinance: three rule changes since 2022

Des Moines County's Board of Supervisors approved a Wind Energy Conversion Systems ordinance (No. 62) on July 18, 2022, establishing the county's first dedicated framework for utility-scale wind siting. It later adopted a separate Solar Farm Energy Systems ordinance (No. 63) covering solar-specific siting and decommissioning rules. Most recently, the board held three readings -- on January 6, January 13, and January 20, 2026, with a public hearing on January 6 -- and approved a consolidated Wind, Solar, and Battery Energy Systems ordinance (No. 64) on January 13, 2026, establishing minimum standards for Commercial Wind Energy Systems (C-WES), Commercial Solar Energy Systems (C-SES), and Commercial Battery Energy Storage Systems (C-BESS) together under one framework intended to protect public health, safety, and community welfare.

This pace of change -- three ordinances in under four years, the most recent adopted only months before this page was last reviewed -- means the specific setback distances (from property lines, occupied structures, and public roads), noise and shadow-flicker limits, height restrictions, and financial-assurance/decommissioning-bond requirements currently in force are a moving target rather than a settled backdrop. We were not able to independently verify the exact numeric setback and bond figures in Ordinance No. 64 during this research pass; a source discussing the county's approach in a regional siting-guide context noted that Des Moines County has coupled height restrictions with longer neighbor-property setbacks compared with some other counties, but treat that as directional rather than an exact figure to rely on. Request the current, adopted text of Ordinance No. 64 directly from the Land Use Department -- staffed by the Southeast Iowa Regional Planning Commission at (319) 753-4313 -- before evaluating any lease offer or estimating how a nearby commercial project might affect your own parcel's use.

If you're approached with a lease for a wind turbine, solar array, or battery storage component on your Des Moines County land, treat it as a real estate and legal transaction, not just an energy decision: have an Iowa-licensed real estate attorney with wind/solar-lease experience review the term length, payment structure and escalators, easement scope (including access roads and underground collection lines that may cross land beyond the turbine or panel footprint itself), decommissioning and land-restoration obligations, and how the lease interacts with any existing mortgage, farm lease, or conservation easement on the property, before signing anything.