Wind and Solar Leasing in Ringgold County, Iowa

From a 2023 moratorium to a permanent, detailed ordinance

In June 2023, the Ringgold County Board of Supervisors put a temporary moratorium on new commercial wind turbine construction in the unincorporated county while it worked out permanent rules. On July 24, 2023, the Board approved separate ordinances regulating commercial wind turbines and utility-scale solar energy systems (US-SES), each covering the siting, construction, operation, and decommissioning of the respective technology, and then rescinded the earlier moratorium (resolution PC23-95) now that a permanent ordinance was in place. This sequence matters for context: the county moved from no rule, to a blanket pause, to a detailed permanent framework, all within about a month -- and county energy policy in Iowa has continued shifting since (several neighboring counties, including Clarke County, have separately adopted their own wind moratoriums or ordinance amendments through 2024 and 2025), so confirm you are looking at the current version of Ringgold County's ordinance rather than an earlier draft.

Wind turbines: a hard 20-turbine cap and tiered setbacks

The wind ordinance caps commercial-scale wind turbines at 20 total for the entire county -- a hard ceiling, not a per-project or per-landowner limit, meaning the countywide pipeline of turbines that can ever be built is fixed regardless of how many individual landowners want to lease. Setback requirements are specific: a turbine must sit at least a half-mile (2,640 feet) from property lines and at least a half-mile from the center of any roadway. Designated public areas -- all nine of the Ringgold County Conservation Board's parks plus the Kellerton Grassland Bird Conservation Area -- carry an even larger one-mile setback, reflecting the ordinance's specific attention to the county's conservation lands and grassland-bird habitat.

For a landowner evaluating a wind-lease offer, the practical implications are direct: because the countywide cap is fixed at 20 turbines, a lease offer today does not guarantee your parcel will end up hosting a turbine even after signing, since the developer's overall project layout has to fit within that county limit alongside every other participating landowner's parcel. And because the half-mile property-line setback applies to your neighbors' property lines as much as your own, a turbine sited near your boundary can effectively constrain what a neighboring landowner can build near that same boundary line -- worth discussing directly with adjoining landowners before signing, not just with the developer.

Utility-scale solar: an acreage cap plus residence and road-frontage setbacks

The solar ordinance caps total developed acreage for utility-scale solar energy systems at 400 acres countywide -- again a hard ceiling on how much land can ultimately be developed for this use, not a per-project limit. Setback requirements are more granular than the wind ordinance's: 1,000 feet from an occupied residence, 250 feet from the property line of a non-participating parcel (a landowner who has not signed a lease or easement for the project), 75 feet from the right-of-way of a paved road, and 50 feet from the right-of-way of a gravel road.

The non-participating-parcel setback (250 feet) is the detail most worth flagging to a buyer: if you own land adjacent to a proposed solar project but have not signed on to it yourself, the ordinance is specifically designed to give your property a larger buffer than a participating parcel would get. Conversely, if you are the one leasing land into a solar project, know that the 400-acre countywide cap means your parcel's inclusion in a project is contingent on the overall project fitting inside that ceiling alongside every other participating landowner.

What to verify before signing a lease or evaluating nearby land

1. Get the current, full text of both the wind and solar ordinances directly from the Board of Supervisors -- this page summarizes the caps and setbacks reported in 2023 coverage, not a verbatim reading of the ordinance text itself.
2. Ask the Board of Supervisors how many of the county's 20-turbine cap have already been permitted or are under active development, since that determines how much room remains for a new project (including one on your own land) to be sited at all.
3. If you are a non-participating landowner near a proposed wind or solar site, confirm the specific setback that applies to your property line and whether the proposed layout actually meets it.
4. Have any wind or solar lease or easement offer reviewed by an attorney experienced in Iowa energy leases before signing -- lease terms (payment structure, decommissioning bond, term length) are separate from, and not resolved by, the county's siting ordinance.
5. Confirm whether a specific parcel falls within the one-mile setback zone around any of the county's nine conservation parks or the Kellerton Grassland Bird Conservation Area before assuming a wind project is feasible there.