COLUMBUS -- "The Ohio Power Siting Board reversed itself Thursday and agreed in a unanimous vote to remove language from a construction permit the Board approved in May that would have required the nation's first freshwater wind farm to shut down turbines at night eight months out of the year to protect migrating birds and bats.

Project developers called that provision a "poison pill" that made financing impossible and asked for reconsideration while 32 state lawmakers from northern Ohio publicly pressured the Board to reconsider. A draft version of Thursday's decision — circulated earlier in the week and introduced Thursday — had kept the overnight shutdown language.

Siting Board member Mary Mertz, director of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, offered an amendment before the vote on the draft proposal could be taken, removing the "poison pill" provisions, but allowing the full Power Siting Board as well as her agency to periodically review avian mortality rates rather than relying only on the Board's staff reviews."

-- John Funk, Utility Dive

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