Erie wind turbine taken down, now being dismantled

ERIE – The 200-plus-foot wind turbine that loomed over Erie Middle School for almost 20 years was taken down Wednesday, Sept 4.

Crews from DW Zinser Demolition of Walford, Iowa, felled the steel structure and are in the process of cutting it into pieces before it can be moved to a recycling facility.

“It will take two to three weeks to cut it all up,” Zach Poulson of DW Zinser said as he and another employee worked at the site Thursday, Sept. 5. “We will bring our trucks in, and all the steel will go to recycling.”

The center base of the structure measured 200 feet, and it had three 90-foot blades, bringing the total height to 290 feet when a blade was directly positioned above the base, Poulson said.

The Erie School District 1 Board voted unanimously in July to demolish the structure, awarding the demolition bid of $258,290 to DW Zinser, which will be paid out of the board’s capital projects fund.

The wind turbine was installed in 2005 by Johnson Controls but had operational problems from the start, Erie School District 1 Superintendent Chuck Milem said.

In 2008, maintenance crews got it working to the best of their ability until the past five years, when it stopped working, Milem said in a previous interview, adding that it was a “one of a kind” that wasn’t replicated anywhere else.

A lack of service parts compounded the problem. Milem said engineers tried to remedy the problem, but after several years, they decided that repairs would be impossible, and replacing it would be too costly.

Brandon Clark contributed to this story.