Some local officials are questioning whether the windmill, to be built on a hill east of the S-curve on Highway 12, is necessary and if it will harm the natural beauty of the land when a large portion of Badger eventually becomes a state park.

"It’s supposed to be a large open space that the public can go and enjoy and actually look at an unbroken horizon and imagine what the prairie looked like hundreds of years ago," said Laura Olah, who represents a citizen environmental group on the Badger Interim Management Oversight Commission.

Olah said the army’s choice for locating the wind generator on a 50-foot hill will make it visible for miles.

Badger Installation Director Joan Kenney said the Army chose that site because nearby it’s increasing lighting for security and constructing a temporary building for monitoring storage at the facility.

"To install the small building and lighting in that same area, we had to beef up the existing electricity supply," Kenney said.

The wind generator will feed electricity back into Alliant Energy’s grid and credited to the Army’s account.

"It will not supply all the power we need, but it’s an offset to the huge amount of power that we already use," Kenney said.

She said the wind generator is in line with federal and state pushes for governmental agencies to use more green energy, and the generator is in an area of the former ammunition complex that the Army expects to use until Badger is closed completely.

Some members of the Badger commission, which plans for the lands within Badger once the Army has transfered all the property, have expressed fears that the generator will be a permanent addition.

"If Army made a commitment to take it down when they are done with it, I don’t think anyone would have a problem with it," Bill Wenzel Jr., a member of the Sauk County Board and representative on the Badger commission, stated in an email to Kenney and the rest of the commission. "But because of the Rules As We Have Come To Understand Them, we strongly feel it will never come down, being a visual disturbance on a parcel of land that we have a plan to minimize just that."

Kenney said once the Army has left, the windmill could be sold or transferred to a land owner, if requested.

The portion of land on which the wind generator is being built is scheduled for transfer to the U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center.

Dairy Forage farm manager and agronomist Rick Walgenbach said he couldn’t say if the center will want the Army’s wind generator.

"At this point, it would be speculation," Walgenbach said.

He said Dairy Forage considered building its new facility on the hill where the wind generator is scheduled to go but decided against it in deference to the wishes of the Badger commission.

"We didn’t put it up on a hill because where visitors are coming, it would be smack dab in the middle of everything up there," Walgenbach said.

Kenney said she didn’t know how much the generator will cost because it still needed to go through the bid process.