A private company would like to make Spanish Fork the home of the state's first commercial wind farm.

Wasatch Wind will hold a town hall-style meeting with Spanish Fork residents on Tuesday to explain the farm and answer any questions about the business or technology, said CEO Tracy Livingston.

The company has submitted a proposal to the city's Planning Commission that would allow it to install seven turbines, each 213 feet tall with a wingspan of 252 feet, in an abandoned gravel pit one mile from the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon. The project would cost $13 million.

Two more turbines could be installed in a second phase if the company is approved for a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant for the turbines, Livingston said. Spanish Fork City Council members must still approve the project and a zoning change requested by the company.

The area "is one of the best in the nation for wind farms," Livingston said. Each 1.5-megawatt turbine is expected to produce enough electricity to power 600 homes.

Wind power uses no water or fuel and creates no haze, greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide or mercury, he said. And despite what the critics say, wind turbines make only as much noise as a refrigerator and are not dangerous to birds.

In addition, a new study shows wind farms do not reduce property values, he said.

"And more importantly, the cost of energy from wind farms is competitive with coal or natural gas," he said.

The company is negotiating a contract with PacifiCorp, which would then buy and distribute the electricity produced at the wind farm, he said.

"Any time we make power out of a wind farm, it offsets a certain amount of coal, natural gas and water from hydro projects," he said. "We will offset 40 million gallons of water that would be used by a coal plant."

Wind power will also reduce the number of future coal plants, he said.

"And by doing that we will create more jobs and clean up the air at the same time," he said.

The company has also proposed a wind farm in California, and will do more wind farms in Utah if this is a success, he said.

"We are not the only ones," he said. "There are more than half a dozen pending in the state and their wind resources aren't quite as good and they need the support of the Legislature. We think they can get that support by the first wind farm being successful."

Before a wind farm can be developed, "you have to spend a lot of money early on to determine whether a wind farm is viable and negotiate contracts to get transmission access and all those require some support from government," he said.

Once the Spanish Fork wind farm is proven successful, the state will be more supportive of other similar endeavors, he said.

Spanish Fork "can continue to curse the strong winds that batter their community or they can join the rest of America's windy communities and be part of a wind farm that will provide clean, inexpensive energy, and will help make the air we breathe and our planet cleaner," said Steven Aldana, professor at Brigham Young University, in a statement. "It is irresponsible to continue to burn fossil fuels that contribute to global warming when clean sources of energy are so abundant and cost competitive with fossil fuels."

The public is invited to bring any questions and concerns about the wind farm to the town hall-style meeting to be held 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the High Chaparral Room at the Spanish Fork Fairgrounds, 475 S. Main St. in Spanish Fork. Spanish Fork City Council members and planning commissioners have also been invited to attend.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1.