CHEYENNE -- The Wyoming Senate voted Friday to impose the nation's first state excise tax on wind energy production, and committees in both legislative chambers advanced new regulations on the state's fledgling wind industry.

Gov. Dave Freudenthal, who made the wind tax a priority of his legislative agenda, intends to sign the bill, a spokesman said. Lawmakers amended the tax as it passed through the House, and both chambers passed the proposal with at least a two-thirds support.

The bill would impose a $1 per megawatt hour excise tax on wind energy production and split the revenues 60-40 between counties and the state. The tax would take effect starting in 2012 and would apply to turbines that have produced electricity for three years.

Throughout the debate, many legislators echoed the wind industry's concern that Wyoming's overall tax structure for the industry needs more study. Lawmakers amended the bill to push the tax's effective date back, giving the state more time to examine the best way to tax the industry.

"It will be a very interesting study on tax policy, and how generation tax relates to property and sales tax," said House Speaker Colin Simpson, R-Cody, who voted against the tax bill.

"The concepts of upfront payment, and medium and long-term payouts and how you structure that in the best manner for the industry, the state and the landowner -- I think that's the crux of the issue."

Also Friday, the House Minerals Committee voted to send Senate File 66 to the full House.

It would expand the Industrial Siting Act, which is the state's permitting authority for major industrial projects. The act would cover wind farms of at least 30 turbines and their collector transmission lines, the lines that gather power from the wind farms and take it to connections with the grid.

"This bill is very important to the (county) commissioners," said Joe Evans, executive director of the Wyoming County Commissioners Association. "They're the ones dealing with the issues with the wind towers at the county level."

The Senate Minerals Committee passed one other wind measure Friday by voting to give counties permitting authority over wind farms. House Bill 72 sets out minimum development regulations, even for counties with no zoning, but doesn't prohibit counties from exceeding those minimums.

The bill sets permit application requirements for wind developers covering issues such as planning for waste management, emergencies, roads and reclamation. The measure now goes to the full Senate.

Both the Senate and House minerals committees added amendments to the respective bills that require agency or county rules for wind developers to give notice of their plans to owners of mineral rights located on and under a wind project.

"We've had several instances already where mineral owners saw information in a local newspaper about a wind project and then, upon finding a map, found out that that was right on top of their claim," said Marion Loomis, executive director of the Wyoming Mining Association.

The Senate Minerals Committee also voted to recommend approval a moratorium on the use of eminent domain for merchant wind power collector lines until June 30, 2011.

"It's this maze, this gathering system that consolidates the power, that has the potential to be pervasive on the landscape and has a lot of potential for habitat fragmentation, bad relationships between neighbors," said sponsor Rep. Kermit Brown, R-Laramie. "All this bill does is say, 'We need to take a timeout."'

The bill would also continue the legislative Task Force on Wind Energy, which was formed in 2009, and assign it to study: the definition of collector system, the appropriate use of condemnation authority for collector systems, payments to landowners subject to collector systems on their land, and state policy regarding the severance of the wind estate from the surface estate.

BillTracker

House Bill 101

* What the bill would do: Impose a $1 per megawatt hour excise tax on wind-generated electricity produced in Wyoming.

* The latest: The bill passed the state Senate 29-1 on Friday.

* What's next: Gov. Dave Freudenthal will sign the bill next week.

How they voted

In favor (29): Anderson, Bebout, Burns, Case, Coe, Cooper, Dockstader, Elliott, Esquibel, Geis, Hastert, Hines, Hunnicutt, Johnson, Landen, Larson, Martin, Massie, Meier, Meyer, Nicholas, Perkins, Peterson, Ross, Schiffer, Scott, Sessions, Townsend and Von Flatern.

Against (1): Jennings.