ESCANABA — The Delta County Board of Commissioners took no action on a request from Heritage Sustainable Energy to extend all conditional use permits an additional year.

Heritage also requested previously submitted site plans and turbine specifications to be approved, and acknowledgment all applicable permits were satisfied.

Additional wind turbines are planned to be added to the Garden Peninsula in two stages in 2019 and 2020. The turbine model submitted on the permit application has been revised by Heritage, and still meets all of the standards under the Delta County Zoning Ordinance.

According to Delta County Administrator Phil Strom, the board will review the matter at its next meeting.

In other business, the board:

– heard District Court Judge Steve Parks acknowledge Delta County Sheriff Ed Oswald and his officers for the excellent job they are doing. Currently, there are 122 people in jail.

“People take the officers for granted. They deserve recognition for continuing to care for prisoners under the conditions they have,” said Parks.

– voted to support Michigan House Bill 4227, sponsored by State Rep. Sara Cambensy. The bill has been submitted to create a committee for Michigan’s mining prospects. The committee will recommend actions to strengthen and develop a sustainable, more diversified mining and minerals industry in the state.

– authorized Strom to write a letter of support to Darcy Rutkowski, executive director of the U.P. Resource Conservation and Development Council, for a federal grant from the program, Sustain Our Great Lakes. The funding is needed to continue phragmites management, under the project titled —” Life After Phragmites: Wetland Restoration and Landowner Stewardship in Michigan’s U.P. and Northeastern Wisconsin.”

Invasive phragmites, a common reed that is perennial, is changing Michigan wetlands by robbing nutrients from native species.

– approved an Exit Interview Committee be created after it was proposed by Commissioner David Moyle.

– authorized the posting of a part-time corrections officer position in the Sheriff’s Department.

The next Delta County Board of Commissioners meeting is April 9. The previously scheduled meeting on May 7 is canceled.