A zoning hearing board meeting scheduled for Wednesday night in Penn Forest Township may bring a multi-year debate over a wind turbine project on Bethlehem Authority land to a close.

The meeting, scheduled for 6:30 p.m., was scheduled back in November, when zoning hearing board solicitor Greg Mousseau gave attorneys for both the township and the Bethlehem Authority until Jan. 23 to submit final legal briefs before the board renders a decision.

The decision, he said at the time, would bring to an end a lengthy court battle over whether turbines are allowed on the property under the township’s zoning ordinance.

“We believe all the parties have exhausted all of their appeals and, to my knowledge, the party who wanted to develop this land is no longer involved,” Mousseau said at the Nov. 22 meeting. “We are here because the issue was remanded back here by the Carbon County Court of Common Pleas. There will not be any additional testimony before our board. We’ll get the legal briefs, deliberate in executive session and then render a decision at a public meeting on Feb. 22.”

Atlantic Wind LLC plans called for 28 turbines, which would stand nearly 600-feet tall.

Penn Forest’s zoning hearing board denied that use in a 2019 decision.

Atlantic Wind appealed, but a county court judge decided against them. Atlantic Wind appealed again, this time successfully, to Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court.

The Commonwealth Court decision, issued in January, said that while the authority does get drinking water from reservoirs it owns nearby, the wooded tracts proposed for turbines never received zoning approval for that use.

Bethlehem Authority has confirmed Atlantic Wind is no longer interested in building wind turbines on the property.