The Agricultural Impact Mitigation Act: A Complete Guide for Illinois Landowners

If a wind farm, solar facility, pipeline, or transmission line is being built across your land in Illinois, the Agricultural Impact Mitigation Act is the law that's supposed to protect you. This guide walks through what the Act actually says, how it got here, and what's changed year by year — so you know what you're entitled to before you sign anything.

What Is the Agricultural Impact Mitigation Act?

The Agricultural Impact Mitigation Act — codified as 505 ILCS 147 — requires companies building large energy infrastructure on Illinois farmland to enter into a binding agreement with the Illinois Department of Agriculture (IDOA) before construction begins. That agreement is called an Agricultural Impact Mitigation Agreement, or AIMA.

The purpose is straightforward: construction and deconstruction of large facilities — wind turbines, solar arrays, pipelines, transmission lines — tears up productive farmland. An AIMA sets the standards for how that land has to be restored, and gives landowners a process for holding developers accountable if it isn't.

The Illinois Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Land and Water Resources negotiates and oversees these agreements. If you're a landowner with a renewable energy or pipeline project planned on your property, you should receive a copy of the executed AIMA — separate from your individual easement agreement with the developer — before construction starts.

History: How the Act Came to Be

The Act has gone through several distinct phases since it was first passed, expanding in scope each time. Understanding this history matters because the protections that apply to your situation depend heavily on what kind of project is affecting your land and when it was built.

Who the Act Applies To

Under the current version of the law, an AIMA is required for:

• Commercial wind energy facilities — wind energy conversion facilities of 500 kilowatts or greater in total nameplate generating capacity
• Commercial solar energy facilities — solar installations of 500 kilowatts or greater in total nameplate capacity

What About Pipelines and Transmission Lines?

It's a common misconception that pipelines and electric transmission lines fall under 505 ILCS 147 itself. They don't — at least not yet. Natural gas pipelines (regulated by FERC), oil pipelines, and high-voltage transmission lines (typically referred to IDOA by the Illinois Commerce Commission under the Farmland Preservation Act) often do use agricultural mitigation agreements in practice, but those agreements exist under separate state and federal authority, not this specific statute. This is exactly the gap HB5054 attempted to close by writing pipelines, transmission lines, and battery storage directly into the Act.

What's Excluded

The law specifically does not apply to:

• Solar facilities on the customer side of the meter that are primarily used to offset the owner's own electricity load, so long as nameplate capacity stays at or below 2,000 kilowatts — a separate carve-out from the general 500kW commercial threshold
• Facilities built on land owned outright by the facility owner itself
• Projects that received a permit to construct before the relevant amendment's effective date

What an AIMA Actually Covers

This is the part most landowners care about. By statute, an Agricultural Impact Mitigation Agreement must address:

What Counts as "Abandonment"

AIMA Drain Tile Protections: The Most Overlooked — and Most Litigated — Part of the Agreement

Of everything an Agricultural Impact Mitigation Agreement covers, agricultural drainage tile is consistently the category that creates the most disputes between landowners and developers after construction ends. The reason is straightforward: tile is underground, often old, frequently undocumented, and easy to damage without anyone noticing until the following wet season — when a field that should be draining isn't.

What the Statute Actually Says

Section 15(b) of 505 ILCS 147 lists the mandatory contents of a wind energy AIMA. It explicitly requires the agreement to address the "protection and repair of agricultural drainage tiles." The solar AIMA template issued by the Illinois Department of Agriculture includes parallel language, requiring the developer to maintain surrounding area subsurface drainage, re-establish subsurface drainage within the facility footprint, and make permanent repairs as needed.

This isn't aspirational — it's a binding requirement on the developer before construction begins. The AIMA must include it. What varies is the specifics: how tile will be located, what the repair standard is, who inspects the work, and what happens when a tile is discovered during construction that wasn't identified beforehand.

The Undocumented Tile Problem — Documented

Illinois has more subsurface tile drainage than nearly any other state. According to the 2017 USDA Census of Agriculture, approximately 39 percent of Illinois cropland — roughly 10 million acres — is drained by tile. Much of it was installed between the 1880s and the 1970s, in many cases by hand or with minimal equipment, and rarely with records that survived.

University of Illinois Extension has documented this directly: "Many of the drainage systems in the state are irregular — that is, the drains are not laid out according to a pattern, nor are they equally spaced." Illinois Extension's Farm Drainage series further notes that 1930s-era tile mains running under railroads were installed with no recorded easements — court records being the only documentation that they exist at all.

This isn't a historical problem. It's an active one showing up in current solar permit applications across Illinois. A 2025 preliminary drain tile report submitted to Kane County for a proposed solar facility (USS Rhea Solar, Kane County Zoning Petition) stated directly: "The Landowner stated that he believes there is drain tile on the proposed project premises but is not sure of the exact location. Given the historic land use of the proposed project premises, it is likely that drain tile is present." The developer was required to hire a third-party consultant to conduct a physical drain tile survey using Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) before a building permit would be issued.

A second Kane County solar application (Orchard Solar, 2025) submitted its own preliminary drain tile investigation report as a required submittal document specifically to satisfy AIMA requirements — identifying one known main tile dividing the property but acknowledging more were likely present.

These are not edge cases. They reflect a systemic reality: across Illinois, a large share of the tile network has no recorded location, and developers are legally required to find it — but the standard for "finding it" before construction has historically been inconsistent.

SB1699: The Law That Changed the Game for Tile (P.A. 103-0580)

The passage of P.A. 102-1123 in January 2023 — the law that preempted county bans on wind and solar siting — created an unintended gap: it didn't explicitly address drainage. The Illinois Farm Bureau identified this immediately and pushed back, noting that the Farm Bureau had specifically "wanted to preserve the ability of counties to regulate the drainage plans of renewable energy projects."

During the fall 2023 veto session, the General Assembly acted. Senate Bill 1699, sponsored by Sen. Bill Cunningham and Rep. Larry Walsh, passed unanimously — 107-0 in the House, 51-0 in the Senate — and was signed by Governor Pritzker as P.A. 103-0580, effective December 8, 2023. Rep. Walsh said explicitly that the bill was introduced because of "concerns over previous damage done to tile drainage by wind and solar projects."

What P.A. 103-0580 requires of wind and solar developers:

• File a farmland drainage plan with both the county and impacted drainage districts before construction begins
• Compensate landowners for crop losses or other agricultural damages resulting from drainage damage caused by construction
• Repair or pay for damage to the subsurface drainage system — tile lines, culverts, water gathering vaults, open drainage ditches
• Repair or pay for restoration of surface drainage disrupted by construction or deconstruction

This law also clarified that a developer with county siting approval may cross or impact a drainage system — including drainage district infrastructure — without prior approval from the drainage district, so long as all damage is repaired. The drainage district has 60 days to review the farmland drainage plan.

"The bill responds to concerns over previous damage done to tile drainage by wind and solar projects and ensures renewable energy companies would be liable to repair any agricultural damages." — Rep. Larry Walsh, sponsor of SB1699, FarmWeek, November 2023

What Happens When Tile Is Damaged and Nobody Knew It Was There

This is where the legal and practical reality diverge most sharply. The AIMA requires developers to protect and repair tile. But if the tile's location was never documented — no maps, no GIS data, no survey — a damaged line can be genuinely difficult to tie back to construction. Developers have argued that tile they didn't know about couldn't have been part of the AIMA's scope. Landowners discover the problem when a field shows water the following spring.

The IDOA's standard AIMA templates address this partially: developers are required to contact landowners and tenants before construction to ask about tile locations, and all identified tile must be staked or flagged before equipment moves. For pipeline AIMAs, the IDOA's standards state that "the Company will endeavor to locate all tile lines within the right of way prior to construction" — but "endeavor" is not "guarantee."

The practical protection for a landowner is having an independent, GPS-documented pre-construction drainage map. If tile locations and conditions are documented before a shovel touches the ground, there is no ambiguity about what was there. If damage appears after construction, the map is the evidence.

Why the Location Problem Is Worse Than Most Developers Admit

Large renewable energy projects in Illinois often cross dozens of parcels. Most of those parcels have tile. Some of those parcels have tile that even the landowner can't locate precisely. Developers conduct their own pre-construction surveys, but those surveys are driven by permit requirements — they look for what they're required to look for, to the standard required, and document accordingly. An independent survey conducted for the landowner, before the permit process begins, creates a parallel record that isn't filtered through the developer's interest.

Illinois Extension's farm drainage research documents cases where 1930s-era tile under railroads had no recorded legal easement, yet the tile was actively draining farms for decades. If those farms were in the path of a solar project today, the developer's pre-construction survey would likely find the tile — or might not, depending on soil conditions and GPR penetration. The landowner's best protection in either case is their own documentation, created independently.

What a Landowner Should Demand in Writing, Before Construction

Your AIMA and underlying easement should explicitly state:

• The method the developer will use to locate tile (physical probing, GPR, review of existing maps, landowner/tenant interviews)
• The standard for "located" — GPS coordinates, mapped to a specific accuracy
• Who is responsible for tile discovered during construction that wasn't identified in the pre-construction survey
• The repair standard — not just "repaired" but to what specification, within what timeframe, and verified by whom
• Crop loss compensation specifically tied to drainage failure — P.A. 103-0580 requires this but your underlying agreement should spell out how damages are calculated
• A contact person and response time for reporting drainage problems after construction ends

None of this requires a lawyer to negotiate — it requires knowing what to ask for. The standard AIMA template is a floor, not a ceiling. Your individual easement can be more protective.

What Counts as "Abandonment"

One protection landowners often don't know about: the Act defines exactly when a facility is legally considered abandoned, which triggers the developer's deconstruction obligations. The rules are different for wind and solar, and the gap matters if a project on your land goes dark and the developer goes quiet.

Wind Facilities

A commercial wind energy facility is presumed to have reached the end of its useful life if no electricity is generated for 12 continuous months AND the owner fails, for 6 consecutive months, to pay the landowner amounts owed under the underlying agreement. Once that presumption is triggered, the owner has 18 months to complete full deconstruction before the facility is legally "abandoned."

Solar Facilities

Solar has a tighter timeline and a simpler trigger. A commercial solar energy facility is presumed to have reached the end of its useful life if the owner fails, for 6 consecutive months, to pay the landowner amounts owed — there's no separate "no electricity generated" requirement like there is for wind. Once triggered, the owner has only 12 months (not 18) to complete deconstruction. Solar owners are also required to submit a deconstruction plan and financial assurance — like a bond or escrow account — to the county before construction even begins, specifically to cover this scenario.

What Landowners Should Do

1. Ask for the AIMA before signing anything. Developers are required to provide landowners with a copy of the executed AIMA — separate from your individual lease or easement — not less than 30 days before construction begins for solar projects.
2. Get an independent drainage map before construction starts. If your property has agricultural drainage tile, document its location and condition before any equipment touches your land. This is the single best piece of evidence if tile is damaged and a restoration dispute arises later.
3. Know your county's role. Wind and large solar projects require a county siting permit, and since P.A. 102-1123 (2023), the AIMA must be fully executed before the county's public siting hearing — not after. If a developer hasn't shown you an executed AIMA by the time of that hearing, that's worth raising at the meeting.
4. Use the mediation process if something goes wrong. Landowners who've signed an AIMA can request mediation through IDOA's Bureau of Land and Water Resources if construction problems go unresolved.
5. Watch for legislative changes. With HB5054-style expansions likely to resurface in future sessions, the scope of what's covered — and what enforcement looks like — may continue to change.

Summary: What You Should Know

Getting an Agricultural Impact Mitigation Agreement in place is a critical step for protecting your farmland when a wind, solar, or pipeline project is planned. The AIMA sets the minimum standards for land restoration, drainage tile protection, and other construction impacts — and it gives you a process for holding developers accountable if they don't follow through.

If you have a wind, solar, or pipeline project planned for your property and want an independent drainage tile map before construction begins, that's exactly the kind of documentation that protects you under an AIMA — and it's something we, Patrick and Agrowhere, LLC, can help with directly.