The big picture

To the editor:

Jody Howard rightly urges us to look at the big picture of fossil-fuel burning, listing some its many ill consequences in a letter in the Dec. 9 Marblehead Reporter.

In then arguing for wind power, however, it would be helpful if Howard could give examples where wind power has in fact reduced fossil fuel use. It seems that Denmark and Germany, the world's leaders in wind power, have not reduced their fossil fuel burning, so Howard's (and HealthLink's) concerns appear to be irrelevant to the debate about wind.

The threat to the Berkshires

from "The rush to wind power: a threat to the Berkshires' way of life"

by Eleanor Tillinghast
A year from now, the third highest point in Massachusetts will be turbine 16 of the Hoosac wind power plant in the towns of Florida and Monroe. Only Mount Greylock and Saddle Ball will be higher. Seven of the Hoosac turbines will be among the 10 highest points in the state. Eleven will be above 3,000 feet.

Enxco Inc. will build 20 wind turbines, each 340 feet tall, on two of our most visible mountains. It will cut more than 4 miles of new roads (some 35 feet wide) through forest, crossing more than a dozen streams and wetlands. The contours of both ridgelines will be cleared, blasted and filled to accommodate vehicles 135 feet long and weighing 197,000 pounds.

The mountain range is a major migratory route for hawks, golden eagles and bald eagles. As scientists are discovering at similar sites, bats are also vulnerable to injury and death from turbine blades. Protected plant species are on the property. One stream flows into a pond that has wild brook trout.

Hoosac is just the beginning. Wind turbines are planned for Brodie Mountain and proposed for Berlin and Lenox Mountains and the Hoosac range south of Enxco’s project.

The Appalachian Mountain Club recently did a study showing that 65 sites on 96 miles of ridgeline in Massachusetts have sufficient wind for turbines. The sites range from a quarter-mile to eight miles long. Of the 65 sites, 62 are in the Berkshires.

... The mayor of Salem, who threatened to sue to stop the state from requiring new emissions controls in a 'Filthy Five' power plant in his city, has announced his support for renewable energy. ...

We are being asked to sacrifice our wilderness to reduce global warming, pollution, and dependence on foreign oil. These are vital goals that can be achieved much more successfully and at much less cost through proven energy efficiency and conservation programs and enforcement of clean air laws.

One regional environmental group has suggested that electricity savings from efficiency initiatives can be considered a new source of energy, costing less than any alternative supply. As just two examples: Kimberly-Clark Inc. improved its energy efficiency by 11.7 percent and saved enough fuel over three years to provide 700,000 homes with electricity for a year. A day after the Aug. 14, 2003 blackout, the regional grid operator paid 82 businesses in Connecticut to reduce energy consumption and within a 10-hour period saved enough power to supply 89,000 homes.

... Gov. Mitt Romney lobbied the White House against the Cape Wind proposal but supports the multiple wind power plants proposed for the Berkshires. Likewise, the secretary of environmental affairs has demanded full environmental reviews and an overall planning process for all offshore wind facilities but is enabling construction here without adequate assessments of impacts and consequences.

Students in Danville (Vt.) don't learn about wind energy

"The windmill is not quite producing as much energy as we had hoped," said Rapoza.

In a year the wind turbine saved the school about $370.00. Compare that to a monthly electric bill for the school of $4000. One reason for the lower than expected savings: The blades were experimental and did not work well. The manufacturer is going to replace them.

"They are going to come out and replace the blades with some newer blades that will do about a third better for production," said Rapoza.

The school says every little bit helps. And more importantly than saving on the bottom line, they see the wind turbine as educational for the kids. An up close way to learn about alternative energy. It's something the students say they now think more about.

Brittany Swartzenberg is a 10th grader. "It is one of those things that you want to make sure for when your kids get older the air is clean for them."

"This is something that all of us are going to have to look at in our future," said Rapoza.

The Danville School wind energy project was just given an award by the Governor for environmental excellence in education and outreach.

So that big expensive wind turbine contributes less than 1% of the school's needs, the improvement "promises" to bring that up to 1%, and the counterfactual lesson that these brilliant devices will somehow clean up our air is rewarded as "excellent."

It appears that everyone has decided wind is the "alternative" energy source to back, even though not a single example of its making a positive difference has ever been shown. On the contrary, the lesson, as in the Danville case, is that we need an alternative to wind.

A slew of destruction

Not surprisingly, the installation of giant power plants requires a certain amount of destruction, both in the construction and ongoing. This might be acceptable in some locations if there was a clear benefit. Unfortunately, wind facilities are practically useless, so there is very little to justify this industrial expansion into agricultural, recreational, and wild areas.

1. Le Moniteur-expert reported that the French hunting & wildlife office found that raptors and night-migrating birds are seriously threatened by wind turbines and then calls the impact "
minimal."

2. Similar to the need in California (see yesterday's post), New Mexico's governor Bill Richardson has called for funding of new power transmission lines that are needed to carry wind power he hopes to see built.

3. "We had hoped to tip-toe in and tip-toe out," the man said. But the construction company is facing their end-of-year deadline, so brought in 100 more workers and much heavier equipment, causing "major changes" (i.e., damage) to the New Mexico ranchers' land.

4. And in Vermont, the Marlboro school has decided to study its wind "resource" before rushing into buying a 120-foot turbine. But they cut down 10 trees anyway, to make room for the measuring instruments.

Fine lessons all in what is not environmental stewardship but is typical for the wind industry.

The Guardian interviews Ralph Nader

"Our political system is an idiocracy."

Something missing?

To the Editor, The Caledonian-Record:

There appears to have been a mistake in the Nov. 19 editorial, "Is Socialized Medicine Next For Vermont?" As printed, it stated that single-payer insurance "delivers health care rationing, no choice of physicians, overworked and underpaid providers, immoral cost shifting and soaring taxes."

Obviously that was meant to be a description of the private health insurance that most people know. A sentence must have been dropped that said compared to this dismal record a single-payer system of universal coverage would be a great improvement for everyone.

New lines planned to carry clean power

By Charles F. Bostwick, Staff Writer, Los Angeles Daily News:

LANCASTER -- Southern California Edison is proposing to run new 500,000-volt lines between west Lancaster, Valencia, Acton and Tehachapi to serve a huge expansion of Antelope Valley wind-energy farms.

Expected to cost $190 million to $250 million, the new lines would replace a lower-power line leading northeast from Santa Clarita, add to an existing power-line corridor from west Lancaster to Acton, and create a new power-line right-of-way north from Lancaster between 100th and 110th streets west.

"We are trying to minimize the impact by either building it within existing lines or by replacing existing lines," said Charles Adamson, Southern California Edison's project manager.

With a post-energy crisis state law ordering utilities to get 20 percent of their electricity from "renewable" sources by 2017, state officials say the Tehachapi-Mojave area has the potential to grow from 600 megawatts of wind power to as much as 4,500, with another 400 megawatts in Los Angeles County.

The proposed new lines could carry 1,100 megawatts -- enough for about 500,000 to 1 million homes, though the variability of the wind means the turbines would usually be producing far less than the peak output.

Seventy miles of new very-high-voltage power lines: This is not an alternative, but simply an expansion of our current electrical system. Note also that 4,500 MW of wind power is a 200-400 square mile power plant, hardly an environmentally friendly "solution" and one that would produce (though rarely when needed) barely 4% of the electricity California uses. The proposed lines would not even be able to handle the surge of such a plant's occasional peak production.