Who's misguided about wind power?

To the editor, Brattleboro (Vt.) Reformer:

The editorial of July 21 ("What's the fuss over wind?") asks, "What is more of a danger? A spinning turbine blade, or nuclear waste by the Connecticut River? What is more damaging to Vermont? A wind farm on a ridgeline, or the trees on that ridgeline dying off from acid rain and pollution generated by coal-fired power plants?"

At this stage in the debate, the irresponsibility of those questions is inexcusable.

Even the promoters of wind power on the grid can no longer get away with pretending it will displace energy from coal or nuclear power plants. (Vermont doesn't even use electricity from coal plants!) Those plants provide base load power. As a highly variable and intermittent source of energy, wind turbines would only provide occasional peak load power, occasionally when actually needed.

If we erected all 350 megawatts of giant turbines that have already been proposed in Vermont, or twice that amount, which many advocates would like to see (without, as classic NIMBYs, actually having to see or hear them near their own homes), we'd still suffer from the same amount of nuclear waste and acid rain.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont

Violation of the mountains by wind erections

The Mountaineer wind power facility on Backbone Mountain, Tucker County, West Virginia, which kills thousands of bats every year (and owner Florida Power & Light has therefore halted access to researchers so they and other developers can get on with erecting hundreds more giant (and useless) turbines on this ridge that spans West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania).

"I looked around me, to a place where months before had been prime country for deer, wild turkey, and yes, black bear, to see positively no sign of any of the animals about at all. This alarmed me, so I scouted in the woods that afternoon. I am accustomed to these woods, and know them and the signs of animals well. All afternoon, I found no sign, sight, or peek of any animal about.

"I did notice, in the next few months, that the animals were more abundant down here in the valley, in the farmers' fields and such. Places that they had steered away from before, they now were in, and causing trouble for man, and, in turn, getting shot. I saw more bear and bobcats in the populated areas than I had ever seen. I went up to the windmills several times to check, and it seemed that the animals had moved away from that area. There were no sight of them, no prints, no sign."

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism, ecoanarchism, ecofeminism, animal rights

Industrial wind destroying Flint Hills in Kansas

The Flint Hills in eastern Kansas were recently named by Yahoo as the fifth best travel destination in the U.S. As Yahoo's listing states:

Mostly treeless and curving gently across the ... landscape, the Flint Hills are home to the largest remnant of native tallgrass prairie in the world. Newcomers driving through this sublime setting ... are stunned by their first glimpse of this gorgeous landscape.

Yet this national treasure has already been desecrated by a massive industrial wind power facility and is targeted for yet more. Compare these pictures of the area before construction and the very unsublime result. And all those towers won't do a thing to change our energy use.





More pictures are available from Protect the Flint Hills.
wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, Kansas

The wind whistles through it

To the Editor, Barre-Montpelier (Vt.) Times Argus:

The editorial of July 19 ("For the birds") rightly recognizes the need to curb the use of fossil fuels. It therefore warns of the damage from drastic climate change compared with that caused by "a few wind projects."

That is an irresponsible statement.

Wind turbines generate electricity, which in Vermont already comes almost exclusively from non-fossil fuel sources. So big wind would not "curb the use of fossil fuels."

Even in places where the electricity does come from fossil fuels, wind turbines would not threaten in any way the steady base load provided by coal. And wind's intermittency and variability require other sources to stay on line. The greater load balancing burden may even cause those sources to burn more fuel not less. Wind promoters can not show a single example of other fuels being reduced because of wind turbines on the grid.

That's just concerning electricity. Most fossil fuel is burned for transport and heating.

So it is irrelevant to compare the potential damage from "a few wind projects" to that from climate change. No matter how many giant wind turbines we erect, it will have no effect on fossil fuel use. Giant wind turbines will only add damage of their own, without any mitigating benefit at all.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont, animal rights

Proposed wind projects in New York

Provided by Save Western New York.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, New York

Searsburg wind facility vs. UPC's Sheffield/Sutton

UPC, the company proposing 26 behemoths over several ridges in Sheffield and Sutton in northern Vermont, have sponsored a bus tour to visit the eleven 9-year-old Searsburg turbines in southern Vermont. They might as well take people to see the toy turbines at Legoland.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, Vermont

East Haven Wind Farm denied permit

The Vermont Public Service Board announced today that it has denied the application for a "certificate of public good" by East Haven Wind Farm (Mathew Rubin and Dave Rapaport). Click the title of this post and scroll to July 17 for the final order, which includes the hearing officer's recommendation and subsequent comment.

We have carefully reviewed the parties' comments ... and find in those comments no basis for changing the Hearing Officer's recommendations. Instead, for the reasons that the Hearing Officer has presented in the Proposal for Decision, we adopt his findings, conclusions, and recommendations ...

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED by the Public Service Board of the State of Vermont that:

1. The findings, conclusions and recommendations of the Hearing Officer are hereby adopted, as modified above.

2. The proposed Project will not promote the public good of the State of Vermont, and a certificate of public good shall not be issued pursuant to 30 V.S.A. §248.

Dated at Montpelier, Vermont, this 17th day of July, 2006.

This is the precedent everyone on both sides has been waiting for. Maybe VPIRG and the Conservation Law Foundation can now return to protecting people and the environment instead of insanely promoting industrial development (of highly doubtful merit anywhere) in threatened rural and wild areas.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, Vermont, animal rights