Tilting At Windmills
The Wind blows freely,
Blowing across the earthscape.
But what if it stops?
When I first saw the windmills I was doing a military base closure project in California in 1992. As I had to fly into San Francisco, I would drive over the hills to the Central Valley town of Merced. At the top of the drive there were hundreds of turbine windmills. Until I saw one up close I really had no idea how huge the propeller blades were. The only thing was, out of the many, many I saw, only a half-dozen or so were in motion.
When I arrived in Merced I asked about the field. The folks told me that the propellers had killed so many birds, to include eagles, and there had been such a huge hue and cry from the animal protection organizations that the contractor was only allowed to operate a certain number at one time. Their opinion was that the electricity supplied was not worth the cost of maintaining the field. Don’t know if anything has changed or not in the last 30 years but I’d bet it hasn’t.
Moving to the East Coast, windmills were going to be installed off Cape Cod until Teddy Kennedy had them killed to save the view. Then years later with some windmills installed, concerns were raised about noise and “wind turbine syndrome” illness. To remove them costs $5-15 million. (Fox News, 2015) Currently, I can find that the only Cape Cod community giving the go ahead to turbines is Barnstable, MA, which Vineyard Wind promised $16 million to use city streets and $1 million annually in property tax. But “ACK Residents Against Turbines” from Nantucket and Marthas’s Vineyard have initiated a lawsuit against the government to cease and desist until environmental concerns are addressed. (Cape Cod Times) But as always, follow the Vineyard Wind money—to federal, state, local, and supportive non-profit organizations—to give the project a green light.
As Lisa Quattrocki Knight, M.D., Ph.D (green-oceans.org) writes,
“…once constructed, the parent companies retain no legal responsibilities for the projects. As the economist, Jonathan Lesser states, the limited liability subsidiaries, such as Revolution Wind, LLC, will possess no other assets than the turbines themselves and their related equipment. Without financial reserves to address future repairs, these LLCs will shift costs to the consumer…”
Boy, the hits just keep coming. If it sounds too good to be true….
Tomorrow, More Issues With Windmills
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