Wind Farms

[miguel]

It would be great if there were a video game that would allow you to attack wind farms with A-10s and B-52s.

 

[JeremiahJohnson]

Settle down Beavis, you're making too much sense.

 

[Doug]

I can't find the thread now, but there was a posting about a wind turbine sitting idle on a farm. The INGO member stopped and asked the owners about it. They had put it in with a big tax break and/or subsidy. It eventually needed repair, but the power output was so low that it wasn't worth repairing.

 

[eldirector]

A family friend lives up in Michigan, with a windmill about 1/2 mile from their house. Says the resonance at certain speeds is maddening. Rattles the house, spooks the animals, and has actually started cracking plaster walls. The family has lived there for a few generations, and nothing like this happened until the windmill went up. I guess at certain wind speeds you can really feel the ground moving.

 

[indiucky]

Kennedy's don't like them...Well at least in their neighborhood...I am sure they are okay with yours however....

Kennedy tries to halt windmills - Washington Times

 

[Leadeye]

Find out who is behind them, a little digging will probably disclose that it's a foreign company with a board dominated by European merchant banking people. Our local co-op was talking about getting "green" energy from a company based in Houston. A little digging showed that while the company had a office in Houston, it was owned by Europeans, mining American tax money.

Always follow the money

 

[actaeon277]

Kennedy's don't like them...Well at least in their neighborhood...I am sure they are okay with yours however....

Kennedy tries to halt windmills - Washington Times

Well, at least they're consistent.
Many people are for things, as long as they don't have to deal with them.
Or against things, as long as they can have theirs.

 

[BigMatt]

Well, at least they're consistent.
Many people are for things, as long as they don't have to deal with them.
Or against things, as long as they can have theirs.

I am guilty of that. I was all for them until I heard the negative aspects of them.

 

[actaeon277]

I am guilty of that. I was all for them until I heard the negative aspects of them.

Changing your mind is one thing. Being for them if they are someone else's probem, until they are you're problem, that's hypocritical.

 

[BigMatt]

Changing your mind is one thing. Being for them if they are someone else's probem, until they are you're problem, that's hypocritical.

I agree.

There is a rally outside the Henry County Courthouse today at 5:30. The Planning Commission is meeting at 6:30, so we are hoping they take notice.

I have also invited a few County Council members/hopefuls that are seeking election/re-election in a few weeks.

 

[wagyu52]

Last I heard a bunch of landowners in Benton county have a class action suit aginst a windmill company that promised X dollars return per tower and have never hit that figure. Problem is the windmills have changed ownership since then and it's hard to track down how promised what when.
One of the scariest things to me is when these things wear out some bankrupt company is going to be the owner and the funds for cleanup will be long gone or grossly inadequate. Of coarse the Fedral government will step in and fund the cleanup just like they funded the construction.

 

[caverjamie]

One downside of these that never occurred to me is - after dark. I don't live anywhere near these things. One night we were driving across Illinois and I started seeing this vast sea of red flashing lights. I'm thinking, WTH is going on up ahead. It was who knows how many wind turbines - with their lights synchronized to flash together. Then I started wondering...would it be worse if they flashed all at once, or a hundred of them randomly flashing. It looked bad to me either way. I'm glad I could drive away from that site before I went mad.

 

[PistolBob]

Ask them how they will be dealing with a fire at 150 feet in the air.....how will it keep your fields from igniting?

[video]https://youtu.be/p5KvJjI21i0[/video]

or this...sprewing metal and fiberglass over 1/2 mile.

[video]https://youtu.be/-YJuFvjtM0s[/video]

 

[Wolfhound]

I live in the middle of the proposed wind farm and I am not happy about it. Those things are eye sores at the very least. I say put them out West where there are far fewer people.

Wouldn't want to live next to a nuke plant either.

 

[mom45]

OK, I went to the meeting. It was a community meeting. The only people there were opposed to the wind farm. Even though everyone was invited, there were about 300-350 people and no county commissioners, no county councilmen, no reps from Calpine (the company proposing this project).

There were a bunch of people spouting anecdotal evidence about headaches, drowsiness, memory loss - physiological stuff. I can't comment on that since I don't know if it is or is not true.

There were videos of the insides of peoples' houses when the blades "flicker" through the windows. That was very disturbing. I looked at a plat of the proposed sites, and there are 2 proposed within 1/2 mile of my house.

I was mostly interested in the property value stuff, county finance stuff, effect on the surrounding area - basically stuff that affects me.

The main points I gleaned were:

1) Nobody knows who is making the decisions. Everybody says that it is the County Commissioners, but another guy says he talked to Kim Cronk (a county commissioner) and Kim said he doesn't vote on that. I have contacted him through Facebook and he has yet to get back with me.

2) The study that Calpine presented on property value loss were seriously flawed. There are no unbiased studies that present change in property values in a true light. The study they cite takes a sample size of 51,000 homes, and less than 100 were within a mile of a windmill when they were sold. That is less than .2% applicable data. I don't consider that a viable study. Also, the study was commissioned by the Department Of Energy so that illustrates the bias from the beginning.

3) Nobody knows exact locations for the windmills. This could make a big difference on my opinion of a wind farm.

4) The proposed setbacks from property lines are 1.1:1 . That means for a 499 foot tower, it only needs to be 550 feet from the property line.

5) This is only viable through government grants. There are Production Credits, Installation Credits, Tax Abatement, Accelerated Depreciation... All these things are on the backs of the American People. Not to mention loss of property value for the people around the wind turbines.

My first priority is to find out who to talk to about his. I will be contacting the County Commissioners, the County Council, the Sheriff, the Mayor, whoever it takes to get a straight answer. I will also be studying up on real property value data.

I think I have made the decision to get more involved. I am not saying it is good or bad, but I do want the appropriate people to take responsibility for their votes. I don't want this to fly under the radar and no one to be accountable.

If your county has an ordinance regulating wind farms, it is likely that they need no special approval as long as what they propose meets the terms of the ordinance. If there is no ordinance, it is likely the Board of Zoning Appeals that would conduct a public hearing and give final approval or denial of the permit application. If there is an ordinance and what they propose does not meet the terms of it, then the BZA would again conduct a public hearing to consider a variance to allow the changes. I would start by asking the planning commission if they have an ordinance and, if they do, get a copy of it so you know what is allowed. The ordinances may be online where you can view them without even going there. If your county has a web site, I would start there and look under planning and zoning ordinances.

 

[sidewinder27]

Find out who is behind them, a little digging will probably disclose that it's a foreign company with a board dominated by European merchant banking people. Our local co-op was talking about getting "green" energy from a company based in Houston. A little digging showed that while the company had a office in Houston, it was owned by Europeans, mining American tax money.

Always follow the money

My cousin is an attorney for one of the big windmill companies, the fly him and his assistant to Germany for a week once a month. All the big windmill companies are typically out of Germany.

 

[sidewinder27]

Europe is now dealing with what happens when these things no longer produce enough. All across the EU there are rusting, nonworking, and falling apart wind farms.

The land under and around these are so contaminated from all the oil that these machines leak.

 

[Leadeye]

There's still a lot of American tax money to be mined here in the US by those people, DC law firms with DOE connections get their cut.

 

[BluePig]

I remember when we were in Hawaii (The Big Island) down near the south tip and seeing a huge wind farm in the distance.
I asked our tour guide about it and he told us that it was not running anymore.
Even though they had a constant wind there, they were not feasible money wise to keep running.
He said that once the gov't got out of it and stopped paying the bill, it was expensive to keep up with the repairs.
Found this article and looks like he was telling the truth.
Broken promises: The rusting wind turbines of Hawaii > Hawaii Free Press

 

[churchmouse]

I remember when we were in Hawaii (The Big Island) down near the south tip and seeing a huge wind farm in the distance.
I asked our tour guide about it and he told us that it was not running anymore.
Even though they had a constant wind there, they were not feasible money wise to keep running.
He said that once the gov't got out of it and stopped paying the bill, it was expensive to keep up with the repairs.
Found this article and looks like he was telling the truth.
Broken promises: The rusting wind turbines of Hawaii > Hawaii Free Press

Cut those eyesores down and scrap them out.