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Sunday, August 09, 2009

Environment - "Blowback: Indiana's emerging wind farms whip up controversy: More and more critics say windmills aren't that green, aren't a great source of energy -- and can be harmful to people's health"

The ILB has a number of earlier entries on wind turbines. Today Jeff Swiatek has a front-page story in the Indianapolis Star. Some quotes:

What's happening in other states suggests that the warm and fuzzy feeling many Hoosiers have for wind farms could change as the big turbines creep closer to more populated areas near Indianapolis, Lafayette and other cities.

Benton County farmer John Gilbert said several farmland owners he knows refused to lease space for turbines. He can't quite understand that. He and his family leased ground for four turbines being built by French-owned enXco.

"My thoughts are, they are going to have to look at 'em, so they might as well get paid."

Wind turbine energy is here. But groups have sprung up nationwide to fight it.

Jon Boone, a retired University of Maryland administrator who helped found the North American Bluebird Society, has become a leading wind-energy critic from his rural Maryland home, where he helped fight a wind farm proposal several years ago. Now he duels with the windmill lobby through his Web site, stopillwind.org.

"Wind is neither clean nor green," he said. "It's like something from the Emerald City of Oz. It's entirely political. Well-intentioned people are coming in and being ginned by promises of a better environment."

Eric Rosenbloom, who got his start in the wind energy debate fighting a wind farm near his former hometown of Kirby, Vt., now heads National Wind Watch. The nonprofit coalition of about 300 groups fights wind farm projects across the country.

"We are still fighting a denial that there is any downside to industrial wind farms," said Rosenbloom, who's seen the debate intensify since National Wind Watch formed four years ago. "There is a lot of rancor that develops in communities" when wind farms come to town, he said. * * *

Indiana is fast becoming a player in the wind business. One reason is because the state sits at the edge of two power grids serving the Midwest and parts beyond.

The state got its first wind farm last year, in Benton County, a wind-rich spot where more than 600 turbines are up or proposed by several developers. In at least 14 other Northern Indiana counties, where winds also blow hard, developers plan sprawling wind farms holding thousands of turbines.

Like oil wildcatters of old, agents for wind developers are persuading hundreds of Indiana landowners to sign leases that allow turbines on their land for as long as 80 years.

Steuben County attorney John J. Schwarz II compared the leasing activity with California's Gold Rush of the 1840s.

Developers have homed in on Clinton and Boone counties, trying to lock competitors out of favorable areas. And the leases are written to strongly favor the rights of the developer over the landowner, Schwarz said. For instance: Leases often don't require developers to remove turbines if the company goes bust.

"Let's say they find out 10 years from now wind energy is not the way to go. Is a guy going to be looking at a huge, useless monument on his property?" Schwarz asked.

But such considerations are hardly front and center for developers looking to profit from wind farms and landowners angling to get a turbine and the typical $5,000 to $7,500 annual lease payments that come with it. * * *

With their location in rural areas, often on ridgetops or in mountain passes, wind farms also have broad environmental impact. They require quarter-acre clear zones for the turbines and long cuts through forests for permanent service roads.

The blades, turning day and night, are efficient killers of birds and bats. Some studies show large wind farms located in migratory paths or on ridgetops can kill thousands of birds a year, though other studies put the death toll much lower.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on August 9, 2009 09:56 AM
Posted to Environment