Letters To The Editor; Wind Power
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Wind Power - Money not only talks, but also encourages selective silence
Deep down in this green cauldron of deception and delusion, bubbles a government and corporate feeding frenzy. The only “green” in this cauldron, however, is money and the hands stained in its passing
Dr. J. B. Nichols, Singhampton, Ontario
The Sun Times
July 18, 2006
World-wide wind power experience has monumentally failed to substantiate this industry’s promises regarding both energy generation and emission reductions. Rather than the “art of the possible”, what Ontarians desire and require is cost effective, efficient, and reliable energy production. Industrial wind power cannot truthfully profess ownership to any of these qualities. In fact, what industrial wind power truthfully represents is a heavily subsidized, high impact, NON SOLUTION to our energy “crisis”, a government and industry proclaimed crisis which is now entering its 4th decade. Amid the cacophony of NIMBYism allegations, my question, regarding the massive proliferation of this non solution would not be “if not here, then where?”, but rather, WHY? The answer is simple. MONEY.
Beginning at the ground level, the long accepted myth of country “neighbourliness” was quickly and effectively debunked the moment that wind power lease money was dangled in front of rural landowners. Many rural dwellers now aim to “farm” the wind, for personal financial reward, albeit of uncertain scope, no matter what the financial, health related, or aesthetic impact on their neighbours.
Despite the often stated refrain, “Nobody is going to tell me what I can and can’t do with my property”, experience shows that certain constraints on land rights remain justifiably necessary. It has been reported that one rural jurisdiction has even signed an industrial wind power contract without public notification or consultation whatsoever. This same municipality has previously entertained the creation of a mega-dump to dispose of garbage from Metro Toronto and is currently involved in talks regarding a garbage incineration plant. Finally, and almost surreally, it has been leaked from this very same council, that interest has been expressed regarding a contractual agreement involving the local disposal of toxic waste shipped in from Alberta. It is entirely unclear to me as to what possible motivation, other than monetary, would drive a municipality’s desire to become the toxin and refuse capital of Ontario.
It is into just such a milieu, one corporately perceived to be “backwoods” and in need, that the wind power satyrs come dancing. Pan pipe in one hand, dropping magic money behind them with the other. Those who reacheth out and graspeth this charmed currency, are placed under a powerful spell, instantly transformed into dedicated wind power disciples, existing in a trance like state, where truth can no longer be distinguished from fiction, nor does one care, so intoxicating is this magic of this money. The satyr then reigns supreme over the enchanted forest, empowered to desecrate his realm as his bounty.
Within this enchanted forest, some local newspapers are repeatedly publishing unabashedly propagandistic articles supporting industrial wind power, written by “freelance” reporters, claiming no corporate ties. Is this ethical? Is this even journalism? How many truly “community” newspapers do we have left?
This August, in Ottawa, a conference for the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, is being financially sponsored by Bullfrog Energy. The Canadian Wind Energy Association is now a corporate member of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. Many environmental protection agencies are now largely sponsored by energy corporations. These environmental agencies have now fallen curiously quiet on the wind power issue. The money is everywhere. Money not only talks, but also encourages selective silence.
Corporate executives have served on provincial wind power task forces, subsequently to be among the first to be awarded a provincial energy contract. In another alarming trend, government advisors and elected officials, empowered to create wind energy policy, are, after completing their terms, acquiring positions in wind energy corporations. They thereby reap monetary rewards for both themselves and their new employers from the very policies they created while wearing their previous hat. Would it be reasonable to accept such outcomes to have evolved through a series of random, uncoordinated, events, utterly devoid of any hint of complicity?
At the provincial level, the Ministry of Energy expresses little concrete interest in conservation. Why would they? They have a huge debt to pay down. They need your MONEY. Provincial politicians are advocating an already proven non-solution to our energy needs to further their own political cause. They hope to ride the “green” bandwagon to reelection and further financial dispensation. In fact, at this very moment, the province is attempting to amend legislation (sec 23 – Bill 51), that if successful, would effectively and completely remove municipal governments from the consultation and approval process for large scale industrial wind farms, proposed for their very own municipalities. I ask you comrade, is this what we call democracy?
Deep down in this green cauldron of deception and delusion, bubbles a government and corporate feeding frenzy. The only “green” in this cauldron, however, is money and the hands stained in its passing.
I really love Ontario. I just don’t know how to get there anymore.
Beware wind farms
Plattsburgh Press Republican (NY)
June 25, 2006
TO THE EDITOR: Your June 1 editorial, "Good ideas, bad realities," notes the need to find alternative fuel sources and the complexities involved.
But you are incorrect that wind power is "cheap." William Koch (Wall Street Journal 5/22/06) notes the cost of wind-generated electricity, "... is twice the current (kWh) rate of eight to nine cents." He exposes as fallacy the proposition that wind power is ready for massive deployment.
He concludes, "When you do the math, it is clear that every other form of power generation would be cheaper to build, produce more electricity at a consistent rate and save consumers more money." This underscores the fact that proposed wind projects are a giant boondoggle that will benefit only the developers.
The 860 huge turbines slated for Clinton and Franklin counties represent a billion taxpayer dollars for construction and millions in corporate welfare for any electricity they produce. The investment bankers stand to make so much money at our expense they will do or say anything.
They promise jobs. But those giant propellers clogging our roads were manufactured in Brazil! Dropping property values and damage to tourism won't help our economy either.
Not a single project has been approved, yet Noble Environmental Power is steamrolling ahead. Their fast-track approach to environmental and other local safeguards demonstrate the developers true colors. The green in "green power'' is money.
J.P. Morgan, whose bank owns Noble, once said, "I owe the public nothing." Noble and their cohorts will irrevocably plunder our region and move on to their next victim. If you think I overstate the impact, visit the Tug Hill and see the result of trusting these guys.
Wayne Miller
North Bangor
Don’t Let Reunion Make Us Lackeys
The Freeman's Journal
December 15, 2006
To the Editor:
Reunion Power’s attitude has gone through a profound change since March 2006 when, at a propaganda seminar Reunion hosted, company officials repeatedly said, “There is no way that we can give you a discount on your electricity bills.”
But it seems as though every time the town government tries to pass a law Reunion doesn’t like, the company does an about-face and starts throwing money around like an ATM machine that has just been given an electronic suppository.
Trying to influence the local government isn’t the only tactic that this ethically challenged company is using: It has embarked on a vigorous lobbying campaign by visiting board members at their homes and staying after meetings are adjourned to “work “ on town officials privately. It and even tried to enlist the fire department to support Reunion’s position on the proposed wind law.
It has been said that for evil to triumph, it is necessary for good men and women to do nothing. The time for doing nothing has passed. If we don’t act now and put and end to the corrupting influence of this company we are giving it our tacit consent to not only ransack the countryside but to treat the town government and all who live here as its own personal lackeys.
JACK PALMINTERI
Cherry Valley
Jordanville Wind Project Gets 80 Percent Tax Cut,
But Provides Only 6-12 Permanent Local Jobs
The Freeman's Journal
December 15, 2006
To The Editor
According to Herkimer County Legislature’s Finance Committee chairman, Dennis Korce, the county legislature has voted to offer Community Energy a Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) agreement of $8,000 per megawatt.
The payment is structured as $6,000 per megawatt plus one percent of gross receipts. Since the turbines planned for the Jordanville
Wind Project are two megawatt turbines, the taxation rate will be $16,000 per turbine.
The county’s consultant determined that the full taxation rate per turbine would be $40,000 per megawatt. Therefore, the county’s offer represents an 80 percent tax exemption.
This rate of exemption will apply to all wind projects in Herkimer County.
The Jordanville Wind project will bring “six to 12 jobs” to the county, according to the Jordanville Wind Project Draft Environmental Impact Statement.
By comparison, Wal-Mart brought over 200 jobs and generates over $1 million a year in sales-tax revenues at its distribution center in Schoharie County, which employs many Herkimer County residents.
And the environmental impacts are negligible, compared with what a 68-turbine factory will do to our towns and the vista from neighboring towns.
If we may judge from experience at the Maple Ridge project in Lowville (Tug Hill), very few of the construction-phase jobs will be filled locally. Almost all the construction crews come from elsewhere, providing no additional jobs to the local area.
If Community Energy builds all 68 turbines, this will provide $1,088,000 in annual tax revenues. The split is 22 percent to the county, 14 percent to the two towns (prorated by turbines per town), and 64 percent to the school.
Both the Draft Environmental Impact Statement and the Supplement that followed are very vague on funding mechanisms for dismantling the 400-foot turbines once their productive life ends. In effect, no “decommissioning plan” is in place.
The towns of Warren and Stark should insist upon detailed plans and full funding for dismantling the turbines, before accepting the Final Environmental Impact Statement.
The cost of removing the 303-ton turbines will be enormous, and transporting them out of the towns will almost certainly cause severe damage to roads, as well as other environmental impacts..
At that point in time, with no profits ahead, the project owner will have no incentive to compensate the towns for these damages, which may extend well beyond the towns of Stark and Warren.
Dismantling includes environmental impacts. Therefore, it should be negotiated and funded before the SEQR process ends. If the towns wait until they are no longer under the protection of SEQR, they may find themselves in a weakened negotiating position.
SUE BRANDER
Van Hornesville
Wind developers can be intimidating
By Sue Sliwinski
Sardinia (NY) in NWW
September 1, 2005
Mischa Gaus's recent piece on wind power and the presumption made that the industry is getting an unfair rap, possibly brought on by itself, makes some good points. But it fails to connect the dots so as to present the whole picture...probably because that picture isn't very pretty.
The impacts of commercial wind power development across the country have not even begun to be realized, because the ever-increasing number of developers are still quietly proceeding through the preliminaries that will enable them to cash in quickly when the real gold rush begins. It's going to be the fleecing of America on a scale like we've never seen before. In NY State alone, 1300 turbines are planned for just two counties! And there are three times that amount planned for the rest of the state! (It might be interesting to ask the average guy on the street if he knows anything at all about it, since he'll be affected each time he receives his electric bill.)
It never ceases to amaze me how authors like Gaus are so quick to point to other countries to prove the merits of the commercial wind industry. Just a slightly closer look would reveal that the very reason we're about to be invaded here in the US is because of the failures in other places around the world. Denmark, for instance, is reported by their own energy analysts to have consumed just 4 % of the huge amount of wind power generated in that country in 2003… mainly due to the fact that wind so often generates electricity when it's not needed or wanted. It's the countries around Denmark that are benefiting because they get to buy this expensive juice at a huge discount while Denmark consumers pay the highest costs in Europe. Not only that, but opposition groups have appeared there as well as in most other places where the unpleasant impacts of industrial wind power must be endured, AND their co2 levels are still rising…up 7.5% in 2003 from the year before!
I'm also not surprised at the attack Gaus made on the energy experts who don't happen to be in anyone's pocket and who are willing to call it like they see it. Not surprisingly, our most experienced people are the ones with many years behind them, and that means they may indeed have had some connection with coal at some point, given that it's the most abundant fuel source in the world. But if one were to actually read Glenn Schleede's papers, for instance, they would know that his work is comprised mostly of verifiable data….and very difficult to dispute. I guess that's why so many just point to his 'coal days'…It's much easier than trying to somehow disprove the numbers that are routinely the bulk of his reports.
Many of the newly organized wind development companies are backed by some of the most powerful investment firms in the world. JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs have each officially blown onto the scene as the list of opportunists seeking to exploit the rural countryside continues to grow. Grid operators across the nation have been flooded with applications to build and connect thousands of mind boggling, gigantic machines, whether it be in highly-valued scenic view-sheds, sensitive wildlife habitats, or directly within the borders of residential communities, and every indication is that more requests are on the way.
Government mandates creating a false market have spurred the huge corporations to front the smaller companies like 'Noble Environmental' and 'Zilkha Energy' (now calling themselves Horizon Wind) and together they've joined forces with other state agencies like Washington's Wind Working Group, NY's NYSERDA, and Kansas's Kansas Energy Council. All are working in concert throughout the country, combining resources and leaving little doubt as to the level of success they'll likely achieve in their campaign to glorify commercial wind power and to (more importantly) conceal and trivialize it's many flaws.
Recently Noble Environmental hosted an 'informational' meeting in the small community of Bliss, NY. I decided to attend, and when I entered the old school auditorium, I was shocked. Talk about intimidating!
The stage was brimming with what appeared to be VIP wannabe's donned in 'Noble' shirts, while the walls were literally lined with still more shirts, not unlike a bunch of bouncers. I found an empty seat, and as I watched the miniature 'windmill' to the side of the stage rotate slowly in front of about three hundred or so country folk, I couldn't help but think of a disturbing article I had just recently read that seemed to be playing out right before my eyes. It was about fascism...and the points made were these:
American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. American fascism is not dangerous until there's a coalition that purposely undertakes a campaign to propel their platform. An American fascist puts money ahead of human beings, and is often ruthless and deceitful in doing so. They don't use violence, instead they poison the channels of public information, and because they're often in bed with the nation's largest corporations - they can gain control of newspapers and broadcast media - and promote their lies with ease.
These observations were made by Vice President Henry Wallace in 1944, when the NY Times asked him to write a piece answering the question: What is a fascist?
Wallace also notes: The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by the environment and adapted to the immediate circumstances. Their propaganda carefully cultivates disunity, and they capitalize on all opportunities to impugn democracy. Their agenda is economic as they merge corporate interests with those of the state. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to deceive the public....
They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.
Speaking indirectly of the fascists that Wallace would directly name almost a decade later, President Roosevelt brought the issue to its core: "These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power."
What's happening now is eerily similar to that description from over 50 years ago. Commercial wind developers are creating conditions reminiscent of times most would rather not relive. They're riding roughshod over the system and over people's rights, and are disregarding the habitat and basic needs of wildlife AND of human beings.
Communities, families, and lifelong friendships in rural America are being systematically torn apart by a well-orchestrated and securely financed scheme employing divide and conquer tactics, purposefully misleading information, and the promise of prosperity for all who'll support and believe in the 'dream'.
It's time to speak plainly and without fear of the obviousness of this unprecedented situation, as each and every day another portion of a concerned and well-meaning public is carefully exposed to the ‘green’ idea of commercial wind power. It may well be that indeed fascism is rising again in America...this time using as it's catalyst today's very critical dilemmas and the urgent need to resolve them.
Letter in the Malone (N.Y.) Telegram, August 30, 2005
by Kaye Johnson
Why is it that we are supposed to believe everything the wind salesmen say and write, yet evidence about their constant misrepresentations of the myriad problems being created by their industry is 'propaganda'?
Noble's out-of-state lawyer recently used exactly that word in a letter to this paper. He also attempted to again ridicule a scientist who is a part of our community by, again, taking her comments out of context. No matter how many times he repeats his phony charges, they won't become true. But 'the big lie' can be an effective weapon against the truth. It may overwhelm the facts, especially when we all wish that wind turbines were a magic bullet to fix the nation's energy problems and our local economy at the same time. Then the developers can have their way with our money and our landscape and be long gone before we unravel their deception.
The developers are trying to frame the debate in such a way that it's their critics who have to prove beyond a resonable doubt that lining up hundreds and hundreds of wind turbines across our region is a bad idea. I say the shoe should be on the other foot. They should have to prove what's right about their plan before they so drastically change our environment, community, and economy.
I have heard their inflated claims about how many jobs they will create, but their industry's record shows almost no job creation in host communities. They claim their development of our ridgelines will help the environment, but the testimony from other sites contradicts that. The evidence coming in from other countries shows that littering the countryside with giant turbines has little net impact on greenhouse gases.
In town after state after country, the story is the same. We can expect that they will come in to our community, extract millions, and leave us to clean up their mess. That is why the developers are the ones who should have their 'propaganda' examined by impartial experts.
The developers are the ones who have been caught misrepresenting the results of research. Then they tried to discredit the very same research when their deception was exposed. The developers said they would answer all questions and make all their information available to anyone. Now they refuse to disclose their plans to those who don't sing their praises. And it's the developers who have a pattern of silencing their critics by buying them off.
... Noble, a wholly owned subsidiary of J.P. Morgan, is part of one of the world's largest financial organizations. They know they will have to spend a little money to get the millions and millions from our pockets in the form of higher utility bills and taxes.
So don't be fooled by the 'just plain folks' gimmicks. It will take more than giving our kids a pinwheel at the fair to compensate for the mess they'll have to clean up if these things are brought in. And don't think that a few well placed and highly publicized donations to worthy local causes make Noble's employees wonderful new members of our community. Their motivation in raping our countryside is not green power. It's greed power. And once they've had their way with us, they'll be gone with the wind.
