Resource Library Category: Environment (166 items)
Documents presented here are not the product of nor are they necessarily endorsed by National Wind Watch. This resource library is provided to assist anyone wishing to research the issue of industrial wind power and the impacts of its development. The information should be evaluated by each reader to come to their own conclusions about the many areas of debate.
Destruction of Lowell Mountain, Sat. Nov. 19, 2011
Source: Mountain Talk
More photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/114098560210816181304/. Via Mountain Talk.
Construction in the Mojave Desert and Grassland
Source: Basin and Range Watch
November 14, 2011 – Photos of construction on large wind projects in the Mojave Desert and Tehachapi Mountains area, Kern County, California. Photos were taken over the period of 2010 to 2011. Photos are by Basin and Range Watch (where more photos are available) unless otherwise labeled.
Mojave Fragmentation
Friends of Mojave took these photos of industrialization of west Mojave ecosystems around the town of Mojave. This area has seen a boom in wind projects on the flat desert and slopes of the Tehachapi Range.
Large swaths of Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia) woodland and creosote desert are destroyed on a wind project. (Photo: Friends of Mojave)
A pile of bulldozed and uprooted Joshua trees ten feet high to make way for wind turbines. (Photo: Friends of Mojave)
Fragmentation of a Mojave Desert ecosystem at the transition to the Tehachapi Range. (Photo: Friends of Mojave)
Deep hole and pad for cement foundation for a single turbine. (Photo: Friends of Mojave)
Dust clouds from construction. (Photo: Friends of Mojave)
Towers and crane. (Photo: Friends of Mojave)
Even when new, oil leaks out of a nacelle. (Photo: Friends of Mojave)
Mojave Desert scrub meets grassland of the Tehachapi Range, now divided up by roads everywhere. (Photo: Friends of Mojave)
Forest of industrial Wind Turbine Generators. (Photo: Friends of Mojave)
Friends of Mojave go to Bakersfield to protest the wind projects surrounding their town, asking supervisors to stop the industrialization. (Photo: Friends of Mojave)
Wind protest, October 2011. (Photo: Friends of Mojave)
(Photo: Friends of Mojave)
Joshua Tree Destruction
Wind project under construction: new roads and pads graded into the Mojave Desert on a an overcast winter day west of the town of Mojave.
New road and pad for a single wind turbine, in the middle of a Joshua tree woodland.
Powerlines feed off wind projects.
New roads in the desert must be wide to accommodate over-sized trucks.
Road grading on a wind project.
Single wind turbine pad 100 feet across.
Tehachapi Mountains Along the Pacific Crest Trail
Summer 2010, the Pacific Crest Trail through the Oak Creek area of Tehachapi Mountains. The trail stretches from Mexico to Canada, and dips into lower grassland, oak woodland, and Joshua tree desert in this part of southern California. In the distant upper right hills can be seen a new road and construction machinery for a wind turbine pad.
Trail sign at a trailhead.
View from the trail: Joshua trees, Gray pines (Pinus sabiniana), and a stream woodland with wind projects on the grasslands.
Wind projects encroach into wild grasslands full of wildflowers and rare plants.
Towers and crane in grassland.
The Tehachapi Mountains have abundant native bunchgrasses such as this Nodding needlegrass (Stipa cernua).
Enormous towers on pads cut into hill slopes.
Over-sized truck with tower piece must access the hills.
Roads and pads along ridge. The Pacific Crest Trail was diverted from this spot to go around the wind project.
Wind project construction on once wild ridge.
New pad and access road.
Native wildflowers bloom in summer here: Sapphire flower (Eriastrum eremicum).
Roads and wind turbine pads scar the mountain and disturb habitat. Pronghorn antelope (Antilocapra americana) have been seen in these grasslands.
Wind project from central yard. Trucks parked carry single turbine blades.
Construction.
Wide entrance road from the paved highway, into the wind project site.
New wide road over a creek, with pipe for the water, and willows torn out.
New turbines.
Tower sections in yard.
Yard and ongoing construction.
New road bulldozed into a desert grassland with junipers and Joshua trees.
Buried line in the hills.
Entrance to wind project access road.
Transport
The wind turbine parts are huge. Over-size trucks need to transport them on wide roads.
Part of a turbine tower, not the complete tower.
Lowell Mountain road and site building
Source: Vt. Department of Environmental Conservation
Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation photos from Nov. 10, 2011, by courtesy of Mountain Talk (more photos at source; click photos below to enlarge).
Field fragmentation
Source: Bembinster, Jim
Wisconsin farmers sign on with wind developers because it seems like easy money. They are told they can farm right up to the turbine foundations. They are told about a quarter acre of land will be taken out of production for each turbine.
What they are not told is there will be access roads and trenching for each turbine that will go where the developer wants them to go, crossing at diagonals in the middle of fields, and in some areas compacting the soil so badly crop production is affected and drain tiles are crushed. The farmer is not told that they’ve given the wind company the right to use the land as it wishes. It’s all in the contract, if you know how to read a contract, or take that contract to a lawyer to read over for you.
The photos below were recently taken by Jim Bembinster. They show a wind project in Columbia County being built by We Energies and the newly fragmented farm fields. [via Better Plan, Wisconsin]
