Who's protecting those in shadow of turbines?
Who’s represented here? Papers around Livingston County have run articles about meetings the wind turbine companies are holding. The papers report county zoning board members saying these turbines are well received.
By who? Of course property owners who stand to benefit from having turbines on their property. They have been represented all along.
What about the rest of the county?
In Odell Township, less than half of the turbine sites are owned by folks from the township. Those that live in Wisconsin, California and Chicago are happy to ruin a place they don’t have to look at or live in. How convenient it is that there is no mention of these spinning, blinking, eyesores as being 500 feet tall.
Which of our county officials have seen a 500-foot tower in person? Did they make the trip to Mendota and look at those towers? If they did, they only saw 260-foot towers, half size of what they want to come to Livingston County!
Why do they need to be so big? In poor wind areas you need bigger turbines to produce power, and the state of Illinois has identified this area as economically marginal.
Remember, these turbines are only happening because federal tax dollars are supporting foreign-owned companies to produce power to sell back to the taxpayers.
Remember, too, that because these turbines store no power and wind is unreliable, no coal- or oil-fired plants have ever shut down when wind power was introduced to the area.
As far as all the tax money, remember when the lottery was introduced, schools were never again to be underfunded, and that didn’t happen.
This deal is another Edsel being introduced, and they hope Livingston County will be first in line to buy the latest lemon.
Carl Gorra
Odell
15 April 2008
Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
Some possibly related stories:
- Livingston Co. zoning board to consider wind turbines
- Livingston County hearing heeds public's comments on wind farms
- Wind farm issue to come back to Livingston Co. committee on 15th
- Livingston Co. wind farm plans progress
- Emotions flare in 3rd day of Livingston wind farm hearing
- Question of wind farm expansion posed to voters
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