McBride calls critics ‘NIMBYs’

MONTEREY — After residents and landowners questioned the latest information submitted by Highland New Wind Development’s to state agencies, Tal McBride, a partner of HNWD with his parents, took issue with their credentials and assertions.

Pocahontas County Commission president Martin Saffer hosts a forum where anyone can post comments and debate issues. McBride has posted several in defense of his family’s utility, and wind energy in general.

Last week, he argued that Rich and Marcia Laska and Dawn Baldwin Barrett, Allegheny Mountain landowners, who have been critical of the project, especially as it affects Camp Allegheny, are not clear about their residency status near the Civil War battlefield, and are only concerned about how their own property will be affected.

McBride, apparently through Internet research, said they were not full-time residents on the mountain, and called them NIMBYs, a disparaging term typically used to describe people who oppose developments near their own home — Not In My Back Yard. He also attributed that description to Pocahontas commissioners Saffer and David Fleming.

He also rebutted a posting by Monterey resident Rick Webb, who has long opposed the location of HNWD’s facility on Allegheny Mountain.

About the Laskas, McBride said they have several buildings on their property, powered by two small wind turbines he says are “clearly visible” from Camp Allegheny.

“I submit seeing the Laskas’ modern, three-story, buildings and their two wind turbines have long since (‘nearly 15 years’ ago) degraded the viewshed from Camp Allegheny,” he wrote. “Marica Laska described the impact of Laskas Grove when she was quoted in the Aug. 8 Charleston Gazette, and I quote, ‘We’re sort of a little city up here, with four or five buildings getting power from the sun and wind,’ said Marcia Laska. Camp Allegheny is no longer ‘pristine’ as Dawn, Rich, Saffer, and Fleming would have you believe, and it most certainly is not ‘just as it was 150 years ago’ … Laska’s modern infrastructure and Laska’s wind turbines are visible from Camp Allegheny. It’s specious, unfair, and ridiculous to hold the Laskas and HNWD to two different standards.”

Further, McBride said, “Dawn Baldwin Barrett has, in my opinion, made many contradictory/misleading claims in person and on her BrightSideAcres.com web site. The house at Bright Side Acres is visible from Camp Allegheny. It’s beyond Laska’s ‘city,’ but clearly visible nonetheless. By what theory do HNWD turbines degrade Camp Allegheny’s viewshed?

“Dawn’s a NIMBY too,” he said.

He further made references to Barrett’s family, their careers, and their lives to argue Barrett cannot be considered a full-time resident of the mountain.

But McBride’s entire Nov. 6 post on the public forum was removed because it involved “personal and private family information” which is not allowed or tolerated, according to the web site’s host.

This week, Barrett said she has no plans to “attack” McBride for posting the comments.

“Ad hominem means ‘against the man.’ An ‘ad hominem’ argument attacks the character of the one holding a view rather than the view itself,” she said. “I have been subjected to Tal McBride’s many ad hominem attacks via personal email and public forums. What these desperate actions indicate to me is that, lacking any facts that might refute my views regarding the economic, environmental, or just plain common sense of industrial wind power in Appalachia, Mr. McBride is compelled to attack me personally in an attempt to intimidate, frighten, and shut me up. Since the science and the economics are with me, I lack any such compulsion to attack Mr. McBride. I haven’t, and I won’t. Neither, however, do I have any intention of shutting up.”

Nov. 7, McBride responded to someone else critical of Laska, saying, “Laska’s Grove is 1.5 miles (by my odometer) beyond Camp Allegheny driving across the Old Pike from U.S. 250. It is located ‘on a remote mountain ridge.’ The Laskas’ driveway is more than 3.5 miles, across the Old Pike, from U.S. 250. The Laskas will probably see wind turbines on Tamarack Ridge from their property. The Laskas wouldn’t see wind turbines in the Chesapeake Bay … ‘Not here, but there’ and ‘THIS is the wrong place’ objections have been raised by opponents wherever a wind farm is built. Doesn’t A+B=NIMBY?”

To this, Laska replied with his own forum posting: “Why put insulting labels on people? Name-calling does not add to the facts of the debate,” he said. “Perhaps, if the debate is factual, you know that you cannot win … As for my being a ‘NIMBY,’ I already have two windmills in my back yard! I am clearly not opposed to wind power. I do oppose wasting taxpayer and ratepayer money to make a few people rich. And I oppose forcing the good people of Pocahontas County to pay for something that is of no benefit to them. Those are facts. Another fact: when measuring distances, anyone from around here knows that the mileage reading on a car’s odometer is not an accurate measurement of direct distances. Mountain roads are very curvy. To get from one point to another, a curvy line is always longer than a straight line. We are curious — how many wind turbines are there in your back yard?”

In a different posting, McBride called attention to a wind energy study by the National Academies of Science as reported by the American Wind Energy Association, with a statement from AWEA senior vice president for public policy Rob Gramlich. He said, “The National Academy of Sciences, in a first-of-its-kind study for the U.S., finds that polluting sources of energy impose a hidden, growing impact on our society that costs billions of dollars — and reminds us of the value and imperative of developing clean, renewable energy sources like wind power. As our government grapples with climate and energy issues, the conclusion is clear: renewable energy policies improve Americans’ health and save Americans money.”

Highland resident Rick Webb, who also hosts a web site on wind power, debated the reference. “Our society’s use of fossil fuel does indeed have serious and long-term impacts,” Webb said. “Industrial-scale wind development in the central Appalachian mountains, however, is not a meaningful part of the solution. A previous 2007 National Academies report titled Environmental Impacts of Wind Energy Projects focused on the impacts and benefits of wind energy development in this region. I was a co-author of this report, which was commissioned by Congress at the request of West Virginia Congressman Mollohan. We found that even the most ambitious projections for onshore wind development in the nation as a whole would offset projected year-2020 U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by less than 2 percent … With respect to the potential benefits of the Highland New Wind project, I have independently prepared an analysis of onshore wind energy development’s potential contribution to Virginia’s 2015 electricity demand. The potential contribution of Highland New Wind is too insignificant to be visible on a full-scale graphic … If we are going to solve our energy problems we need to go beyond wishful thinking and engage in actual cost-benefit analysis.”

McBride countered, “Actual title of the report referred to above: Environmental IMPACTS of Wind-Energy Projects … Does the title of this NAS Committee report give you the impression it was an impact and benefit analysis? NO. Didn’t think so. Does the title read the Environmental Cost (and Benefits) of Wind Power? Again, NO. Is the author of the above post (Webb) a professional engineer, an electric engineer, or an electric utility engineer? NOPE, NONE of the above. The NAS committee had many members. Most (but not all) committee members had PhDs, had published extensively, were well respected throughout the scientific community, and had impressive CVs. HNWD’s wind farm’s contribution to the electric grid is a great many things. It is: 39MW; the first wind farm to be permitted in the State Corporation Commission; the first wind farm to begin construction in Virginia (Dominion/BPWind have projects under development in Tazewell and Wise counties as well); the first distributed, renewable generation of its size in Virginia; the first uninterruptible power supply on the Monterey, Va.-Durbin, W.Va. 69kV transmission line running through Highland and Pocahontas counties.

“Most significantly,” McBride continued, “HNWD is blazing the trail for Virginians to follow in our transition to the renewable energy grid of the future. HNWDs project insignificant? Hardly … ‘Engage in actual cost-benefit analysis’ is NIMBY-speak for ‘delay, stall, and wring our hands while we wish something better would come along.’ It’s also ‘paralysis by analysis.’”

Saffer, in a separate forum posting, encouraged those debating wind energy to “keep it civil.” He noted, “Let’s keep these discussions civil and focus on the messages, not the messengers. These are all difficult subjects and we should try to look at them objectively, if possible.”

McBride has also accused Saffer of being opposed to “anything and everything that constitutes growth or development.”

“Besides being untrue,” Saffer said previously, “Mr. McBride’s attack attempts to limit choices based upon his belief that wind energy is inherently good and opposition to it, by definition, is rejection of progress.”

Saffer has said the growing demand for energy “does not necessarily mean that our environment must be sacrificed or that our economic security rests upon it. Education and reinvention can offer the tools to embrace other more sustainable and broader choices. Unfortunately, these require hard work and self-discipline and do not produce immediate results. Farming, tourism, timber and fostering a healthy community with an enviable quality of life can sustain us far longer than short term projects which leave behind ruined water or decimated landscapes.”

Laska rejects the idea that his turbines have an impact on the battlefield.

“Let’s compare the area swept by the blades of our tiny windmills (15-foot diameter) to their 19 industrial turbines (285-foot diameter),” he said this week. “If you do the math, you’ll find that it’s similar to comparing a bar of Ivory soap (four inches) to a modern aircraft carrier (1,101 feet). Their argument shows how desperate they are and how little respect they have for logic. Our small windmills are similar to the windmills that have been on this mountain for nearly a century. We found parts of an old Zenith windmill in our barn a few years back. It’s tail is bigger than the tail on our new windmills. (HNWD’s) machines are huge, 400-foot-high industrial power plants. There is no comparison.”

Further, he said, “Our cabins are so small and far away that it takes binoculars to see them from Camp Allegheny — and then only from a small corner of the site. Until somebody came along last summer with a powerful telephoto lens, nobody — not historians nor hunters nor other visitors to the site — even knew it was possible to see our place from up on the mountain. Your readers are encouraged to visit the battlefield and see for themselves. Or, more accurately, not see for themselves.

“Thoughtful people should look behind the scenes into what motivates the two sides. We who oppose the industrial wind turbines are trying to preserve a pristine and historic Civil War site. The folks who want to build the turbines can look forward to pocketing a $24-million federal handout, taxfree, the first year.

Who has more to gain by misrepresenting the truth?”

Webb responded, too. “It’s strange that Tal McBride persists with the name-calling and inane arguments,” he said. “It’s not going to help with Highland New Wind’s regulatory problems, and it can’t be attractive to potential business partners.”

McBride did not respond for comment this week.

By Anne Adams
Staff Writer

The Recorder

www.therecorderonline.com

12 November 2009

Tags: Wind power, Wind energy

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