November 7, 2007
Delaware, Letters

Please Oppose Delaware Off-Shore Windfarming

Rhoda Bryan

I am writing you and asking you to please oppose the proposed Delaware off-shore wind farming project. I don’t support off-shore or on-shore wind farms at this point in time.

I went to the 7-40 meeting last night at the Bear Library, and I am convinced for now that the over-all effects of such Wind Farms outweigh the benefits for the following reasons:

  1. High cost that outweighs the benefits.
  2. Cost and size of infrastructure and the habitat this project will gobble up; plus, more human activity (fishing, etc) will be invited into this disrupted habitat area for recreation. Human recreation puts a lot of pressure on wild-life and habitat (pollution, littering, over-fishing and other destructive activities).
  3. Any large project invades and uses up large areas of habitat (whether terrestial, ocean bottom or other-wise). What in-water, under-water and bottom-dwelling wild-life use this area for migration ?
  4. Developers and others will use the wind farms as an excuse to put in more development along the shore which will destroy more habitat and create more pressures on wild fauna.
  5. IF the global warming crisis is real, how are the wind farm structures going to stand up to higher seas from increased glacial melt, and who’s going to care about the wind farms if people along low-lying areas suddenly have to move in-land ?
  6. As for habitat mitigation, I don’t believe that Wind Farms or piles of old tires create artificial reefs. The tire venture has already been proven to be a stupid dismal failure (just someone’s idea of getting rid of old tires in a sly underhanded passive-aggressive way).
  7. I don’t think any grass-root groups such as River-Keepers, and others, will be allowed to monitor other possible/unknown-at-this-time consequences of how these wind farms might affect habitat, wild life. etc.
  8. If wind farms are so great then why are there on-line web-sites where environmentalists and naturalists oppose them ?

I do appreciate that there are concerns about the upward swing of the price of oil and auto fuel. Wind Farms are not going to address fuel prices. It is more important to figure out how to remake the auto, and change from a gas-oil consuming combustion engine to something far cleaner (supposedly fuel cells, etc).

I do support more green innovative ideas, but I don’t support large structures that sprawl over large tracts of land/water/habitat. I do urge you to encourage technology that will enable homeowners to have small, efficient energy producers on, or within their own property/structures, that do not harm humans, wildlife, habitat, air or water quality. That technology can’t be too far away.

Sincerely,

Rhoda Bryan, Delaware

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/alerts/2007/11/07/please-oppose-delaware-off-shore-windfarming/