March 21, 2018
Economics, Emissions, Environment, Essays, Health, Impacts, Information, Law, Noise, Property values, Wildlife

Industrial wind turbines are being proposed in your community

Coalition for Rural Property Rights

Industrial wind turbines are being proposed in your community.

It may seem like a great opportunity but many people regret signing contracts, others regret not having fought them off and others have fought them off.

These are the issues you should educate yourself on.

1. Property values

• Not many people want to live within an industrial installation so the value of your home will be diminished severely. The Berkley study they will bring out is flawed.

2. Electromagnetic and frequency interference

• TV, radio and cell phone signals may be disturbed.

3. Shadow flicker

• Wind companies find it acceptable for NON-participating residents to deal with 30 hours/year of shadow flicker within their homes. If they exceed 30 hours it will be difficult to prove.

4. Noise

• They may talk about how quiet the turbines are but sound is tricky. Often the wind companies will ADD the sound they say they will make to the ambient sound or they will average the sound limits over time. The bottom line is that there is no “sound police”. If you have a problem it will be up to you to prove it.

5. Trespass zoning/safety

• Wind turbine manuals state that in case of a problem with the turbine an area of 500 meters (1640 feet) should be secured around the turbine. This area usually overlaps onto non-participating land. GE, a large manufacturer of wind turbine blades has a formula for ice throw which is 1.5 × (hub height + rotor diameter). According to GCube Insurance, “there are an estimated 3,800 incidences annually of blade failure – a rate of one in 184, or, put more simply, one incident per 61 turbines in operation.”

6. Health concerns

• Many people have reported headaches, heart palpitations, vertigo and dizziness from wind turbines. Some people have difficulty sleeping. They will say that they have many reports that state wind turbines do not harm health but people have been known not to just leave, but to abandon their homes. Yes, even Iowans.

7. Farmland destruction

• Large machinery causes compaction and can crush tiling. If you have a problem it could be up to you to prove it was the fault of the wind company. The point is they will be in charge of your land and you will lose your rights.

8. Neighbor contracts

• You will be offered money that is comes out to a few dollars a day to put up with any negative impacts. You will likely give up your right to sue the company by jury trial. Ask yourselves why these contracts are offered.

• Wind companies CANNOT use eminent domain for their project.

9. No regulation, no due process, no protections

• In Iowa power plants and transmission lines usually have to go through the IUB process. Industrial wind is skirting this process to avoid having to prove need, avoiding public comment, the possibility of a hearing and they can avoid environmental impact studies. Residents in Palo Alto County have sued MidAmerican on this point of law.

10. Killing of wildlife

• Wind energy and its extra transmission lines kill birds and bats. The birds and bats are our natural pesticides. Killing them requires farmers to use more pesticides. Wind companies were given the “right” to kill 4200 eagles each by the last administration.

11. Road destruction

• The large amount of traffic necessary for building turbines will disturb traffic, complicate farming and ruin roads. Even if they promise to fix the roads it will likely be on their timeline and to their own satisfaction.

12. Suffering for the “greater good”

• Even if you believe that excess CO₂ is a problem for Earth consider that in 2016 the American Wind Energy Association boasted that turbines would avoid 159 million metric tons of CO₂. Because man is attributed with producing 35-40 billion metric tons of CO₂ every year that means that even if Big Wind doubled its fleet it still would not avoid over 1% even with its own very optimistic numbers.

12. Money

• What it really comes down to is money. Even Warren Buffet said “I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate,” Buffet told an audience in Omaha, Nebraska recently. “For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” Even Midwest electric co-ops have said that they cannot afford to build more turbines because they are tax exempt. Wind turbines and wind energy are NOT cheap. There is a big difference between cost and price.

• The money taken out of the community by diminishing property values, the large loans taken over large swaths of land, the destruction of wildlife, diminished health and the ruination of world class farm ground is not worth the taxes. Especially when you consider the taxes these big companies avoid by tax credits and the tax abatements they enjoy. They will pay no tax the first year, only 5% the second year, increasing every year until at year 7 where they will finally pay the cap of 30%. At that time they will have depreciated the value of the turbines.

Top sites to begin research. No, these folks are not funded by fossil fuels though the wind companies love to say it. All of these sites are purely volunteer, just doing what we believe to be right.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/alerts/2018/03/21/industrial-wind-turbines-are-being-proposed-in-your-community/

URLs in this post:

[1] Coalition for Rural Property Rights: http://www.coalitionforruralpropertyrights.com/

[2] National Wind Watch: https://www.wind-watch.org/

[3] Stop These Things: http://stopthesethings.com/

[4] Interstate Informed Citizens Coalition: http://iiccusa.org/

[5] Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions: http://wiseenergy.org/

[6] North American Platform Against Windpower: http://www.na-paw.org/

[7] Mothers Against Wind Turbines: https://mothersagainstturbines.com/

[8] Wind Concerns Ontario: http://www.windconcernsontario.ca/

[9] Waubra Foundation: http://waubrafoundation.org.au/

[10] European Platform Against Windfarms: http://epaw.org/

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