February 25, 2007
Blogs, Kansas

Smoky Hills wind farm opposition growing

When I started researching and commenting on the Smoky Hills Wind Farm, I thought I was one of a handful who found it objectionable for reasons in addition to site location. Now I’ve learned there is a ground swell of opposition to the mills.

I’ve talked about my doubts about wind farms in various blogs and to date have not been convinced that it’s a good thing for the citizens of this area. Quite the contrary.

On my sidebar to the right, if you scroll down to “categories”, you’ll find “energy”. Click on it and you’ll pull up the blogs I’ve written about the subject.

Certainly, the proposed wind farm will be very detrimental to the land and our landscape, which can never be recovered. That’s not debatable.

A friend of mine wrote: “I recognize that one of the sticking points on this issue is aesthetics. To quote an old physics professor of mine, aesthetics is a matter of taste, and isn’t debatable. For my part, the communication towers that are scattered around the area are a lot uglier than wind generators. But that is just me. In addition there is the matter of disturbing the natural habitat, which must be respected and mitigated in any development. On the other hand, to not do something here to at least deal with local electrical usage in a sustainable way is, in my mind taking a NIMBY stand, and isn’t defensible.”

And, he’s correct. And he sees the need for us to do something locally, as a community. But we aren’t dealing with local electrical usage in a sustainable way and if we were, taking a NIMBY stand would not be defensible.

But that isn’t the issue here. We’re not benefiting from energy produced by the wind farm. It’s not OUR wind farm designed to deal with our community energy requirements.

There are only a few who are going to benefit from this upheaval of our land and landscape and those are the few landowners who have sold out to false claims. They will benefit financially. That’s the point. It’s straight downhill for the rest of us.

Now, I find it interesting that there seems to be a great local ground swell of people against it. People like me are objecting because we’ve had no voice in the matter. The whole process is shrouded in secrecy. There is supposed to be transparency in government, but there has been no accountability here.

It isn’t “green” energy at all in the way they are handling it. Do you see hear of any of the fossil fueled energy companies in Kansas talking about decreasing their output? Nope. They all want to expand, burn more gas and coal, and cause more greenhouse conditions. They have to increase their output to compensate for the downtime of wind farms when the wind doesn’t blow.

They are going to start on the first phase of the project in a couple of weeks, so they say, and we’ll soon see the folly and expense of it all. In time.

When you see the enormous size of the sections of turbines, think about all the pollutants that were spewed in the atmosphere during their manufacture. Think also about the trucks transporting them. Think about ten years or so in the future when the turbines are antiquated and found to be useless and are decommissioned. Then what? It will be interesting to see what happens when the wind farm owners disappear, as they will, and the landowners are left standing there looking at decomposing arms waving at them from above.

kansasprairieblog

24 February 2007


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2007/02/25/smoky-hills-wind-farm-opposition-growing/