April 25, 2007
Editorials, Massachusetts

More sensible than windmills

While Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray paid some lip service to windmills during his visit to the Berkshires on Friday, his emphasis was rightly on broadband Internet service and getting it to all rural communities in Western Massachusetts.

Mr. Murray stopped short of promising the estimated $20 million necessary to accomplish that task, but he did say he and Gov. Deval Patrick were well aware of the need for such service and were drafting a bond bill to get it moving.

While some windmill projects are laudable – most notably Jiminy Peak’s relatively small-scale operation in Hancock – the Berkshires do not need a plethora blighting our scenery and providing a negligible blip on the Grid. This state also is spending – or planning to spend – far too much money in subsidies for out-of-state and even out-of-country developers whose “energy credits” derived from windmill projects will not make even a small dent in this nation’s reliance on oil and coal.

Far too many of the proposed windmill projects in this region seem to be geared more toward pleasing the greenies and “let’s pretend to make a difference crowd” than they are toward producing significant energy.

And we have yet to measure their potential impact on our environment – beyond bats and birds, flashing lights and ruined scenery, roads must be built and miles and miles of wired buried along our precious mountaintops.

TheTranscript.com

23 April 2007


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2007/04/25/more-sensible-than-windmills/