LOCATION/TYPE

NEWS HOME

[ exact phrase in "" • results by date ]

[ Google-powered • results by relevance ]



Archive
RSS

Add NWW headlines to your site (click here)

Get weekly updates

WHAT TO DO
when your community is targeted

RSS

RSS feeds and more

Keep Wind Watch online and independent!

Donate via Paypal

Donate via Stripe

Selected Documents

All Documents

Research Links

Alerts

Press Releases

FAQs

Campaign Material

Photos & Graphics

Videos

Allied Groups

Wind Watch is a registered educational charity, founded in 2005.

News Watch Home

More hot air 

Watch out. Here they come again. Deerfield Wind LLC, alias PPM Energy, a subsidiary of ScottishPower, the largest purveyor of wind turbines in the United States, now wants to build fewer but bigger windmills on U.S. Forest Service land in Searsburg and Readsboro, Vt.

PPM is the company, you remember, that wants to save us from the fossil-fuel industry by building turbines in the Berkshire towns of Florida and Savoy, among other places. And it wants to use taxpayers’ money and federal and state subsidies to do it, while ripping apart our scenic mountain ridges and treasured wilderness to make connections to the grid – connections that would supply us with less than 1 percent of even Massachusetts’ energy needs.

The good folks of Searsburg, who have lived with the region’s only wind farm for 10 years, don’t want the expansion, fearing noise and disruption, not to mention the change of scenery. But what a surprise, Readsboro and Searsburg selectmen do want the expansion. The prospect of annual payments in lieu of taxes and possibly an initial lump-sum payoff must be too much of a gift horse for the officials of these and other cash-strapped small communities to ignore.

But beware of international conglomerates bearing gifts. When it’s working, the 11-windmill Searsburg Wind Facility the industry likes so much to tout produces about one-fifth of the energy the new and “improved” version would bring (when it works). The new turbines would stand nearly twice as high, requiring, of course, continually flashing lights and new access roads.

Is this the right use for our supposedly protected forest land – places where no one can build houses, or in some cases even outhouses, because of the potential impact on the environment?

There may be places for wind turbines in the New England hills, but so far developers have been going at the thing willy-nilly, with very little careful study involved. And the effect on the fossil-fuel industry, even with thousands of turbines erected, would be next to nothing. Don’t these people have any bridges they want to sell us? Those we could use.

North Adams Transcript

9 October 2007

This article is the work of the source indicated. Any opinions expressed in it are not necessarily those of National Wind Watch.

The copyright of this article resides with the author or publisher indicated. As part of its noncommercial educational effort to present the environmental, social, scientific, and economic issues of large-scale wind power development to a global audience seeking such information, National Wind Watch endeavors to observe “fair use” as provided for in section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law and similar “fair dealing” provisions of the copyright laws of other nations. Send requests to excerpt, general inquiries, and comments via e-mail.

Wind Watch relies entirely
on User Funding
   Donate via Paypal
(via Paypal)
Donate via Stripe
(via Stripe)

Share:

e-mail X FB LI TG TG Share


News Watch Home

Get the Facts
CONTACT DONATE PRIVACY ABOUT SEARCH
© National Wind Watch, Inc.
Use of copyrighted material adheres to Fair Use.
"Wind Watch" is a registered trademark.

 Follow:

Wind Watch on X Wind Watch on Facebook

Wind Watch on Linked In Wind Watch on Mastodon