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Nothing beautiful about wind turbines
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Regarding Jennifer Thomas’ My Turn “Turbines, a beautiful form of self sufficiency” (Nov. 15). It’s a shame the writer, apparently sincere in desiring to be a friend to the environment, doesn’t realize the limited benefits and permanent disastrous effects these industrial installations have and will have on the landscape of Vermont.
The writer claims the turbines (actually huge electromechanical generators) are “beautiful” examples of self-sufficiency. She obviously does not realize that the generators produce electricity when it is not needed. Intermittent wind power is available primarily as excess to the grid, and does nothing to reduce the need for waste producing generators, which can’t be “turned on and off” when the turbines happen to be producing energy. They need to be backed up by coal or nuclear 24/7.
Beautiful, akin to a Rembrandt etching? Pullleeeeze! They’re as similar as the Hoover Dam is to a 19th century paddle wheel. I’m in Searsburg, not Hanover Airport, because it’s wilderness surrounded by National Forest. The turbines here blight the landscape, and are very noisy despite claims otherwise.
The proposed expansion will be devastating, clear-cutting 80 acres of ridgeline in the Green Mountain National Forest. Construction will remove 10,000 truckloads of earth from the ridge. Towers over 400 feet tall, with obtrusive aircraft beacons, lighting the night, not next to a municipal airport, but in forest previously unlit except by natural moonlight. Clear starry sky replaced by something as “unobtrusive” as a light show at a rock concert. Turbines may belong in Hanover airport, but not the Green Mountain National Forest.
TOM SHEA
Searsburg
12 December 2007
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