Being a resident of Port St. Lucie for 33 years, I’ve seen a lot of change. Being a former septic contractor and now owning a plumbing, drain and sewer service company, I’ve covered pretty much all of St. Lucie County over and over again.
Here’s what we have: the Indian River Lagoon, the ocean and beaches, most residents living between U.S. 1 and Interstate 95, cattle ranches, orange groves, agriculture and beautiful weather.
Disregarding all the technical debates, I cannot for the life of me figure out why anyone would want wind turbines on our most precious attribute. Would Colorado consider them on the front range of the Rockies? How about South Dakota on top of Mt. Rushmore? Diamond Head in Hawaii?
Isn’t it bad enough that we have high-rise condos starting to choke our beautiful island? Do we want to be St. Petersburg Beach?
At one time, St. Lucie County was fishing, cattle and orange groves. I assume we needed stimulus and taxes and that’s the reason for the nuclear plant being here. That’s enough.
If you want wind turbines, Florida Power and Light has huge amounts of land where transmission lines run along Glades Cut-off Road south of Midway.
I’ve read that some people object to oil platforms 25 miles out in the ocean that cannot be seen from land. We should all object to a bunch of ugly turbines to be seen every time we visit the beach or fish the lagoon.
I believe that someone said the turbines would actually attract tourists. Imagine the tourists we could have attracted in the long run had our island remained as natural as possible with limited growth and four-story height requirements like Martin County.
William Dvorak
Port St. Lucie
3 March 2008
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2008/03/03/beach-wrong-place-for-wind-turbines/