April 2, 2008
Letters, Maryland

Are Garrett County officials afraid?

The People’s Counsel was asked to protect Garrett County against the fast tracking of the wind turbine project with the Public Service Commission. As noted, the application was incomplete (by Clipper/Criterion Wind Power) but the PSC approved it anyway. The People’s Counsel has turned down Garrett County’s request to protect us from their momentum.

It sounds like our commissioners are afraid of the governor. They won’t even step up and support the mayor of Mountain Lake Park, where the water table and also Loch Lynn water table will be affected by the blasting near or over or in the aquifers (no impact studies have been required or done).

Even though a petition is out that we’re asking land owners to sign, I am asking any Maryland resident or Maryland visitor to write to the governer to stop the fast tracking of this project. There is now documentation of “Wind-Turbine Syndrome” in Meyersdale, Pa., where people living nearby are getting sick.

Our little community of interested and educated people cannot stand up to the big corporation, our state government, and the masses down state who don’t know/ aren’t impacted and think it’s better elsewhere (such as not off-shore).

Our perspective is described in the Sunday Sun paper’s March 16 article (section A2 “Your Right To Know?”) describing 44 percent of people who think the government (including our own in Annapolis) is secretive and not trustworthy and makes decisions without people’s input: exactly what has happened with the PSC and the wind turbine project.

A parallel can be drawn from the February ’08 Bay Journal Forum, about negative changes in Maryland primarily from sprawl where lobbyists, developers, and political decisions raise serious questions about treatment of our land and water. Everything that is disappearing is thoughtlessly being dismissed – that is my impression of our own commissioners handling of our concerns of the wind projects in Appalachia.

Theresa Hannibal
Accident

Cumberland Times-News

2 April 2008


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2008/04/02/are-garrett-county-officials-afraid/