Roger Irons’ letter (“Some people welcome alternative energy,” March 20) exposes the winners and losers in Gamesa’s industrial wind game on Shaffer Mountain.
The only winners are those who will gain financially if this wind plant is built.
Gamesa will harvest millions in federal subsidies funded by our tax dollars.
Berwind Corp. and a few private property owners, including Irons, will win as well. They will get $5,000 a year for each wind turbine built on their properties.
Irons failed to disclose that the turbines he wants on his land will be within 300 feet of the beautiful, peaceful mountain farm of his neighbor, Joseph Cominsky.
Cominsky bought his farm for retirement. By placing 404-foot-tall noisy industrial machines beside Cominsky’s property, Irons will make Cominsky’s property virtually worthless. Is that fair?
Who wants to live beside an industrial wind facility?
But there is a solution. A couple miles down the road is a huge Berwind strip mine that could accommodate all of Gamesa’s wind turbines. Gamesa could still harvest the federal subsidies and Berwind would earn $150,000 a year in lease payments.
Why destroy the untouched virgin ground of Shaffer Mountain when a windy strip mine is down the road?
Kim Moore
Windber
7 April 2008
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2008/04/08/energys-not-the-issue-its-money/