Wind project tiring, but opposition remains
The Recorder, www.therecorderonline.com 3 March 2011
Sometimes it seems quixotic to continue to tilt at windmills powered by the huffing and puffing of a coterie of imported shysters and politician and home grown Babbits and bunkers – all at the behest of an invasive specie taxonomically labeled as Mcbrideae harrisonbergi.
There are some people who are altruistic givers and some who are greedy takers. As F. Scott Fitzgerald described the Buchanans in his novel The Great Gatsby, “they are careless peoples. The smash up things and creatures and retire back into their money and carelessness and let others clean up the messes they have made.”
But we have to go on tilting until the environment is free of all its messes.
It is absolutely inevitable that if windmills are built there will be enormous slaughter of Indiana and the Virginia bigeared bats and other endangered and threatened species. There are no valid means of significantly mitigating this obscene carnage.
Even if the windmills are built, the contribution to the country’s supply of alternative energy would be miniscule and would not be worth the irreversible damage it would cause to Highland’s ecosystem and biosphere. The only way to prevent this inexorable tragedy to Nature’s inventory and the degradation of the environment is to stop Highland New Wind Development in its tracks. It is now up to the people of Highland County to assert their time-honored sense of good stewardship and demand that this folly that has gone on for six years ceases.
In 2005 a petition indicated that those opposing the HNWD wind project were as follow: 788 residents in the county; 425 persons outside the county, consisting of landowners and their families and friends of the county; 14 persons without an address given. There were also 300 persons opposing the project not listed in the petition. A total of 1,527 persons were in opposition.
Mr. (Jerry) Rexrode (county supervisor) compiled a list of 153 persons within the county who were in favor of the wind project. Of the residents in Highland County expressing an opinion about the wind project, there were 788 (84 percent) who opposed and 153 (16 percent) who favored it, giving opposition a vast majority.
During a recent discussion, Mr. (Robin) Sullenberger (county supervisor) characterized Mr. (Rick) Webb’s assertion that a significant majority of the people in Highland County actively opposed the wind project as being “absolute bunk.” One might ask him to show his numbers that are to the contrary. He appears to be dismissive of persons with concerns about aesthetics. Every sentient person has a deep abiding appreciation of Highland County’s beauty and does not wish to see it besmirched. He also seems to have misjudged HNWD-fatigue as indifference in his constituents.
This has been a six-year long slough with an ill conceived and untrustworthy enterprise with too many problems to portend any chance for an adequate investment. Is it not time for the board of supervisors to cease their acquiescence to HNWD and for a majority of the citizens to demand that no permit to build be issued to industrial wind projects in Highland County?
Orren L. Royal, M.D. M.S. (Biology)
Dublin, Va.
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/03/04/wind-project-tiring-but-opposition-remains/