Appreciate, protect beautiful Ogle County
Rockford Register Star, www.rrstar.com 25 March 2011
Ogle County is a beautiful county comprising small towns, rural communities, agricultural land and the Rock River Valley. It holds enough beauty and has enough to offer to be home to three state parks and six nature preserves.
The sunrises and sunsets are beautiful, as are the starlit skies at night. How many of us have enjoyed looking up into the night sky for an uninterrupted view of the Big Dipper or the North Star?
I think the beauty of our county has been taken for granted, and we have not stopped frequently enough to appreciate what we have. It’s now in jeopardy.
The Ogle County countryside is threatened by big industry wanting to clutter our landscape with hundreds of huge industrial wind towers, some of which loom as high as 600 feet. There’s a lot of our federal money that’s currently available to developers that make it extremely profitable for them to put up as many industrial wind towers as possible. They are driven to do so quickly, before our federal tax dollars are no longer available to them.
I urge Ogle County Board members to adopt the recommendations made by the Wind Energy Conversion Systems Subcommittee that has worked for many months to develop performance standards that promote safe and responsible wind development in Ogle County.
The County Board will soon vote to adopt or reject the subcommittee standards, which are available at oglecounty.org. People have until May 1 to comment. Check it out. Let your opinion be known. Beautiful Ogle County is at risk.
Tricia Mallon lives in Rochelle.
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/03/25/appreciate-protect-beautiful-ogle-county/