July 19, 2011
Letters, Oregon

Taxpayers, residents pay heavy price for wind

East Oregonian, www.eastoregonian.com 19 July 2011

This is a continuation of my first letter (in Saturday’s EO) outlining how wind energy doesn’t make dollars or sense.

Consider the following:

•The wind turbine projects are sold to the public as being able to produce enough pollution-free power for 10,000 or however many homes (depending on the size of the project, which often depends how big a “windfall” they could get from the taxpayers at the time). But when does it produce that, for how long, at what intervals: when demand is high, or when demand is low; when they are needed, or when they are least wanted?

•Wind turbines are sold to us as a pollution-free renewable energy. In reality, miners retrieved the ore, someone smelted it; industries shape and mold the parts; factories put them together; somehow they are moved to the docks; ships transport them across the ocean; trucks haul the parts and pieces up and down the highways; other factories produced the support materials such as hardware, tons and tons of cement, tons of rebar, and thousands of miles of wire; excavation equipment moves the earth. All parts and pieces and equipment had to be processed and/or transported by plane, train, ships, or trucks, huge boom trucks help in their installation and maintenance rigs support them. Pollution-free? No carbon footprint?

•There are unlimited articles about the noise pollution and confusion pollution the wind turbines cause amongst fowl, ground animals and people. Noise pollution-free?

•This last month I have driven to the west side of the state of Oregon on three different occasions. Talk about a eyesore and a pollution of the once-beautiful vistas and scenery. Thousands upon thousands of eyesore things. Many of the individuals and special interest groups who don’t want the wind turbines near them, and who support these eyesores to be built on the east side of the state, hypocritically complained about a single coal stack in Eastern Oregon – a stack you have to strain to see from the freeway. In my opinion, wind turbines. are a horrid visual pollution.

Leonard C. Routson


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/07/19/taxpayers-residents-pay-heavy-price-for-wind/