August 10, 2011
California

‘Now is time to act,’ wind-farm foe says

By Rebecca Unger, Hi-Desert Star, www.hidesertstar.com 9 August 2011

PIONEERTOWN – Cherry Good of Pioneertown rallied a crowd to oppose a utility-scale windfarm during a Saturday-afternoon gathering at Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace.

Good discovered in July that wind-monitoring masts erected on Black Lava Butte are part of a feasibility study Element Power is conducting for a wind farm in Pipes Canyon.

The application for the feasibility study expires in September 2013, but the second application, for the wind farm, would be made 120 days before the study period ends.

In response, Good organized Save Our Desert. She has been giving presentations about a possible 4,000- to 6,500-acre take of public lands. Her listeners have gone from handfuls to hundreds.

“Now is the time to act,” Good told her audience Saturday. “The more money that Element Power spends on this project, the less likely they are to back off. We can make this a very frustrating, expensive process for them. We need to persuade them that they can’t ride roughshod over us.”

The Bureau of Land Management has been directed by California legislature to fast-track feasibility studies for wind and solar power projects. This rush to meet renewable energy requirements has created a new gold rush on the Mojave Desert’s resources.

“There are better ways to go green than destroying the wilderness,” Good stated. “If we allow this project to go ahead, it sets a precedent for many other areas of wilderness to be destroyed.”

“I have contacted all the environmental groups, about two dozen, from the California Desert Coalition to the Wildlands Conservancy, and they all give us thumbs up for winning!” Good told her cheering Pioneertown posse.

For information on Good’s fight, log on to www.saveourdesert.com.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/08/10/now-is-time-to-act-wind-farm-foe-says/