Pro-wind ordinance letter ridiculous
The Daily Telegram, www.lenconnect.com 6 May 2012
After spending more than a year of my life working on recommendations for the Ogden Township industrial wind ordinance, I find it troubling that the head of your planning commission, Mr. Leonard, doesn’t know the first thing to look at when you are working on an ordinance is to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the entire community.
Mr. Leonard never once states in his letter (“Support Palmyra Twp. wind ordinance,” May 4) the possible effects of these industrial wind turbines on residents. But if you read between the lines of his letter, you see that there must be adverse effects on people’s health, safety and welfare. If your ordinance can really prevent the developers from placing industrial wind turbines away from “higher populations of the township,” the question needs to be asked, why does your ordinance give the people who live in “higher populations of the township” better protection than the rural residents? Sounds like a double standard to me.
Also his statement about paying people who live within a half of a mile of the wind turbine is in the ordinance, but your township’s own legal council suggested that it may not be legal.
Mr. Leonard also states that oil wells have no direct financial benefits to its resident, but if you sign a lease with an oil company, don’t you get a check for leasing your ground? You can’t get more direct than that.
The most ridiculous lines from Mr. Leonard’s letter is the conspiracy theory that the opponents for wind are somehow sponsored by big oil or big coal. As I look out my window, as I am writing this letter, there is an oil rig drilling on a prominent wind lease-holding family’s land in Riga Township.
So, Mr. Leonard, are you saying that the wind lease-holding family sponsored the opposition to not have turbines on their land? And wouldn’t drilling for oil here in our county reduce our dependency on foreign oil? As for big coal, “Exelon’s fossil fuel power plants produce over 12,000 megawatts of electricity. A diverse fuel mix of coal, oil and natural gas…”. This quote is off of their website. So do you really believe Exelon sponsored the opposition just to keep their fossil fuel plants running?
Be real, Mr. Leonard. We are all smarter than that.
Everyone knows.
People before profit.
Eric A. Martis
Ogden Twp.
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/05/06/pro-wind-ordinance-letter-ridiculous/