Wind turbine site ruffles area avian enthusiasts; Dangers to migratory birds are cited 

PORT CLINTON – Twice a year, mi­gra­tory birds flock to the marshes and woods along Lake Erie.

In spring, song­birds stop in wooded lots, eat­ing in­sects and rest­ing be­fore the long flight across the lake to north­ern breed­ing grounds. This shore­line stretch that in­cludes Lu­cas, Ot­tawa, San­dusky, and Erie coun­ties at­tracts bird­ers as well who are ea­ger to spot bald ea­gles, wa­ter­fowl, and catch a rare glimpse of a pip­ing plo­ver or the small and col­or­ful Kirt­land’s war­bler.

The boun­ti­ful birds found here are why a pro­posed 198-foot wind tur­bine with whirl­ing blades, to be lo­cated about 1 mile from Lake Erie at Ot­tawa County’s Camp Perry, trou­bles avian ad­vo­cates. The proj­ect is un­der anal­y­sis and at­tack.

The coastal swath, dot­ted with wild­life ar­eas and ref­uges, is con­sid­ered a “glob­ally im­por­tant” hab­i­tat by bird­ers, said Kim Kauf­man, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Black Swamp Bird Ob­ser­va­tory in Oak Har­bor.

“We’ve just got to pre­serve these crit­i­cal pieces,” Ms. Kauf­man said.

She said a “pre­pon­der­ance of ev­i­dence” shows the pro­posed Camp Perry site is the wrong place to put a wind tur­bine. Ms. Kauf­man has been work­ing to gather op­po­si­tion from other groups and plans to send a let­ter to­day pro­test­ing the proj­ect to the 200th Red Horse squad­ron of the Ohio Air Na­tional Guard.

“It’s just as­tound­ing that they are still con­sid­er­ing it,” Ms. Kauf­man said.

Na­tional Guard of­fi­cials said proj­ect study and en­vi­ron­men­tal anal­y­sis con­tinue, as well as work to re­spond to con­cerns from the Ohio Depart­ment of Nat­u­ral Re­sources and the U.S. Fish and Wild­life Ser­vice.

It’s pre­ma­ture to dis­cuss con­cerns be­fore that anal­y­sis is fin­ished, Ohio Na­tional Guard spokes­man James Sims said.

“We un­der­stand that they are con­cerned about this. There is a pro­cess; we are work­ing through the pro­cess,” Mr. Sims said.

Those con­cerns re­volve around plans to in­stall at Camp Perry a 500-ki­lo­watt tur­bine, with an aim to gen­er­ate wind power, re­duce elec­tric costs, and aid re­search.

U.S. Rep. Marcy Kap­tur (D., Toledo) helped se­cure about $1.5 mil­lion in fed­eral funds for the proj­ect. The Na­tional Guard en­tered into a con­tract with a firm that pur­chased a re­con­di­tioned wind tur­bine that could be used at the site but is not pres­ently lo­cated there, Lt. Col. Daniel Tack said.

Be­cause Camp Perry is an his­toric site, the proj­ect re­quires a his­tor­i­cal and en­vi­ron­men­tal re­view, he said.

There is no con­struc­tion time­line, of­fi­cials said.

Solar power is avail­able at the camp. Ad­ding wind gen­er­a­tion is just one of many Camp Perry in­vest­ments as­sisted by Miss Kap­tur, said her chief of staff, Steve Kat­ich. She views al­ter­na­tive en­ergy as a way to cre­ate jobs and cut costs, said Mr. Kat­ich, who added that Miss Kap­tur is a bird en­thu­si­ast.

The Na­tional Guard and state and fed­eral agen­cies should work to­gether to ad­dress bird-re­lated con­cerns, Mr. Kat­ich said.

“I would ex­pect that the guard is heed­ing the con­cerns of the fish and wild­life ser­vice and other en­ti­ties, and we would en­cour­age them to do that,” Mr. Kat­ich said. “I think there is an air of co­op­er­a­tion and dis­cus­sion that’s go­ing back and forth on this proj­ect. That is good. That is im­por­tant to al­lay the con­cerns of all the folks that are in­volved.”

Sixty bald ea­gle nests are lo­cated within 10 miles of the pro­posed proj­ect site, and one nest is about a half-mile away.

Those fish and wild­life ser­vice num­bers are among the rea­sons Mark Shield­cas­tle, Black Swamp re­search di­rec­tor, op­poses the Camp Perry site.

“It’s one of the dens­est nest­ing grounds for ea­gles in the lower 48,” Mr. Shield­cas­tle said.

Ohio’s bald ea­gle pop­u­la­tion pre­vi­ously was di­min­ished, he said, in part by con­tam­i­nants that climbed up the food chain. A re­cov­ery ef­fort helped bring back the sym­bolic bird to this re­gion, Mr. Shield­cas­tle said. Now, he’s wor­ried about ea­gles col­lid­ing with a wind tur­bine.

It’s hap­pened be­fore, said Megan Sey­mour, a fish and wild­life ser­vice bi­ol­o­gist who wrote a de­tailed re­view doc­u­ment­ing con­cerns with the pro­posed site.

“We know that bald ea­gles can be killed by wind tur­bines,” she said.

The fish and wild­life ser­vice rec­om­mended a num­ber of ac­tions to help mit­i­gate the risk of bird-tur­bine col­li­sions. Shut­ting off the tur­bine dur­ing the bus­i­est mi­gra­tory sea­sons, es­pe­cially dur­ing the high-dan­ger time pe­riod of dusk to dawn, is one sug­ges­tion. Birds are ac­tive dur­ing day­light and can see and avoid a tur­bine more eas­ily then, Ms. Sey­mour said.

“We do have a num­ber of con­cerns about the proj­ect. We can work with Camp Perry,” she said. “They’ve been pretty re­spon­sive to us so far.”

But pre­cau­tion­ary steps won’t elim­i­nate all prob­lems, con­tends Ms. Kauf­man, who points out the eco­nomic ben­e­fit bird­ers bring to the area through­out the year and dur­ing a large bird fes­ti­val. It would be bet­ter, Ms. Kauf­man said, to in­stall the tur­bine far­ther from the lake­shore area that serves as a sky high­way for mi­grat­ing birds.

Even if birds don’t crash into the tur­bine or its spin­ning blades, birds may be­gin to fly an­other route to avoid the tall struc­ture, she said. That “avoid­ance fac­tor” is just one of the prob­lems with the pro­posed site, she said.

Mr. Sims re­fused to ad­dress pub­licly bird­ers’ spe­cific con­cerns un­til proj­ect anal­y­sis is com­plete.

“They would like to have some an­swers, and all of that is go­ing to come out,” Mr. Sims said.

Ms. Kauf­man, mean­while, re­mains convinced the solu­tion lies in re­lo­cating the tur­bine.

“What we are go­ing to have to un­der­stand is that there are places along the lake­shore that we have to con­serve,” Ms. Kauf­man said. “We can ab­so­lutely have wind tur­bines. We just have to work to­gether to [find] good, re­spon­si­ble lo­ca­tions.”