December 7, 2012
Arizona, Letters

Supervisors do the wind-farm flip-flop

The Camp Verde Bugle | 12/6/2012 | campverdebugleonline.com

“County approves more time for wind farm at Yavapai Ranch” (VI, Dec. 5) was disappointing but predictable.

Early in 2011, Pacific Wind proposed building one wind tower on land leased by Yolo Ranch to test if wind generation was feasible. Ranch representatives sent a letter to the county supervisors stating that “the environmental, habitat, noise and other impacts of a wind farm and associated transportation and transmission improvements are completely inappropriate to this pristine and historic area and clearly an unsuitable land use.”

Supervisor Tom Thurman apparently agreed, stating: “I am against any kind of wind generation in our mountains. They are gorgeous, they are pristine, there’s wilderness just north of there. It is going to be seen for miles and miles. As far as I am concerned, I will fight it.”

Supervisors voted unanimously to reject the proposal.

Five months later, Supervisors Thurman and Springer approved the construction of 81 436-foot wind turbines on Fred Ruskin’s Yavapai Ranch.

If anyone considered there might be some form of corruption involved in this deal, particularly in light of Ruskin’s sale of 40 acres of Ranch land to former Supervisor and now State Transportation Board Chair Bill Feldmeier, they should note Thurman’s rejection of Supervisor Davis’s request for road improvements that would benefit the county: “It would kill the project.”

Just who does Tom Thurman really work for? Sadly, most county voters don’t seem to care.

David Perrell

Clarkdale


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/12/07/supervisors-do-the-wind-farm-flip-flop/