June 18, 2013
Indiana, Letters

E.ON assurances are empty promises

Kokomo Tribune | June 18, 2013 | kokomotribune.com

Since recently learning that my home is literally inside the footprint of the proposed Howard County Wildcat Wind Farm, I have been doing all I can to learn about the potential impacts the industrial wind turbines could have on our community.

This journey has taken me to multiple studies and articles, especially regarding potential property value declines and health effects wherein authors and/or researchers seek to definitively make their case – only to be contradicted by yet another study on the other side of the issue.

In fact, even a 143-page “official study” given by an E.ON representative to a nonparticipating landowner in the present Madison/Tipton County Wildcat Wind Farm, while energetically striving to prove that property values are not negatively impacted, states in its final sentence, “Currently, the severe lack of statistical rigor, unbiasedness, and reliable methodologies across the wind farm proximity and property value studies cannot allow any general conclusions to be made – only site-specific findings.”

How’s that for a definitive statement?

Similarly, when numerous people presently living under the impact of industrial wind turbines fervently declare they are, indeed, suffering negative health issues, it seems there is some study or article “out there” ridiculing those citizens as somehow making it all up – that there is no way these effects can be “real.”

In light of this dilemma, I pose the following two questions:

A. What if property value declines and negative health effects are real?

B. And if they are, who should be held morally, ethically and financially responsible when they occur?

Unfortunately, we are already finding sufficient proof of both property value declines and negative health effects through the official complaints being filed by our local wind farm victims. I find it quite disturbing that our own county commissioners are showing no signs, whatsoever, of taking these written complaints seriously, choosing instead to continue believing the easily rebuffed studies of the wind companies.

How sad that we have a local government that is far more willing to have its citizens bear the physical and financial risks, while an intruding corporation lavishes in its government subsidies. Indeed, the wind company assurances are empty promises, until they back it up with legally binding guarantees. The burden of proof is on them, not the citizens of this county.

Keith Brautigam

Greentown


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2013/06/18/e-on-assurances-are-empty-promises/