November 30, 2014
Letters, Wisconsin

Wind report didn’t tell the whole story

Fond du Lac Reporter | November 29, 2014 | www.fdlreporter.com

I’m responding to a Nov. 16 Reporter letter citing the Wisconsin Public Service Commission’s Wind Siting Council Report. The author of that letter twists the truth by leaving out part of the sentence he quotes from the report. His intellectual dishonesty is paralleled by the authors of the WSC Report. Readers need to understand how the WSC Report was produced and why its heavily biased position cannot be trusted.

The PSC staff, widely recognized as very pro-wind, drafted the report and then sent it to the 14 WSC members for feedback. Eight of those members – the “majority”— are pro-wind, including two wind developers (who profit from wind development), two utility representatives (who operate wind projects), and two members of quasi-environmental groups (receiving funding from wind interests). The six remaining members – the “minority” – are pro-health and have no conflicts of interest. All requests by WSC members to modify the PSC staff’s draft were either unilaterally accepted or denied by the staff, or were put to a simple majority vote of the WSC, with the pro-wind majority winning nearly all of those votes.

That majority also decided what the report would include, and voted to exclude all “real world” wind turbine health impact testimony, affidavits and resolutions from Wisconsin residents, towns, counties and the Wisconsin Towns Association. Prematurely, before the report draft was even discussed by the full WSC, the majority voted to adopt it “as is” despite strong objection by the minority.

The resulting WSC Report amounts to nothing more than wind industry propaganda. Don‟t trust it.

The minority view, while excluded from the main report, is presented as an appendix and provides a truthful, objective report by unconflicted WSC members whose only interest is protecting public health. Read it at: http://bccrwe.com/images/stories/WSCMinorityResponse2014.pdf [or here.]

Jim Vanden Boogart
WSC Alternate Member
Greenleaf

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2014/11/30/wind-report-didnt-tell-the-whole-story/