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Wind farm creating environmental nightmare
Credit: Walla Walla Union-Bulletin | February 7, 2015 | union-bulletin.com ~~
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The recently completed Tucannon River Wind Farm was built on a site that was thrice rejected as unsuitable for windmills, because average wind speeds were too low to produce any electricity, and because ridgelines run in the direction of the prevailing wind, so that even when wind did blow, windmills built on the ridgelines would shadow each other.
Portland General Electric, desperate to cash in on windmill subsidies and tax breaks, ignored all the warnings about environmental degradation and built the windmill strings across the ridgelines, using massive landfills as bridges for access highways across the valleys.
Any conscientious farmer knows what this kind of treatment does to farmland, and now the worst possible environmental nightmare is occurring: erosion is carving great ditches through the fields, dumping tons of once fertile topsoil into the Tucannon River, leaving a thousand acres of land unfarmable.
Once upon a time, irresponsible construction like this would have been deemed a crime, and the EPA would have levied fines for negligent discharge of pollutants into the waters of the United States.
We farmers have long wanted to be regarded as good stewards of the Earth’s precious natural resources, and we are ashamed of ourselves for allowing this to happen.
Jim Thorn
Dayton
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