State park defender calls windpower a government-created scam
Guest column by Arnold Sturtevant | The Franklin Journal | 30 October 2015 | sunmediagroup.me.newsmemory.com
Guest column by Arnold Sturtevant | The Franklin Journal | 30 October 2015 | sunmediagroup.me.newsmemory.com
Of unproven ultimate worth to citizens (like ethanol), another government experiment, wind generation of electricity, has been birthed by shoot-from-the-hip, crisis-oriented, bad public policy. This shortsighted government experiment wouldn’t exist but for government; government promotion; government legislation; government regulation; and let’s not forget, government subsidies extracted from hoodwinked taxpayers it purports to serve.
Roles of master and servant have been switched! I do believe more than one politician has created his/her own ‘personal server’, and we’re it! Windpower is so recklessly massive in scope as to be ruinous to one of Maine’s most valuable assets, its scenery. Vacationers may soon have little variety in tourist destinations; just one sea of towered wind generators across the land.
It all started based on two major presuppositions: 1) that we earthlings are fast dying from fossil fuel power generation (debatable); 2) that we are dangerously dependent upon unfriendly terrorist nations for oil (not true). Promoters of windpower supposed we had immediate need for ‘clean’ alternative energy sources. We citizens have had our clocks ‘cleaned’ by our elected servants! Wind isn’t as ‘clean’ as we were led to believe.
Unknown to many, a huge amount of electricity is consumed (at low, subsidizing rates) by windmill generation of power that is then sold back to the power grid at hugely marked-up rates calculated to cover operating costs and amortization of capital investment, plus a guaranteed profit to a small number of private investors. Wind proponents boast of generating ‘capacity’ while conveniently neglecting to clearly reveal effective capacity, net of the mills’ own substantial electricity consumption. Windpower is costing us far more than we are led to believe. It’s a scam, and in more ways than one!
Yet-unquantified ‘cost’ of visual pollution
Beyond the understated yet still astronomical financial cost to consumers and taxpayers, the environmental cost of wind farms’ visual pollution is no less disheartening. I’ll leave it to others to prove or disprove windpower’s economic justification. My personal emphasis is rather on its destruction of Vacationland’s environment. Maine government is proving itself to be a very poor steward of our public parks and conservation lands. Just look what it has been doing to Mount Blue State Park, our largest and arguably most beautiful state park. (Baxter Park is larger, but it isn’t part of the Maine State Park system, having been established by private trust, under governance of a separate authority.)
In Augusta, greed trumps a scenic view: The bandit wins
How can Maine’s State House be allowing this to happen to its citizens’ property? The answer seems to be ‘house’ games are rigged! Count on greed always trumping a scenic view!
Vegas has one-arm bandits; Weld now has its three-arm bandits! Both Vegas and Weld thieves are money machines for a few privileged owners; and both monsters are losers to us deluded suckers who pour endless ‘quarters’ into their hungry bellies.
Visual pollution is not a new concept. What’s new is how it has lately become a heated topic of conversation among those increasingly disgusted by the way voter-empowered guardians of our environment are callously plundering treasured Maine scenery, dear to the hearts of many Mount Blue State Park lovers. Located in the town of Weld, the Park’s holdings, together with abutting Maine conservation lands, now top 20,000 acres, including extensive shore frontage on Weld’s Lake Webb, and hills and mountaintops that ring this jewel-like lake, but sadly, not including all of the ridges comprising the park’s stunning views.
Not quite soon enough, conservationists labored over the last decade to protect one of Maine’s most valued natural resources from expected development pressures that threatened to significantly degrade the park’s wilderness camping ground, its scenic picnic areas and popular summer and winter trail systems. The Tumbledown Mountain Range has become hugely popular for climbers in recent years.
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2015/10/30/state-park-defender-calls-windpower-a-government-created-scam/