Wind turbine column discounted certain facts
The Buffalo News | Thu, Nov 14, 2019 | buffalonews.com
This letter is in response to The Buffalo News column dated Oct. 26 by Ellen Cardone Banks of the Sierra Club. She is encouraging the development of offshore industrial wind turbines for electricity in Lake Erie, our fresh water source.
To keep this concise please set aside views on politics, climate change, economics, jobs, wildlife, clean energy, permanent damage to the lake bed and the fact that we can see half of the land based turbines in Lackawanna are broken. Kindly focus on two of the points Ellen Banks makes.
She is advocating the permanent placement of an undisclosed number of electric generators containing oil to be anchored in the bed of Lake Erie. The proposal I have seen is a line of 50 from Lackawanna to Dunkirk. She justifies this by stating there are plenty of oil-filled boats and freighters out there on Lake Erie.
It’s funny, every picture I find of offshore turbines are in calm seas and under blue skies. Lake Erie can change from calm and serene to wild tempest in a matter of hours. The Oct. 27 weather should remind us. All the oil-filled boats and freighters can move safely to shore.
In the winter they would be in storage or docked, leaving the oil-filled turbines out on open water to face the elements. Who will be going out there and climbing up to maintain them?
Ellen Banks also states that they will be “barely visible” on the horizon. Offshore wind turbines are approximately the height of Seneca One Tower, the tallest building in Buffalo. Please consider the distance from which that building is visible.
At night, they will be flashing their presence like a 47 mile long airport runway, all the way to Dunkirk.
With all due respect, Ms. Banks, we will see them very well.
Mary Hensen
East Aurora
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2019/11/15/wind-turbine-column-discounted-certain-facts/