‘Greed’ in the easement business
Iowa Farmer Today | Feb 8, 2020 | www.agupdate.com
Kim Brenneman in a recent issue of IFT hit the nail squarely on the head when dealing with the snake oil salesmen of the wind industry convincing landowners to sell easements for wind turbines and transmission lines. They’re quite persuasive in their arguments because they are dangling a large amount of money in front of unsuspecting landowners who get blind-sided by the seemingly huge payout for such a simple thing as an easement.
The entire wind industry is driven by greed! Greed of private companies maximizing their efforts to receive every possible penny from we taxpayers. Greed of local board of supervisors for huge tax windfalls from turbines blinding them to the plight of county residents forced to live with these monstrosities 24/7, allowing them to be built almost on top of other private property. But probably the most egregious greed of all is the landowner willingness to see only dollar signs with zero regard to their neighbors.
I can’t explain what has happened to our senior politician, Sen. Chuck Grassley who during his first four terms encouraged “whistle-blowers” to expose government waste, but his slavish support for wind and solar subsidies will, in the end, make him responsible for the largest waste of taxpayer dollars in history! He assured us this would be the end of subsidies. He told us that in a meeting with him a few years ago as we were fighting a private company who wanted to use eminent domain to force us to sign easements for a proposed power line cutting our farms in half!
Did I believe him? Not when he also said “wind subsidies will end over my dead body!” Is it surprising a year extension of subsidies is included in the current “omnibus” spending bill passed by Congress?
Why am I so opposed to subsidies for wind turbines? Quite simply a life-cycle cost analysis shows a wind turbine uses more fossil fuel over it’s lifetime than will ever be recovered! Less greenhouse gas emissions if fuel was burnt directly to produce the electricity!
Jerry Crew
Webb, Iowa
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2020/02/08/greed-in-the-easement-business/