Wind projects operate under false equivalence
The Columbus Dispatch | Feb 14, 2020 | www.dispatch.com
The Columbus Dispatch | Feb 14, 2020 | www.dispatch.com
The Ohio General Assembly is currently considering legislation, Senate Bill 234, allowing local referendums on wind projects. One of the main arguments from Big Business against such a vote is that there is no precedent for referendums on any kind of energy generation projects. To buy into this argument one has to believe that wind projects are equivalent to other forms of generation projects. They are not.
No other form of electrical generation project transforms entire communities into heavy industrial zones like wind projects do. Some might wish to paint a pastoral face on them but 600-foot-tall machines with 200-foot-long blades spinning 150 mph and developing 6,000 horsepower are in fact heavy industrial machines and not just “structures.” Place several dozen across a single community and you have a communitywide heavy industrial zone.
Current Ohio policy on siting wind projects is the precedent that was mistakenly applied to wind energy by the legislature in 2008. The control over such projects should be returned to local citizens.
Jim Feasel, Tiffin
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2020/02/14/wind-projects-operate-under-false-equivalence/