Wyoming wind power sticky subject
The Saratoga Sun | April 28, 2021 | www.saratogasun.com
Wind power in Carbon County has been much more contentious than what was covered in the Weickum article, History documentation is dependent on who tells the story. This paper (Sun) illustrates that with the old news excerpts of mining in the early 1900’s and the exaggerated claims of farming potential by newspapers of the 1880’s, many in the Territory of Wyoming.
Terry Weickum is originally from Goshen County and started his Carbon County political career pushing against Agricultural land lot sizes in zoning amendments to the Carbon County Land Use Plan.
These lot minimums protected fragmentation threat of open spaces by land speculators. An out-of-state developer, who was subdividing large ranches, backed Mr. Weickum’s campaign to show the locals what Carbon County’s rubes and rednecks had in place to prevent development. He got elected and proceeded to remake the planning commission with sycophants to develop, no matter the consequences.
This is one of the reasons that Mr. Weickum is a former Commissioner and not the best witness in our county to tell what has happened. National media needs a broader spectrum from unbiased sources to show what’s happening in Carbon County.
Taxes on wind generated electricity are still debated because loss of open space and visual integrity is worth much more to concerned Wyoming citizens than what is generated by the tax rate in place now. The phoney theory that destroys carbon fuels is causing tremendous financial damage to critical areas of state of Wyoming revenues. The replacement industry needs to replace some of the losses.
Another driver in place in Wyoming is purely political cronyism. How many people know the reason turbines and transmission lines are proceeding in Eastern Carbon COunty is because of political connections Warren Buffet, Pacific Power and Rocky Mountain Power have with California to monopolize access to that market. The decisions and subsidies propping up the wind industry flow to the most influential and Buffet has everybody else squeezed out. Follow that thread, media gurus.
Thanks for the opportunity to comment.
Sincerely
Scott Kerbs
Saratoga
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2021/04/29/wyoming-wind-power-sticky-subject/