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Industrial wind turbines … the corruption of zoning
Credit: PUBLIC FORUM: Industrial wind turbines … the corruption of zoning | Daily News | May 07, 2022 | www.thedailynews.cc ~~
Industrializing rural counties with commercial wind turbines will deconstruct many aspects of country life, none so obvious as zoning.
Zoning regulation exists to protect us from development infringing on adjacent property rights and values, as well as to preserve the essential nature of our communities by creating zones of like kind areas of development. Effective zoning promotes orderly development, harmonious with the nature of the community as a whole.
To pretend industrial turbines are harmonious with agricultural farming in rural communities is insanity. When money is allowed to purchase common sense zoning decisions, and that is clearly what is what we are up against with Apex Clean Energy, we should call it what it is – corruption. Money for turbines is a total scam, causing many township officials to lose their minds. A little common sense reveals industrial turbines have no place in rural communities and that by placing them there, communities will lose their essential natures forever. The purpose of zoning is to ensure that this very thing does not happen; that the essential nature of our communities is being protected, not destroyed. Industrial turbines, if nothing else, belong in areas zoned industrial, not agricultural.
Say I want to put a commercial gas station on land zoned agricultural. I have no doubt I should be turned down based on common sense zoning, because a gas station would run counter to the essential rural nature of the area and the zoning that protects it … industrial wind turbines a thousand times more so. Adopting the Apex model, however, if I offer to share my profits with the township and my neighbors (i.e. bribe them), I should expect to be able to purchase a variance for my gas station. Fairness demands I be treated like Apex. The only question being how much money it will take for me to corrupt the process to get a favorable decision? And that would be fair to ask should industrial wind turbines be approved for placement in rural areas zoned agricultural. It would set a horrible precedent of pay to play for all future zoning decisions and establish corruption as a way of life.
Charles Curtis
Rockford
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