Kennedy's don't like them...Well at least in their neighborhood...I am sure they are okay with yours however....
Kennedy tries to halt windmills - Washington Times
Well, at least they're consistent.
Many people are for things, as long as they don't have to deal with them.
Or against things, as long as they can have theirs.
I am guilty of that. I was all for them until I heard the negative aspects of them.
Changing your mind is one thing. Being for them if they are someone else's probem, until they are you're problem, that's hypocritical.
OK, I went to the meeting. It was a community meeting. The only people there were opposed to the wind farm. Even though everyone was invited, there were about 300-350 people and no county commissioners, no county councilmen, no reps from Calpine (the company proposing this project).
There were a bunch of people spouting anecdotal evidence about headaches, drowsiness, memory loss - physiological stuff. I can't comment on that since I don't know if it is or is not true.
There were videos of the insides of peoples' houses when the blades "flicker" through the windows. That was very disturbing. I looked at a plat of the proposed sites, and there are 2 proposed within 1/2 mile of my house.
I was mostly interested in the property value stuff, county finance stuff, effect on the surrounding area - basically stuff that affects me.
The main points I gleaned were:
1) Nobody knows who is making the decisions. Everybody says that it is the County Commissioners, but another guy says he talked to Kim Cronk (a county commissioner) and Kim said he doesn't vote on that. I have contacted him through Facebook and he has yet to get back with me.
2) The study that Calpine presented on property value loss were seriously flawed. There are no unbiased studies that present change in property values in a true light. The study they cite takes a sample size of 51,000 homes, and less than 100 were within a mile of a windmill when they were sold. That is less than .2% applicable data. I don't consider that a viable study. Also, the study was commissioned by the Department Of Energy so that illustrates the bias from the beginning.
3) Nobody knows exact locations for the windmills. This could make a big difference on my opinion of a wind farm.
4) The proposed setbacks from property lines are 1.1:1 . That means for a 499 foot tower, it only needs to be 550 feet from the property line.
5) This is only viable through government grants. There are Production Credits, Installation Credits, Tax Abatement, Accelerated Depreciation... All these things are on the backs of the American People. Not to mention loss of property value for the people around the wind turbines.
My first priority is to find out who to talk to about his. I will be contacting the County Commissioners, the County Council, the Sheriff, the Mayor, whoever it takes to get a straight answer. I will also be studying up on real property value data.
I think I have made the decision to get more involved. I am not saying it is good or bad, but I do want the appropriate people to take responsibility for their votes. I don't want this to fly under the radar and no one to be accountable.
Find out who is behind them, a little digging will probably disclose that it's a foreign company with a board dominated by European merchant banking people. Our local co-op was talking about getting "green" energy from a company based in Houston. A little digging showed that while the company had a office in Houston, it was owned by Europeans, mining American tax money.
Always follow the money
I remember when we were in Hawaii (The Big Island) down near the south tip and seeing a huge wind farm in the distance.
I asked our tour guide about it and he told us that it was not running anymore.
Even though they had a constant wind there, they were not feasible money wise to keep running.
He said that once the gov't got out of it and stopped paying the bill, it was expensive to keep up with the repairs.
Found this article and looks like he was telling the truth.
Broken promises: The rusting wind turbines of Hawaii > Hawaii Free Press