[BCNnet] Wind turbines in Chicago area

[Randi Doeker - Chicago]

This is from a letter to the suburban Daily Herald newspaper.  The City of Chicago has announced
that they will be installing a wind turbine someplace in the City as a prototype to encourage
private business to follow.

 

The argument that I've been given by conservationists who support wind turbines for Chicago is that
it is better than the habitat destruction at mines and power plants that deprive birds of nesting
sites.  My response is that the warbler that didn't get to nest is still alive to look elsewhere;
the ones that hit turbines are not.

 

COS and CAS is arranging a public meeting (hopefully for Sept) with the local company that does
bird-safer turbines - http://www.aerotecture.com/.  

 

Randi Doeker

Chicago

 

...........................

 

Wind is no answer to U.S. energy needs 

 

Howard A. Learner (Fence Post, July 17) supports "investments in wind power and other clean,
renewable energy" despite the fact after three decades and over $14 billion in taxpayer subsidies,
so-called renewable energy - wind, solar, and biomass fuels - together supply only 3 percent of
America's electricity, with wind and solar providing less than two-tenths of 1 percent, and that's
when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining. 

 

Any electricity generated cannot be stored and must be transmitted over high voltage lines to where
it is needed. Counting turbines and transmission, that's a lot of land. A single 555-megawatt
gas-fired power plant on 15 acres generates more electricity each year than all 13,000 of
California's wind turbines, which dominate 106,000 acres of once-scenic hill country. They kill
some 10,000 eagles, hawks, other birds and bats every year. 

 

In Wisconsin, anti-oil groups support building 133 gigantic Cuisinarts on 32,000 acres (16 times
the ANWR operations area) near Horicon Marsh. This magnificent wetland is home to millions of
geese, ducks and other migratory birds, and just miles from an abandoned mine that houses 140,000
bats. At 390 feet high, the turbines would tower over the Statue of Liberty (305 feet), U.S.
Capitol Building (287 feet) and Arctic oil production facilities (50 feet). All these Horicon
turbines would produce about as much power as Fairfax County, Va., gets from one facility that
burns garbage to generate electricity. 

 

Two of the biggest wind farms in Europe have 159 turbines but together they take a year to produce
less than four days' output from a single 2,000-megawatt conventional power station that takes up a
couple of acres. Our energy answer, my friends, is not blowing in the wind. 

 

Daniel John Sobieski 

Chicago 

 

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