Not a Lot Aired About Wind Turbine Problems

[XLFD]

 With a recent final settlement of the last two individual holdouts of a lawsuit started in 2013 by 17 neighbors of Mason County's Lake Winds Energy Farm, Consumer's Energy has only issues concerning noise mitigation with the county to settle, it is on appeal by Consumer's after losing in the county circuit court.  The litigation in both have been little more than background noise according to the regular media of the area and in Michigan.

According to Shineldecker, (whose home is pictured to the left) the residents’ lawsuit was resolved (for 15 of 17 plaintiffs) during the late summer and autumn of 2014.

“It was just about to go to trial; in fact I was in court waiting to be the first to testify, when we were told a settlement had been reached,” Shineldecker said. “It took about two months to work out the wording; then ours was actually finalized the week of Dec. 17.

“To me, we were helping others by being willing to take a stand,” Shineldecker added. “One of these days the facts are going to come out. Twenty years from now the health impacts of living with these industrial wind turbines will be common knowledge. It will be like the way it happened with cigarettes. But right now those who know the truth are a minority. The talking points used by AWEA (American Wind Energy Association) haven’t changed from what they were saying five years ago. I believe that in our democracy, right will win in the end, but only after a lot of sacrifices have been made.”

Shineldecker also said that his family’s property, which he is selling off in portions, is now going for 78 percent of its appraised value.

Before the end of 2013, Mason County had declared that the wind plant was not in compliance with its noise ordinance. Consumers Energy took the county to court over that determination. It lost at the Circuit Court, and that case is currently under appeal.

The local media have noted the issues as news, since filing a court lawsuit and getting a verdict or settling typically meets that standard.  Beyond the court dispositions of these two lawsuits, however, there has been very little said or investigated about the issues under consideration, and the bigger issues that should be considered when a lot of public money is used for what some learned people may deem as great, while other learned people would say is a waste and a step backward for the green movement. 

The week before last, there were two groups that met in Lansing, not far from each other geographically, but very far from each other philosophically.  One was the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) who held a meeting where they threw out some of the media who have not cheerleaded their cause, effectively having a secret meeting where the anointed and enlightened media that shilled for them could get their talking points.

In a different room in the same building, the Interstate Informed Citizens Coalition met and welcomed all to attend and participate.  Some of the people speaking are recognizable, such as State Representative Ray Franz, and local Riverton property owner Cary Shineldecker, talking mostly about unresolved issues with wind power.  There were also experts in the field of wind power that freely discussed these issues.  This was too much to handle for most of the regular media, other than the one dismissed from the other meeting, Michigan Capitol Confidential. 

Two of the things that merit discussion now that the legislature is scheduled to review the state's 10% mandate of energy coming from 'green' sources  passed in 2008, is wind energy's efficiency and its health effects. 

 

The allegation that wind energy is neither efficient nor particularly good for the environment is based on the fact that the wind only blows intermittently. The claim here is that, in Michigan, which the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission long ago excluded from its list of “good” wind energy states, wind energy is mostly fossil fuels — primarily natural gas — in disguise.

According to wind energy critics, natural gas is needed to supplement the on-again off-again variability of wind to a degree that the wind portion of the equation is an impediment. In other words, simply turning on the natural gas generators and disconnecting from the wind turbines would be both more efficient and result in fewer emissions, a fact the AWEA would rather ignore.

The wind energy advocates and their willing media accomplices therefore overlook that wind power is mostly redundant and requires fossil fuel backup for success.  Demonizing wind energy critics by calling them shills for the fossil fuels is nonsense when one considers this, as these will still prosper with wind turbines or not.  Energy companies and wind advocates know this, but they sell the Emperor's new clothes to the gullible media and politicians. 

Healthwise, close proximity to industrial wind turbines seem to cause real physical and mental problems to some people.  Mason County took Consumers Energy to court over what is essentially the health issue concerning Lake Winds wind plant near Ludington. The county won at the circuit court level and that case is now before the Michigan Court of Appeals. The fact that most of the news media across this state (even the local ones) has failed to cover that case is nothing short of amazing. 

Even more amazing is that the 'public-minded' wind projects are cloaked in secrecy, with clandestine agreements with gag clauses  worked out with landowners well before the projects come to fruition as it did here.  When the settlements with 15 landowners and then the last two were worked out, nobody involved could speak about what the settlement actually entailed in either dollar amounts or conditional agreements.

Across Lake Michigan, Brown County in Wisconsin (where Green Bay is located) declared wind turbines to be health hazards. In Ohio, the state rid itself of the “in-state” aspect of its wind energy mandate and lengthened its wind turbine setback distance. The national and statewide news media has failed to report stories like these.  Health hazards are for coal miners.

When the seven year review of the energy mandate comes up, look for the energy companies to direct the proceedings and the reportage.  Don't expect either to fight back unless they get the idea that the public is not buying it anymore.

[Willy]

Very informative X. Good job. When those giant eyesores were being install I took a few pictures of the vehicles in the staging area just south of town where the tower parts were being stored and the transport of the tower parts to the "infected" areas was in progress. I did not see any vehicles from Michigan except the "rent a security guard" that was on duty to keep an eye on the equipment. What I found directly contradicted the information handed out to the abused citizens of Mason County. All those promised jobs that were going to bring prosperity to the Mason county area just never materialized. For starters every truck that was used to transport the towers out to the sites, were from out of state such as Maine, Oklahoma and Texas. The escort vehicles that followed and preceded the trucks were from Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin. The trailers were from Indiana and several other states I have forgotten. The parts for the towers were labeled "Oregon and I think Denmark. Even the cradles that the tubes were resting on as they waited for transport were from VietNam. If I remember correctly, the only local help that worked on the project were cement contractors because the cement was, of course, created locally. If it would have been possible I'm sure the contractors in charge of the towers would have imported the cement from China. The entire industry of blowhard wind companies, users and supporters are nothing but a pack of liars and we, again, fell victim to these progressive " save the planet" leaches. These windy idiots have cost the tax payers billions and will be costing us much more in the future.

[XLFD]

It definitely isn't the way a legitimate public enterprise is conducted.  You can't even check on how many local jobs were created because of their attention to detailed secrecy.  Meanwhile, those living close to these turbines become part of a scientific experiment they had no say in their participation in, and our energy in reality gets no greener.