Wind Power - Windmills Do Alter Our Environment #3

Highland Hill Farm Vice President William J. Hirst of Fountainville, PA, announces that Highland Hill Farm will fund projects, research, and fund litigation to promote and protect citizens and the environment from the placement of wind power turbines in New York and Pennsylvania. This article explains why.

********************************************************************* Environmental Threats by Proposed Windmills at Fairfield, NY ....Big Windmills Make Big Ecological Problems Highland Hill Farm Vice President William J. Hirst of Fountainville, PA, announces that Highland Hill Farm will fund projects, research, and fund litigation to promote and protect citizens and the environment from the placement of wind power turbines in New York and Pennsylvania.

Environmental Threats by Proposed Windmills at Fairfield, NY

There is a proposed large scale wind power electricity generating project located in Herkimer County, in central New York state. Among the nearby surrounding properties affected is a 160- acre parcel that is currently being used as a tree resource, East Penn Gardens, a natural growth tree farm, owned by James R. Hirst, a supplier to Highland Hill Farm. This project has an attractive shrewdly designed name. It is euphemistically called "Top Notch," in the proposal by PPM Atlantic Renewable, a foreign-owned wind power company. This company proposes to place a total of 56 wind turbines, each generating a maximum of 1.5 megawatts, in the adjacent area surrounding the East Penn Gardens parcel.


The turbines, with the turbine blades 450 feet up in the air (the Statue of Liberty's torch is only about 300 feet up) will forever change the environment of Top Notch AND the surrounding areas. Highland Hill Farm and East Penn Gardens will both fight this project in every possible legal manner. According to an article from www.LiveScienc e.com , : When power companies started installing towering arrays of white wind turbines as a clean, efficient energy alternative to oil and coal, critics pointed to the farms as noisy, unattractive, and fatal to passing birds. Many of these concerns were since addressed, but questions still remained about local and global weather impacts. Wind energy output is growing by about 30 percent a year globally. To answer the global question, David Keith of the University of Calgary and his colleagues estimated the drag that wind farms hypothetically expanded to cover 10 percent of the Earth's land surface could have on the planet's circulating atmosphere. The result showed global cooling in polar regions above 60 degrees North latitude and global warming in temperate regions such as North America at about 30 degrees North latitude. A forecast for a hotter, drier Earth could result if we build too many wind power generating plants throughout the world. The results were released yesterday and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Somnath Baidya Roy of Princeton University headed up a related project that studied the impact of simulated, extensive wind farms on local weather and found they could cause a drying and warming effect in the morning when somewhat inefficient turbines end up pushing warm air across moist and cool overnight soil. Local wind speed would also increase slightly, the experiment showed. Baidya Roy and his colleagues figured the meteorological costs of a simulated 60-mile-square wind farm by running a mathematical model of a climate system in Oklahoma on a computer. The local impact study was published recently in the Journal of Geophysical Research. "People treat renewable energy as if it's a free lunch. That is not true," Baidya Roy said. "You always have to pay a price for any consumption. We have to look at the costs and make a choice." As you will see in the bulleted list below, the ecology of East Penn Gardens will be effected in many serious and detrimental ways: -The natural bird and bat populations will be at risk as air flows to and from the woodlot are changed. -It is estimated that the mean temperature change in the 160 acre East Penn Gardens parcel where measurements have been made will be up to 2 degrees Fahrenheit. This will of course increase evaporation rates. Plant and animal life will be stressed and surrounding wetlands will be drier. -Changing the temperature of this immediate typical temperate arboreal zone (cool, moist, northern forest) will affect native trout. When temperatures rise, dissolved oxygen in the water gets lowered, understandably, the fish suffer... -There are known EPA officially registered endangered species of plants and animals living in the East Penn parcel's wooded forests and marshy wetlands. These species will undoubtedly have their habitat changed, most likely for the worse if the "mega-scale" turbines are installed. -There will be shadow problems and windmill flicker problems. In short, the huge blades break up sunlight into a staccato facsimile of flashes like Morse Code as they spin around, don't they? -The noise from the blades may not compare with a helicopter's rotor blades, but the low hum we hear affects other life forms differently. Wind turbines generate both audible and low frequency [deep base vibration] sound waves. Imagine standing amidst 160 acres of formerly serene forest with 15 gigantic wind turbines installed near and around you, located on 3 sides.

A recent study claims that 20% of all species worldwide will become extinct if the temperature rises just .8 degrees Centigrade, or more than 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit, by the year 2100. Won't a similar 2 degree Fahrenheit change in the East Penn Gardens local area described threaten local habitats? Of course it will. The study claiming that global warming would cause species to become extinct was in Nature 427, 145- 148 ( 8 Jan. 2004 ); by C.D. Thomas et al.

Highland Hill Farm will begin legal filings that will attempt to block this project. James Hirst believes wind turbines placed so close to his property, discharging air, changing the flow of air, raising the temperature, changing the incident light, and adding sound waves, at his property is a use of his air rights and he will file an injunction to address this question. Highland Hill Farm will help fund this legal claim as, according to William Hirst, this will serve to protect every-one's rights to their air space from industrial discharges without due process and or compensation. Just as one homeowner in a neighborhood cannot emanate offensive odors, or noise(s), block sunlight, or block the view, for any other neighbors, and not just those immediately adjacent to his or her property, neither can Atlantic Energy Renewable do so, even in a sparsely populated rural area like Herkimer County, NY.

The local zoning codes, define the tower setback zone for residences at 1250 feet, for public roads at 500 feet, and unoccupied private property at the height of the tower, measured only to the rotors' center, and not including the base, as being 30'. This zoning code allowance means that a 50 foot tower can be 30 feet from the property line because the base and rotor tip extended range is not included in the height calculation from a property line (the 30 feet limit established by the code restriction establishes that the rotor blade must be 30 feet from the ground), thus a 40 foot tower with a 10 foot diameter blade can be as close as 30 feet from a property line. If the base of a tower is elevated, then the rotor tip could be raised up from ground level and the tower could even be closer than 30 feet from the property line! This is a extremely vague, don't you agree? The statute creates setbacks which deny some classes of property owners their property rights. Therefore, some property owners are denied "due process" and "equal protection" under this law. Furthermore, this law does not promote the health and welfare of the community, nor establish reasonable guidelines for safety of the community, nor protection of property values by zoning use restrictions.

<ahref="http://www.digatree.com/scan">This download shows typical construction area which Atlantic Renewable has filed with its Environmental Assessment Report. Atlantic Renewable has submitted this as part of its permitting process. We see no evidence in these photos (the poor quality is our fault in copying, sorry) of any attempts whatsoever to control erosion during what is, in fact, the most sensitive stage of site development. Construction is when extra care, extraordinary concern is required to alleviate impacts on any site and the surrounding environment. Atlantic Renewable energy spokesmen claim their company's projects do not harm the environment. Yet, if they are showing in their application photos in which they are already not protecting the environment during construction, when effects on the environment are so crucial, how can any of us have even the slightest confidence Atlantic Energy Renewable will attempt to protect the site and its surroundings during ordinary routine operations, after they finish construction?


Don't forget, conserving oil is NOT a reason for erecting wind power electricity generating turbines. According the EPRI, the Electric Power Research Institute, in 2005, only 2.8% of America's electricity came from oil-fired generating plants. And, we should also note that wind powered generating turbines only produce an average of about 25%, or one-quarter, of their maximum production rating, because wind speed often falls below 12 miles per hour in even the windiest places (from the AWEA, American Wind Energy Association).

Imagine a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without peanuts. Imagine going to a ball game and having no buns for your hot dog. Imagine image our skies without birds. This is why during the months of January and February, all sales at Highland Hill Farm will be used for the campaign to stop the proposed "Top Notch" wind power generating turbines. We want to help promote awareness of the issues by the general public, as well as fund legal actions to assist property owners in their quest for justice, so that they are adequately compensated, in legal terms, "to be made whole." Further, Highland Hill Farm has contacted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to get them, along with state government agencies, begin a program to place leg bands with transponders on affected birds which will be able to turn off rotors of wind power turbines when birds approach. Once a species of bird is extinct, there is absolutely no way we can bring them back, at least not currently (pun intended). Almost all wind turbines are fitted with automatic braking devices. They can be damaged when the rotor blades go too fast if wind gusts are strong enough... It is indeed possible for transponder/shutoff systems to be incorporated into wind power turbines to stop the killing of endangered birds.


Bill Hirst Highland Hill Farm

About the Author

James Ryan has a large nursery in Bucks County Pa near Doylestown. He has thousands of Green Giants and writes about there uses. His web sites include http://www.seedlingsrus.com and http://www.digatree.com/Living Fences

Author: JHirst

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