Better Plan, Wisconsin

NOTE FROM THE BPWI RESEARCH NERD:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will host a Wind Turbine Guidelines Advisory Committee meeting via teleconference and webcast on August 23. This meeting is open to the public, but registration is required. The meeting will take place on August 23, from 1 to 5 p.m. Eastern Time. If you are a member of the public wishing to participate in the meeting via telephone or webcast, you must register online by August 16, 2011.

SOURCE: http://www.fws.gov/windenergy/

Please visit www.fws.gov/windenergy <http://www.fws.gov/windenergy> to register.

For the full meeting announcement, please see the Federal Register notice: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-08-08/pdf/2011-19972. <http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-08-08/pdf/2011-19972.pdf> pdf

'CLEAN' POWER, LIKE OIL, IS BIG BUSINESS- AND MUST OBEY THE SAME RULES

SOURCE: thedaily.com

August 8, 2011,

Trevor Butterworth,

Imagine the U.S. government had asked the oil industry to observe “voluntary” environmental guidelines to protect wildlife — and then imagine that the oil companies were so upset by how burdensome these “voluntary” guidelines were that they were allowed to substantially rewrite them. Of course, this is the kind of dystopian conspiracy that many people imagine already occurs when commercial interests collide with conservation and ecology. What’s remarkable though, is that this is precisely what the U.S. government is allowing to happen with the wind power industry, and not the oil companies — or any other fossil fuel utility.

Last week saw public comments close on the debate over the Department of the Interior and the “voluntary” regulation of Big Wind. Why does Big Wind need regulation? Because wind turbines are highly effective bird-killing machines: stick a 4,000-acre wind farm in the wrong spot and it’s an ecosystem-destroying splat fest.

If there is a capital of wind-turbine avicide, the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area in central California might well be it. Between 1998 and 2001, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory tried to quantify the impact of this vast wind farm, which extends over 50,000 acres, on bird life. It concluded that up to 4,300 birds were killed each year, including 27 to 34 golden eagles. A later, more extensive study of the farm, while noting the uncertainties in measuring bird kills, postulated even higher numbers.

The problem is not just collision — when you add in factors like habitat loss and fragmentation, barrier effects (such as a farm disrupting local or migratory flight paths) and noise, the annual tally of bird deaths caused by wind power is estimated at 440,000 a year, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

But while fossil fuel utility companies are subjected to mandatory conservation rules and are aggressively prosecuted for killing protected species, Big Wind just has to look like it’s trying to be bird-friendly. As the Wildlife Service notes, following the voluntary guidelines will be “taken as evidence of due care,” and even if legally protected species are killed, “caring” means the companies may still be able to dodge the massive fines that have been imposed on careless oil and coal companies.

As Robert Bryce, energy journalist and author of “Power Hungry: The Myths of ‘Green’ Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future,” told me, “Violations of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act — which, by the way, is one of the oldest wildlife protection laws in America – have long been prosecuted without regard for whether the bird kills in question were intentional or not. Imagine if the U.S. Justice Department suddenly decided that enforcement and compliance with federal laws on cocaine trafficking were now to be considered ‘voluntary.’”

Many bird conservation groups are, not surprisingly, furious over this regulatory farce: It’s not just that they believe Big Wind should be subjected to mandatory regulation like every other utility, it’s that Big Wind should not get to write its own regulations.

As Kelly Fuller, an American Bird Conservancy expert on wind power, explained, the first set of “voluntary guidelines” was gutted to take out many of the specific proposal that would actually protect birds. “It is of real concern to the American Bird Conservancy that the earlier draft, written by experts at the Fish and Wildlife Service, has had most of its content replaced with material that came from an industry-dominated panel,” she said. “No other energy sector is allowed to write its own regulations — at least not without people getting upset when they find out about it.”

Despite this, some on the left have tried to portray the outrage as a Republican plot against renewable energy. Media Matters recently claimed that while there have been “a number of wildlife deaths … wind turbines provide more benefit to the environment than they do harm to wildlife.”

When I asked Fuller whether the American Bird Conservancy considered itself part of a Republican smear operation, she stressed that the organization was nonpartisan, and that other conservation and scientific groups that favor mandatory standards for wind power, such as the American Birding Association and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, were hardly political fronts.

Of course, the threat to wildlife from wind power does overlap with intense criticism of wind as a massively inefficient energy source (because it needs to be backed by conventional power and so forth), so it’s hardly surprising that Republicans are quick to accuse wind power advocates of “do as I say, not as I do,” hypocrisy; but that shouldn’t blind the public to a rather more basic economic truth: Wind power is not about mom-and-pop-shop environmentalists sticking up a couple of turbines on a mountaintop, it’s about massive companies like BP Alternative Energy building vast wind farms. When it comes to environmental impact, why should BP’s alternative energy division be held to lesser standards than BP’s petroleum division?

What’s good for the goose is good for everyone; namely, that the law should be applied equally.

BATS AND BIRDS FACE SERIOUS THREATS FROM GROWTH OF WIND ENERGY

SOURCE: New York Times

August 8, 2009

By Umair Irfan

Spinning blades and fluttering wings are clashing more frequently as greater numbers of wind turbines are installed throughout the United States and the world. The generators can top 400 feet tall, have blades turning at 160 miles per hour and can number in the dozens over hundreds of acres. They are part of America’s expanding renewable energy portfolio.

But the same breezes that push the blades are the playground of hundreds of species of birds and bats, and to them, the turbines are giant horizontal blenders.

With wind being one of the fastest-growing energy sources in the world, turbines are generating electricity along with friction between different environmental interests as advocates seek a compromise between the demand for clean renewable energy and the safety of animals.

Wind provides 198 gigawatts of electricity worldwide, with 39 GW of new capacity added just last year, according to the Renewables 2011 Global Status Report (GSR) by REN21, an international renewable energy proponent. “Commercial wind power now operates in at least 83 countries, up from just a handful of countries in the 1990s,” said Janet Sawin, research director and lead author of the GSR, in an email.

The report notes that for the first time, wind power is growing more in developing countries than industrialized nations, led by emerging markets like China, which accounted for half of the global capacity increase last year. In addition, the European Wind Energy Association projects that wind energy employment will double by 2020 in the European Union.

However, the rapid growth and expansion of wind farms has had an increasingly significant effect on birds and bats, especially since, according to the GSR, the average wind turbine size has increased. The American Bird Conservancy (ABC), an avian conservation group, observes that upward of 14 birds per megawatt of wind energy are killed each year, numbering more than 440,000. The organization projects the number will rise substantially as wind energy production increases.

Killing mechanisms are different

Yet it’s hard to determine how bird populations will respond to turbines. “It’s very difficult to say what the impact on birds is … particularly migratory birds,” said David Cottingham, senior adviser to the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Thus, the economic and environmental fallout may not be seen right away, said Cottingham.

According to FWS, birds are killed when they collide directly with turbine blades. Statistics show more birds are killed by cats and windows, to the tune of hundreds of millions. But turbines pose a unique threat to all birds, including endangered species, like whooping cranes, and raptors, like eagles, hawks and falcons.

Electrical infrastructure around turbines, like power lines, also poses hazards to birds, said FWS in a report on bird mortality.

Bats, on the other hand, face different problems around wind farms. “Many more bats than birds are killed by wind turbines, and they are killed in two ways: simply by being hit by the blades, and some are killed by pressure changes due to the sweep of the blades without even being hit,” said John Whitaker Jr., a professor of biology and director of the Center for North American Bat Research and Conservation at Indiana State University, in an email.

Because bats use sound to navigate and can detect moving objects, like insects, exceptionally well, many are better able than birds to avoid striking the blades. However, they can’t detect the invisible swath of low pressure left behind turning blades. Bats then fly into this area, and their internal airways rapidly expand, causing internal bleeding.

This phenomenon, known as barotrauma, accounts for more than half of all turbine-related fatalities in bats, according to a 2008 paper in the journal Current Biology.

The die-off is troubling because bat populations are already under stress from white nose syndrome, a spreading epidemic fungal infection that kills more than a million bats annually. This is exacerbated by bats’ slow reproductive rate and decades-long life expectancy, meaning populations are slow to recover.

“The hibernating bats are being killed by white nose syndrome, whereas it is the migratory bats — red, hoary and silver-haired bats — that are being killed by wind farms,” said Whitaker. “The kill of these bats is going to be huge.”

Bat die-off costly to farmers

Bat deaths also carry substantial economic consequences. Because of their voracious appetite for insects, bats are excellent for natural pest control. A paper published in the journal Science in March said bats typically save farmers $74 per acre, and the study projects that bat deaths can cost $3.7 billion annually in crop losses.

The solutions, according to FWS, are planning, mitigation and offsets. “We’re trying to figure out how to work with industry so you can have both renewable energy and do it in a way to protect birds, particularly those birds that are endangered species,” said Jerome Ford, director for the migratory birds program at FWS.

Ford said substantial conflicts can be avoided if wind farms are placed away from flying animals by studying wind and migration patterns.

Active deterrence, using tools like radar, is also being studied, but it can create other potential issues. “You want the birds to avoid the area to avoid injury, but you don’t want them to avoid the areas if it leads to habitat fragmentation,” said Cottingham. The FWS is also investigating vertical axis turbines, which take up less airspace and are potentially less harmful to birds and bats.

Cottingham and Ford did acknowledge that despite their best efforts, wildlife will still be at risk, including endangered species. The FWS has allowed wind energy companies to “take” a certain number of endangered animals without fines or penalties, provided they offset the harm with habitat restoration. “Take” is defined as maiming or killing under the Endangered Species Act.

Feathers fly over new guidelines

Last month, FWS released another draft of its wind energy guidelines. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), a wind industry advocacy group, expressed approval for the new document. Tom Vinson, AWEA’s senior director of federal regulatory affairs, described it as an “extraordinary achievement.”

The ABC, on the other hand, was aghast. The revised guidelines removed much of the previous language about protecting birds as well as other suggested measures to protect wildlife, and what little remained is voluntary, said Bob Johns, director of public relations for the ABC.

“What’s difficult to overlook is the number of times the word ‘should’ is used,” said Johns. “There is no reference to ‘must’ and ‘shall.’”

However, the ABC is still in favor of wind power. “We are a supporter of wind,” said Johns. “We think it has the potential to be very green. All we’re saying is do it right. It’s not hard to do. There are a limited number of sites where [harm to wildlife] would be an issue.”

Through working with the government and industry groups, the ABC hopes it is not just tilting at windmills, but that eventually there will be binding regulations to protect bald eagles and little brown bats while reducing American dependence on fossil fuels.

ACOUSTIC TRAUMA:

HOW WIND FARMS MAKE YOU SICK

SOURCE: The Register, www.theregister.co.uk

August 3, 2011

By Andrew Orlowski

Industrial wind installations are creating a serious health issue, and comprehensive research is urgently needed, says a former Professor of Public Health.

“There has been no policy analysis that justifies imposing these effects on local residents. The attempts to deny the evidence cannot be seen as honest scientific disagreement, and represent either gross incompetence or intentional bias,” writes Carl Phillips, formerly Professor of Public Health at University of Alberta, now an independent researcher.

“There is ample evidence that turbines cause a constellation of health problems, and attempts to deny this involve claims that are contrary to proper methods of scientific inference,” Phillips writes in a paper published in the Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society. It’s one of several interesting papers in the journal, which is devoted to wind health issues.

Industrial wind installations produce audible and non-audible noise, and optical flicker. But campaigners are fragmented, and face a daunting alliance of big eco-business and government. The academic establishment, which is quick to leap upon public health issues, is strangely inert.

“There is a huge amount of evidence, and it’s incredibly convincing,” Phillips told us by phone, “but it takes a different form to what industry consultants present.”

Empirical studies are rare. Renewable UK, the wind and wave industry lobby group, cites research by the Noise Working Group for the UK business department on its web page devoted to noise issues. The 1996 study, known as ETSU-R-97 (10-page PDF/1.8MB), recommended “Noise from the wind farm should be limited to 5dB(A) above background for both day-time and night-time”, and in the Renewable UK portrait, wind farms sound idyllic; like nature, only more so.

“Outside the nearest houses, which are at least 300 metres away, and more often further, the sound of a wind turbine generating electricity is likely to be about the same level as noise from a flowing stream about 50-100 metres away or the noise of leaves rustling in a gentle breeze,” the group writes.

Yet the ancient study, completed in 1996 and now so old it’s actually in the national archive – has been heavily criticised. Sleep expert Dr Christopher Hanning has written:

“Its major flaws include the use of averaged noise levels over too long a time period and using a best fit curve, thus ignoring the louder transient noise of AM which causes awakenings and arousals. It ignores also the property of low frequency noise to be audible over greater distances than higher frequency noise. By concentrating on sound pressure alone, it ignores the increased annoyance of particular noises, especially that associated with AM. It is also the only guidance anywhere in the world which permits a higher sound level at night than during the day, completely contrary to common sense, noise pollution legislation and WHO guidelines.”

Reality bites blows…

People living near wind farms – and near can be quite a long way away – find the reality far different to Renewable UK’s pastoral idyll.

Dr Michael M Nissenbaum, a radiologist at Northern Maine Medical Center, has new work imminent on the study. He says “significant risk of adverse health effects is likely to occur in a significant subset of people out to at least 2,000 meters away from an industrial wind turbine installation. These health concerns include: sleep disturbance and psychological stress.”

He continues: “Our current knowledge indicates that there are substantial health risks from the existing exposure, and we do not know how to reduce those risks other than by keeping turbines several kilometers away from homes.”

Consultant Mike Stigwood, who has testified before public enquiries, points out that since ETSU-R-97 was published, the World Health Organization has twice lowered its recommended limits for night-time noise.

Currently there’s no solution other than to site the wind turbines further away. But how far?

The Planning Policy Statement on Renewable Energy (PPS22) is often cited here, obliging local planning authorities to “ensure that renewable energy developments have been located and designed in such a way to minimise increases in ambient noise levels.” It doesn’t specify a distance, though.

Hanning notes that: “Proposals that site wind turbines within 1.5km of habitation will not keep wind turbine noise to an acceptable level and are therefore in contravention of PPS22.”

Even at 2km, there are noticeable health consequences.

But there are signs the mood has shifted from one of acquiescence to Big Eco-business – with local authorities judging that they’re accountable to the communities they’re supposed to serve. In June, Highland Council temporarily shut down a 23-turbine installation in Sutherland after persistent complaints by residents. The operator, SSE, had failed to test noise levels at properties 2km away and failed to produce a noise mitigation plan. The stop notice has since been lifted. More are planned nearby.

Related Link

Properly Interpreting the Epidemiologic Evidence About the Health Effects of Industrial Wind Turbines on Nearby Residents – Carl Phillips (43-page PDF/1.2MB)

FROM CALIFORNIA:

FEDERAL OFFICIALS INVESTIGATE EAGLE DEATHS AT DWP WIND FARM

SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, www.latimes.com

August 3, 2011

By Louis Sahagun

Pine Tree facility in the Tehachapi Mountains faces scrutiny over the deaths of at least six golden eagles, which are protected under federal law. Prosecution would be a major blow to the booming industry.

Federal authorities are investigating the deaths of at least six golden eagles at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s Pine Tree Wind Project in the Tehachapi Mountains, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday.

So far, no wind-energy company has been prosecuted by federal wildlife authorities in connection with the death of birds protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. A prosecution in the Pine Tree case could cause some rethinking and redesigning of this booming alternative energy source. Facilities elsewhere also have been under scrutiny, according to a federal official familiar with the investigations.

“Wind farms have been killing birds for decades and law enforcement has done nothing about it, so this investigation is long overdue,” said Shawn Smallwood, an expert on raptor ecology and wind farms. “It’s going to ruffle wind industry feathers across the country.”

Wildlife Service spokeswoman Lois Grunwald declined to comment on what she described as “an ongoing law enforcement investigation regarding Pine Tree.”

Joe Ramallo, a DWP spokesman, said, “We are very concerned about golden eagle mortalities that have occurred at Pine Tree. We have been working cooperatively and collaboratively with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Department of Fish and Game to investigate these incidents.

“We have also actively and promptly self-reported raptor mortalities to both authorities,” he said. “Moving forward, we will be ramping up further our extensive field monitoring and will work with the agencies to develop an eagle conservation plan as part of more proactive efforts to monitor avian activities in the Pine Tree area.”

An internal DWP bird and bat mortality report for the year ending June 2010 indicated that compared to 45 other wind facilities nationwide, bird fatality rates were “relatively high” at Pine Tree, which has 90 towers generating 120 megawatts on 8,000 acres.

Golden eagles weigh about 14 pounds and stand up to 40 inches tall. Their flight behavior and size make it difficult for them to maneuver through forests of wind turbine blades spinning as fast as 200 mph — especially when they are distracted by the sight of prey such as squirrels and rabbits.

DWP officials acknowledged that at least six golden eagles have been struck dead by wind turbine blades at the two-year-old Kern County facility, about 100 miles north of Los Angeles, which was designed to contribute to the city’s renewable energy goal of 35% by 2020.

Although the total deaths at Pine Tree pale in comparison with the 67 golden eagles that die each year in Northern California’s Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area, the annual death rate per turbine is three times higher at the DWP facility. The Altamont Pass facility has 5,000 wind turbines — 55 times as many as Pine Tree.

Nationwide, about 440,000 birds are killed at wind farms each year, according to the Wildlife Service. The American Wind Energy Assn., an industry lobbying group, points out that far more birds are killed by collisions with radio towers, tall buildings, airplanes and vehicles, and encounters with household cats.

Attorney Allan Marks, who specializes in renewable energy projects, called the Pine Tree deaths “an isolated case. If their golden eagle mortality rate is above average, it means the industry as a whole is in compliance.”

About 1,595 birds, mostly migratory songbirds and medium-sized species such as California quail and western meadowlark, die each year at Pine Tree, according to the bird mortality report prepared for the DWP last year by Ojai-based BioResource Consultants.

BioResource spokesman Peter Cantle suggested that those bird deaths may be unrelated to Pine Tree’s wind turbines.

“It’s hard to tease out those numbers,” he said. “Basically, we walked around the site to find bird mortalities, which could have been attributable to a number of things including natural mortality and predators.”

The death count worries environmentalists because the $425-million Pine Tree facility is in a region viewed as a burgeoning hot spot for wind energy production.

“We believe this problem must be dealt with immediately because Pine Tree is only one of several industrial energy developments proposed for that area over the next five to 10 years,” said Los Angeles Audubon President Travis Longcore. “Combined, they have the potential to wipe this large, long-lived species out of the sky.”

SECOND STORY

From CANADA

NOTE FROM THE BPWI RESEARCH NERD: The wind turbine related bat kill rates mentioned in the piece below are alarming and newsworthy. What's more alarming and newsworthy is that the bat kill rates in Wisconsin are nearly twice as high. As far as we know, environmental groups in our state have said  nothing about it.

TRANSALTA URGED TO SHUT DOWN WIND FARM DURING MIGRATION SEASON

SOURCE The Globe and Mail, www.theglobeandmail.com

August 2, 2011

Richard Blackwell

A major conservation group is calling on TransAlta Corp. TA-T to periodically turn off turbines at its Wolfe Island wind farm in Ontario to cut down on the number of birds and bats killed by the machines.

Nature Canada says the project’s 86 turbines are among the most destructive of wildlife in North America. The organization argues TransAlta should shut down parts of the wind farm – one of the biggest in the country – during high-risk periods in the late summer and early fall, when swallows congregate in the region and bats migrate.

“That period is when the vast majority of birds seem to be killed,” said Ted Cheskey, manager of bird conservation programs at Nature Canada. “The evidence is there, and now there is an obligation for [TransAlta] to act.”

The controversy over bird deaths is just one of the many challenges facing Canada’s wind industry, which has run up against by increasingly vocal opponents who say turbines are ugly, cause health problems, and do not contribute to reduced carbon emissions.

The Wolfe Island site, near Kingston, Ont., began generating power in 2009, and an ongoing count of bird and bat deaths has been conducted by a consulting firm since then. Nature Canada says that while bird deaths have been in line with other wind farms on the continent, those numbers are far too high.

The bird death rates from the turbines “are consistently high,” Mr. Cheskey said. He is particularly concerned with the deaths of tree swallows and purple martins – which are in decline in the province – along with bat fatalities.

Mr. Cheskey said his comparison of the numbers in the Wolfe Island report shows the turbines generate one of the highest rates of casualties – about 1,500 birds and 3,800 bats in a year – of any wind farm.

But TransAlta disagrees with Nature Canada’s views. The numbers suggest that the Wolfe Island wind farm is no worse that most others, and is well within limits set by federal environmental regulators, said Glen Whelan, TransAlta’s manager of public affairs.

“The mortality rates that we are seeing in birds and bats are within ranges reported for other wind farms across North America,” he said. For bats, the death rate is well below what is often reported in the eastern United States, he added.

While “bird and bat mortality is unfortunately inevitable at wind power facilities, we are seeing numbers that are within the ranges that are called for by regulators,” Mr. Whelan said.

TransAlta is researching ways to mitigate bat deaths, possibly by turning off turbines at certain times, but the results are not in yet, he said.

Nature Canada is not opposed to wind farms in principle, but it thinks they should be in locations where birds and bats are not at serious risk. Because of its location on a migratory route at the eastern end of Lake Ontario, Wolfe Island is one of many spots where the risk of killing migrating birds and bats is particularly high, Mr. Cheskey said.

Other groups base their opposition to wind farms on other factors. Wind Concerns Ontario, one of the most vocal of the anti-wind groups, claims that noise and vibration from turbines causes sleep deprivation, headaches and high blood pressure. It is demanding independent studies of health impacts.

Anti-wind groups were outraged by a decision two weeks ago from Ontario’s Environmental Review Tribunal which ruled that a wind farm near Chatham, Ont., being developed by Suncor Energy Inc. can go ahead because opponents – who made detailed presentations at a lengthy hearing – did not prove that it would cause serious harm to human health.

Some groups also worry about the aesthetic issues that arise from the erection of thousands of new turbines across the country, while others suggest wind power is expensive, unreliable and needs fossil-fuel-generated back-up.

THESE WIND TURBINES filmed at 50 frames per second give us a speeded up view each turbine. Click on the image above to see how each turbine respods differently to whatever wind conditions may be present.

NEW WIND GUIDELINES ANGER BIRD AND BAT GROUPS

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE AT SOURCE: watertowndailytimes.comBy

July 30, 2022

By NANCY MADSEN

 Siting guidelines: Industry too influential in drafting, critics say.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released revised wind power siting guidelines, but bird and bat advocates say they still lack the teeth to force developers to consider the long-term effects of turbines on wildlife.

Staff at the American Bird Conservancy said the guidelines lead to “‘rubber-stamping’ of wind projects.”

“Given the administration’s commitment to scientific integrity, it’s hard to understand why the peer-reviewed work of agency scientists was dismissed in favor of text written by an industry-dominated Federal Advisory Committee,” Kelly Fuller, wind campaign coordinator at the conservancy, said in a news release. “ABC would like to see the next draft include more of what the agency scientists wrote.”

The voluntary guidelines, if adopted by the government and developers, could force significant changes to projects, including those along the St. Lawrence River and Lake Ontario.

The guidelines include:

■ Three years of preconstruction bird population studies.

■ If the parties can’t agree on the adverse effects on wildlife, the service may document concerns, but the decision to proceed lies with the developer.

■ Use of operational modifications — raising the speed at which turbines start turning, not operating during key migratory times or using radar to turn off turbines when flocks pass — was suggested.

■ Further testing on other measures — such as multicolored turbines and the effects of turbine noise on birds — were suggested.

The post-construction studies lost a minimum of two years, but would be based on the level of risk with the new draft. Wind power developers approve of the revised draft guidelines, which took out some requirements to return to an advisory committee’s recommendations.

“We appreciate that the service listened to the many thoughtful public comments that were submitted and revised the document in many important ways that make it more consistent with the consensus recommendations from states, conservation organizations, and industry,” Tom Vinson, American Wind Energy Association senior director of federal regulatory affairs, said in a news release. “The industry looks forward to having workable final voluntary guidelines that will hold our industry to a higher standard for wildlife analysis and protection than any other industry in the country. We take our conservation responsibilities seriously.”

Local ornithologist Gerald A. Smith said that the guidelines attempt to reduce the cases in which a full environmental impact statement is required, but that the full studies are necessary.

“If this energy is so green and you’re painting it as a green alternative, it would seem to me that you would want to assess the costs and benefits and that you would want to minimize the cost to the greatest extent possible,” Mr. Smith said.

New York’s environmental quality review process is robust, but it is understaffed and cannot conduct the necessary oversight, he said.

“The Fish and Wildlife Service should be part of the process in more than just an advisory role and they should have some teeth,” Mr. Smith said. “The best guidelines are still inadequate because they don’t force developers to really look at things in a more holistic way and the funds are not there as they should be for the agencies to try to look at these things like cumulative impacts, which is where the service could play a very critical role if they had teeth.”

Proposed wind farms along the shore of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River would have severe numbers of bird deaths, as Wolfe Island Wind Farm already has reported, he said. But with proper locations and technology, wind power could be a wise alternative energy, he said.

Critics said the industry-heavy committee had too strong a hand in the newest guidelines.

Public interest attorney Eric Glitzenstein of Meyer, Glitzenstein & Crystal, Washington, D.C., said in an email that the wind power industry views were too strongly weighted on the committee, possibly violating the Federal Advisory Committee Act, and that the Interior Department ceded decision-making power to the committee.

“Given all this, the direction in which the department is heading absolutely places it in a legally tenuous position under FACA,” Mr. Glitzenstein wrote. “More important, however, it is a direction that will inevitably be disastrous for the many birds, bats, and other wildlife that will be killed and injured by poorly sited wind power projects, since the industry will have little if any incentive to take such impacts into consideration in making siting decisions.”

Public comments on the revised guidelines will be open until Thursday by emailing windenergy@fws.gov.

WIND POWER VS WHOOPING CRANE ON THE PRAIRIE

SOURCE Earth Techling, www.earthtechling.com

June 20 2011

by Pete Danko,

The term of art is incidental take. It refers to the “harassment, harm, pursuit, hunting, shooting, wounding, killing, trapping, capture, or collection of any threatened or endangered species.” Incidental take is in the news now because the Obama administration has given notice that it is evaluating issuing an incidental take permit (ITP) – a free pass of sorts – in a 200-mile-wide corridor from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico where whooping cranes migrate.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it was acting at the urging of a collection of wind-power developers – including familiar names like Duke, Acciona, Iberdrola and NextEra – under the banner of the “Wind Energy Whooping Crane Action Group.” The service said an ITP, if issued, would “cover regional-level construction, operation, and maintenance associated with multiple commercial wind energy facilities” in portions of nine states, including Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas.

To obtain an ITP, the government said, an applicant must submit “a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) containing measures which would minimize incidental take to any species protected by the ESA, including avoidance of incidental take, and mitigate the effects of any incidental take to the maximum extent practicable; and ensure that the taking is incidental to, and not the purpose of, an otherwise lawful activity. If the Service determines that an applicant has satisfied all permitting criteria and other statutory requirements, the ITP is issued.”

The government said the species affected could include the endangered interior least tern and endangered piping plover, as well as the lesser prairie-chicken, a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). But it’s a population of whooping cranes that would also be covered by the ITP – Grus Americana, the tallest North American bird – that is drawing the most attention.

According to a 2009 government report, the Aransas-Wood Buffalo Population (AWBP) of cranes, the species’ only self-sustaining flock left on Earth, has been making a slow comeback, but still numbers just 247 individuals. So precarious is the AWBP population, the report said, that a rise in mortality rate of a mere three percent annually – as few as eight additional bird deaths each year – would reverse its comeback and spell doom for the species. For its part, the wind industry said it neither wants to nor expects to diminish the whooping crane’s long-term prospects, but rather it seeks to “streamline the ESA permitting process, allowing for the compatible goals of effective wildlife conservation and robust wind energy development.”

The public has until October 12 to comment on the proposed action (see http://www.fws.gov/southwest/ to download a copy of the notice).

WIND DEVELOPERS VS BIRDS

American Bird Conservancy, www.abcbirds.org 20 July 2011

(Washington, D.C., July 20, 2011) American Bird Conservancy (ABC)—the nation’s leading bird conservation organization—today raised concerns about new draft Department of the Interior (DOI) guidelines for wind development that appear to have been overly influenced by energy industry lawyers and lobbyists. The new draft reverses agency protection recommendations for many bird species and adds unrealistic deadlines that would lead to “rubber-stamping” of wind projects. ABC expects millions of migratory birds to be harmed by poorly-planned wind energy.

The draft guidelines were released ahead of a Wind Federal Advisory Committee meeting scheduled for today and tomorrow in Arlington, Virginia, where Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar is expected to speak.

“What is particularly surprising is that even the original guidelines proposed by Interior weren’t mandatory. Here, industry is asking for voluntary guidelines to be weakened. What they might succeed in getting, though, is a set of guidelines that lack clarity, plus greater likelihood of legal problems,” said Mike Parr, Vice President of ABC.

“What we are talking about is thousands of unpermitted wind farms that break bird protection laws and open up legal liability for wind developers and risk for investors. Mandatory guidelines would give developers certainty that they would not face prosecution, and would generate a dialog between wind developers and the Fish and Wildlife Service to help minimize and mitigate bird impacts,” he added.

“Given the Administration’s commitment to scientific integrity, it’s hard to understand why the peer-reviewed work of agency scientists was dismissed in favor of text written by an industry-dominated Federal Advisory Committee,” said Kelly Fuller, Wind Campaign Coordinator at ABC. “ABC would like to see the next draft include more of what the agency scientists wrote.”

Recommendations on wind energy were developed over a two-year period by an industry-dominated, 22-member Federal Advisory Committee and forwarded to the Secretary of the Interior in March 2010. Over the next year, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists made a series of changes to those recommendations to improve protection for birds. Those revised guidelines were then published for public comment in February 2011 (an overwhelming number of the comments called for the guidelines to be strengthened, not weakened). They also underwent scientific peer review. Last week, FWS re-issued a new draft of those guidelines, available at http://www.fws.gov/windenergy/docs/WEG_July_12_%202011.pdf that removed many of the key bird protection elements following pressure from industry.

“ABC supports bird-smart wind energy development in which birds can co-exist with wind energy. America must avoid repeating the mistakes we made with hydropower half a century ago, when we built dams without careful environmental review or consideration, necessitating spending millions of dollars today to remove them. We must likewise steer clear of the mistakes we are making today with coal, which result in costly impacts to public health and wildlife. These new guidelines are not bird-smart,” she added.

Parr said “The new guidelines would harm birds by only giving U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) biologists responsibility to review wind projects within new, truncated deadlines, and without the funding to hire the requisite additional staff. The new draft guidelines would also protect fewer migratory birds than the earlier version and move away from DOI’s legal responsibility to protect all migratory bird species, not just ‘species of concern’.”

In addition, the new guidelines remove protections for both birds and people that FWS biologists had recommended in their peer-reviewed guidelines, including:

Allowing greater latitude in installing overhead power lines between wind turbines, which increases the risk to larger birds such as eagles, hawks, and cranes, instead of burying the lines.

Removing a recommendation that wind developers address wildfire risk and response planning, something that could be potentially very important, especially in Western communities or areas experiencing drought.

Removing a recommendation that wind developers avoid discharging sediment from roads into streams and waters, a standard recommendation at construction sites that protects water quality.

Removing a recommendation to avoid active wind turbine construction during key periods in the life histories of fish and wildlife, such as the nesting season for migratory birds.

The publication date for the final version of the guidelines has not yet been announced.
Concerned citizens have until August 4 to comment on the current guidelines. Comments can be sent to windenergy@fws.gov.

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American Bird Conservancy (ABC) is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit membership organization which conserves native birds and their habitats throughout the Americas by safeguarding the rarest species, conserving and restoring habitats, and reducing threats while building capacity in the bird conservation movement.