Better Plan, Wisconsin

BIG BIG BIG MEETING Thursday, April 10, at 7pm at the Magnolia Town Hall! Wind Ordinance for the Township of Magnolia will be considered for recommendation. (Scroll down to read the Janesville Gazette article about it)

WHICH END OF THE WIND FARM WILL YOUR HOME BE ON?

Why is it so important?

The blue and pink areas on this map show the most likely Magnolia locations for the 67 industrial turbines. (Scroll down to the end of this post for close ups of the maps.) These turbines are 40 stories tall. The state of Wisconsin allows them to be placed 1000 feet from your door even though there are documented with problems with living too close to these giant, noisy machines. If you live in the pink or blue areas of this map or even near them, your home will be affected.

 The Magnolia township ordinance recommends they be placed a half mile from a home. At half a mile the noise and shadow strobing can still be a problem but it's one that may be easier to live with.

Magnolia township isn't the only township that will have to adopt an ordinance.

Projects in Union, Center and Spring Valley will also have to be considered.

If you know anyone in local government who may want to learn about why wind ordinances are important, please tell them about the meeting on April 10th at the Magnolia Town Hall! Here is what Today's Janesville Gazette had to say about it.

Magnolia proposes wind ordinance
April  7, 2008 by Gina Duwe in GazetteXtra

A proposed wind ordinance that would keep wind turbines a half-mile from any home could be up for its first vote Thursday in Magnolia Township.
The planning and zoning board will have a public hearing and discuss and possibly act on the draft ordinance at its 7 p.m. meeting Thursday night at the town hall.

 

 

 

 

GOT TURBINE TROUBLES or CONCERNS? 

Call 1-888-732-7234! The Coalition for Wisconsin Environmental Stewardship (CWESt) is a grass roots organization of made up of people concerned about the responsible placement of wind turbines. CWESt's primary goal is to provide a central source for both  gathering and giving out reliable information about industrial wind plant siting, issues relating to the industrial wind turbines and the effects on residents.  CWESt will take your concerns and information to our legislators in Madison. The number is good 24/7! The BPRC applauds CWESt for providing us with this very helpful resource.

What a difference 18 days makes!

These two email messages were sent to us within 18 days of each other.

The resident who sent them asked that their name be withheld for now but has given us permission to post them.

The BPRC has verified this resident's name and address, and we are glad to have information from someone who can tell us what life is like now that the turbines are up and running. We are told others in the area are others having problems too.

If you are having turbine troubles, please contact us with your story by clicking here.

First email: MARCH 10, 2008
Message: Would you please send me a DVD of the interviews with residents, and is there a way to get a hold of a DVD of the turbine that exploded? I’d appreciate it. Dial up in the country has no streaming video.
We live in the township of Marshfield, the Blue Sky Green Field project.
They are right out in my backyard but not hooked up yet so we don’t know how noisy they will be
Thanks
(name withheld)
Township of Marshfield
Fond Du Lac County

Second Email MARCH 28, 2008

Subject: BLUE SKY GREEN FIELD
Message: They’re here.

    Now what for us? We tried to tell them before but only now are they ready to listen. Too late!
    We have five acres right in the Blue Sky/ Green Field project. We can see the (name withheld) turbine out of our dining room window.
    One of the turbines is very close to us, but we can’t measure without trespassing or paying someone to use their special equipment to measure it. Their GPS says none of the other turbines is closer than 1000 feet from a habitable structure. Not property line, mind you. If the darn thing fell this way it would most likely be in my back yard.
    I can see turbines out of every window in my house, there is no escaping it, and it’s driving me nuts already. It’s the constant movement. And the noise woke me up in the middle of the night last night. It wasn’t the turbine itself making the noise but the pulsating howl of the wind hitting it. Maybe that’s one of their loopholes.
    One of my neighbors, a land owner who is hosting a windmill, called me yesterday to ask if I could get my local T.V. stations because he couldn’t and didn’t know who to call. Luckily another land owner/host had already given me contact info with the express wish that I not tell anyone where I got the information from. They both wish they had not done this.
    My question is, Now What? Have you any idea if we have any legal recourse? We have not received a cent in any way. There was a supposed payment made for people in our position, but the town board decided we didn’t need to get any payments. We would realize it in our lower property taxes. Our taxes were higher this year than they have ever been.
    I don’t know where to start, get a lawyer on my own, or try to get all of us together to find a lawyer, I know that other people have fought them successfully bit I can’t find any info on how they did it.
    I hate the thought of leaving our home of ten years, but this will drive me to distraction. I’ve had a constant headache for nearly three weeks and the doctor has no idea why.
    I’d appreciate hearing any ideas you might have.
 
THANK YOU  
 (name withheld)
Town of Marshfield
Fond Du Lac County

NOTE FROM THE BPRC RESEARCH NERD:  If you are having turbine troubles, something you can do immediately is keep a record of what is happening to you. Each day write down what problems you are having with noise or shadow strobing, what time it happened, and how long it lasted. Just a few sentences a day is all it takes and it will go a long way to establishing a credible record of events that may be valuable later.

Here is another letter from a Wisconsin woman who is having trouble living near turbines:

To Jim Lepinski, Public Service Commissioner:

I am writing in disgust to you about the wind turbine project that went up around the town of Brownsville. My family and I live in the township of Leroy. We came to live out here about five and a half years ago, looking for a nice community to live in and raise our children. We thought we had found an area where people would look out after one another and show decent good values towards their neighbors. Obviously this is not the place, nor the people that I thought were out here. Now all I hear when I go outside to my once quiet yard is that thumping swishing noise created by those stupid wind turbines. Not to mention how ugly those things are with their stupid red lights on top of them.

I feel like we now live in the middle of an industrial park! If I wanted to live in an industrial park with noise and lights we would have lived in a city. We chose to live on a quiet rural road where no real disturbing sounds existed up until now. We were never in favor for those things to go up around here. I have never heard anything good about living next to them and now I know it as a fact.

My husband did go to a couple of the town hearings before they voted to put them up, only to have fallen on deaf ears. I think maybe those who were supposed to be listening to the opposers of this project were probably doodling while their pleas were being said. My husband and I are tax paying upright citizens, who have worked hard for what we have. We have done nothing but renovate our house, trying to make it a nice home, only to have you and your people knock it all down.

The really great thing is, you don't care. No one cares. Do you live next to these things? I bet none of you do. I am personally inviting you to come out to our house while they are turning, which is ninety percent of the time, so you can hear for yourself what a nuisance these things are. Thank you so much for considering people like me. You know it takes us average middle class citizens to make your stupid townships and counties go round. Do we deserve this? If you guys think they are so great, why don't you put them up in YOUR backyards! I don't care what anyone says, you all sold your souls to the devil for a little bit of money.

You had men put these things up, and they can take them down. This is not a God-made creation, they are man-made pieces of junk that are creating a lot of noise in my yard. I want something done about this! Start making laws that protect innocent citizens like us from this stupid project. I don't care if you need to try and save the Earth this way, but you should not be allowed to disrupt people's lives in the process.

AN OPEN LETTER OF THANKS TO ALL MEMBERS OF LOCAL TOWNSHIP GOVERNMENT FROM A FAMILY IN ROCK COUNTY 

     We never knew much about what you did, or how hard you worked or what went on at town hall meetings.

     We never knew how much we were taking for granted until our home was threatened.

     We live in a valley below the beautiful hills of Magnolia Township where wind developers want to put 67 turbines. There are real problems with these huge machines. The low frequency thudding noise they make at night has driven people from their homes.

     Sound really carries in our valley. We did enough research to realize that if the turbines were put in too close to where we live, we’d have to leave our home too.

    But how close is too close?
    Who decides this?
    Right now it’s our local government. 

    A few weeks ago, a bill came before the state senate that would have stripped local governments of this deciding power and handed it to the Public Service Commission.

    The PSC believes a wind turbine that is 40 stories tall and has a blade span wider than a 747 can be placed 1000 feet from my door. Township governments that have studied the issue disagree and have passed ordinances to protect their residents. If the bill had passed, those ordinances would have been invalidated.

    Why didn’t it pass? Because with less than 48 hours notice, Wisconsin town and county supervisors, chairpersons, clerks, planning and zoning board members, citizens appointed to study committees and other local officials came from all over the state to testify against the bill at the capitol and fight to retain local control.

 You sat in the hearing room for two long days listening to testimony from the PSC, the power companies, wind lobbyists and developers who said members of our local governments were inadequate, confused, uneducated and incapable of making intelligent decisions about regulating industry that would affect the residents you represented. We know this because we were there. Both days.
  But when you members of our local governments finally got a chance to step up and speak, boy did you prove all of those people wrong. Your testimony was intelligent, informed, powerful, and for us, deeply moving. Because every word you spoke helped to save our home.

    Without the testimony from local government officials like you, that bill would have become law and families like ours all over Wisconsin would have no idea what was about to hit them.

    We all owe you a huge debt of gratitude. You helped save our home and we will never forget it. We appreciate this opportunity to be able to thank you and let you know we will never take our local government for granted again.
    Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!

Lynda and Kevin Kawula
Spring Valley and Magnolia Township Line

A NOTE FROM THE BPRC RESEARCH NERD: Come to the Magnolia Township Annual Meeting April 8th, 7pm, at the Magnolia Town Hall (County Road A just west of 213) It's free! It's easy! It's fun! (Especially if you come!)

A tip of the hat to young Mr. Petrie from the Nerds here at Better Plan!

THE TALL TALES REGARDING WIND TURBINES (Click here for source)

Everyone who likes taxes, raise your hands! C’mon, anyone? Nobody? Ok, how about an efficient source of renewable energy? Yeah, that’s more like it! I couldn’t agree more.Now, how about a project that is 70% inefficient, could cost around $240 million of your tax money and does irreparable damage to environmental and housing economies, say, like a wind turbine farm?

I support progress and the development of alternative sources of energy, as long as actual progress is being made. Common knowledge says that the wind doesn’t blow every day. However, even if it is windy, the wind must reach speeds near 25 miles per hour for the turbines to operate efficiently. And if the wind flies above 55 mph, the turbine must be turned off.

Thus, numerous studies have shown that wind turbines often are efficient only 30% of the time. Nobody would buy a television, car or computer that would work only 30% of the time. So why would we pay $3 million for a lemon?

Many supporters of wind energy claim that it can replace conventional sources of energy that are not as environmentally friendly. This is not true.

Our power supply system is set up in a gridlike fashion. Everything must be connected to provide a continuous flow of energy. During the 70% of the time that the wind turbines are not working, the electrical grid relies on conventional thermal power stations to maintain the constant source of energy. When winds are ideal for producing energy, these thermal power stations can be placed on “spinning standby.”

However, due to the rapidness with which winds can change and the amount of energy required to restart a conventional power station, such stations must remain on standby, and, thus, implementing wind turbines offers little or no reduction in the need for conventional thermal power stations. There is no reduction in the environmental effects of traditional power plants.

Although I am a student at Marquette University in Milwaukee, my permanent residence is in Mount Calvary, the epicenter of the Blue Sky Green Field wind project in Fond du Lac County.

Critics could say that I am just playing the “Not in my backyard” card, but the majority of my time is spent in Milwaukee, where I cannot be lulled into the belief of progress by the 340- foot monstrosities of cold, white steel.

I am sure that the legions of titanic invaders and the flicker of their slashing swords eventually will fade into the horizon, but their effects on our land and our wallets will not.

The only one that really is getting paid is Big Business. The main incentive for large companies to build turbines is the humongous tax credit they receive.

They could care less that the roads they blaze into farmers’ fields transgress the fruit of our forefathers’ toil. They could care less about what happens to the wildlife in the area, especially the many birds that will perish at the hands of these turbines.

They could care less that noise and shadow flickering jeopardize the health of the local community. They could care less because for every turbine, they receive a third of the cost back in tax credit, and they gain an image as valiant protectors of the environment. They are swindling hard-working people of their land and their rights for a measly $3,000 per year.

Alternate initiatives are more effective. Simple conservation alone can save a bundle of energy, reducing our need to create it. Tax money spent on a campaign for conservation would be a more efficient use of our hard-earned money.

There also are promising new efforts being made with offshore tidal turbines. The increased predictability of tides and the greater density of water make tidal turbines more efficient.

At the same time, all aesthetic and health issues are eliminated, since the turbines are underwater. In addition, tests of underwater turbine sites have produced energy at a much cheaper rate than with wind and natural gas.

These are just a few suggestions to a problem too big for any one solution. A cooperative effort, a multifaceted approach and an efficient alternative are needed. Wind turbines do not accomplish this.

Kollin G. Petrie is a Marquette University student.

Why are setbacks important? Would you like this 1000 feet from your home? The developers tell us that distance is safe and that trouble with wind turbines is rare, but two days ago in our neighboring state of Minnesota, this turbine caught fire along I-90. There was no way to put it out. This picture shows toxic flammable chemicals pouring down the tower into the soil. How would you like that in your corn field? The instructions to the fire department? Nothing we can do. Let it burn. (click here for source)