Better Plan, Wisconsin

NELSONS GET PURCHASE OFFER AND LAWSUIT THREAT

by Chris Braithwaite,

SOURCE The Chronicle

October 12, 2011

LOWELL — If Don and Shirley Nelson are mules standing stubbornly in the way of its industrial wind project on Lowell Mountain, Green Mountain Power tried to move them Tuesday with both a carrot and a stick.

The carrot came by telephone Tuesday morning. The utility’s president, Mary Powell, called the Nelsons to say Green Mountain Power (GMP) would buy their 580-acre farm at the asking price of $1.25-million.

The stick arrived by courier Tuesday afternoon. It was a letter from GMP’s attorney threatening to sue the Nelsons if they persist in letting “guests” occupy a campsite too close to the top of the project site to permit blasting. The damages GMP would attempt to recover could easily exceed $1-million, the letter said, and punitive damages might also be sought.

“I can take one and a quarter million and run, or be fined a million bucks,” Mr. Nelson said Tuesday. “That’s a good way to handle a Vermont farmer on his retirement.”

As of late Tuesday afternoon Mr. Nelson said he and his wife had not decided what to do. GMP’s lawyer, Jeffrey Behm, had demanded an answer by noon Wednesday, October 12. Mr. Nelson said he had an appointment with his lawyer at 10 a.m. that morning.

The farm, which sits high on the eastern slope of Lowell Mountain above Albany Village, has been for sale for years. It was originally priced at $1.5- million, Mr. Nelson said. “But when they started putting up these damn wind farms, we had to knock the price down.”

His real estate agent, Dan Maclure, has brought the farm up at public meetings to demonstrate that industrial-scale wind projects lower area property values.

But if the farm is for sale, Mr. Nelson said Tuesday, “I sure as hell didn’t want to sell to them bastards.”

This is not GMP’s first attempt to move the couple — who have proved to be determined and eloquent opponents of the wind project — off their farm. Just over a year ago GMP was behind a complex deal that involved the Vermont Land Trust and the Nelsons’ neighbor and chief advocate for harnessing the mountain’s wind, Trip Wileman.

The land trust would buy the development rights to the farm using a contribution, expected to be $250,000, from Mr. Wileman which Mr. Wileman, in turn, would borrow from GMP. A young farm family from Brookfield would buy the farm and raise beef cattle there.

When first asked about the deal, GMP spokesman Dorothy Schnure denied that the utility would play any financial role — a claim she later corrected. Ms. Powell, the GMP president, was chairman of the Vermont Land Trust board when the idea of buying the farm was first proposed to its president, Gil Livingston.

The deal fell apart when the Nelsons learned of Mr. Wileman’s involvement, and his demand for a right-of-way across the farm.

At any rate, Mr. Maclure said at the time, the offer of $870,000 fell short of the Nelson’s asking price. This time, it seems, GMP is prepared to step into the open as the buyer, and pay the full asking price.

Mr. Nelson said he and his wife accepted an invitation to meet with Ms. Powell and another GMP executive, Robert Dostis, at a Stowe restaurant on Monday.

“They tried to get us to say we wanted them to buy us out,” Mr. Nelson said Tuesday. He said the utility executives brought up another couple who lived close to the project and had opposed it vigorously. They recently sold their home to GMP or an agent of the utility, and moved to a nearby town.

They brought up the woman’s name, Mr. Nelson said, and said she “came to us, and of course we were glad to buy her out.”

After an hour and a quarter of conversation, Mr. Nelson said, “I shook both their hands and got up and walked out.” When Ms. Powell called Tuesday morning with her offer, Mr. Nelson said, she said “you can live there if you want,” but urged him to respond quickly.

When Mr. Nelson reached Mr. Maclure at Century 21 Farm & Forest Realty, Inc., the agent said he’d already heard from GMP. “He said, ‘They want me to go to Colchester and get the money,’” Mr. Nelson reported.

A collection of six small tents and a rough field kitchen on the western edge of the Nelson farm is perhaps the opponents’ last hope of stalling — if not stopping — the project.

Mr. Nelson said last week he was asked if he would host the campsite, and quickly agreed. The idea was that blasting could not safely go on with people so close to the project.

In the letter he sent Tuesday, Mr. Behm, the GMP attorney, said the utility’s contractor plans to start blasting in the area on October 17 and to continue for two or three weeks.

If the Nelsons permitted their guests to remain within the 1,000-foot safety zone around the blast site, he wrote, that could amount to “intentional interference with a contract,” which he called “an actionable nuisance.”

Such action could raise the cost of power, the lawyer wrote, and the utility “will vigorously pursue recovery of all monetary damages in order to protect its customers from a cost increase.”

“We’re trying to do what’s right for all the people who supported us,” Mr. Nelson said. “It’s a hard position to be in, I’m telling you.”

“GMP knows if they buy us out, they’ve got the green light — and they can use this land for mitigation purposes.”

Whatever the couple decides to do, Mr. Nelson made one thing clear Tuesday: “I don’t plan on living under a wind farm.”

AMERICA'S WORST WIND ENERGY PROJECT

By Robert Bryce,

SOURCE National Review Online, www.nationalreview.com

October 12, 2011

The more people know about the wind-energy business, the less they like it. And when it comes to lousy wind deals, General Electric’s Shepherds Flat project in northern Oregon is a real stinker.

I’ll come back to the GE project momentarily. Before getting to that, please ponder that first sentence. It sounds like a claim made by an anti-renewable-energy campaigner. It’s not. Instead, that rather astounding admission was made by a communications strategist during a March 23 webinar sponsored by the American Council on Renewable Energy called “Speaking Out on Renewable Energy: Communications Strategies for the Renewable Energy Industry.”

During the webinar, Justin Rolfe-Redding, a doctoral student from the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, discussed ways for wind-energy proponents to get their message out to the public. Rolfe-Redding said that polling data showed that “after reading arguments for and against wind, wind lost support.” He went on to say that concerns about wind energy’s cost and its effect on property values “crowded out climate change” among those surveyed.

The most astounding thing to come out of Rolfe-Redding’s mouth — and yes, I heard him say it myself — was this: “The things people are educated about are a real deficit for us.” After the briefings on the pros and cons of wind, said Rolfe-Redding, “enthusiasm decreased for wind. That’s a troubling finding.” The solution to these problems, said Rolfe-Redding, was to “weaken counterarguments” against wind as much as possible. He suggested using “inoculation theory” by telling people that “wind is a clean source, it provides jobs” and adding that “it’s an investment in the future.” He also said that proponents should weaken objections by “saying prices are coming down every day.”

It’s remarkable to see how similar the arguments being put forward by wind-energy proponents are to those that the Obama administration is using to justify its support of Solyndra, the now-bankrupt solar company that got a $529 million loan guarantee from the federal government. But in some ways, the government support for the Shepherds Flat deal is worse than what happened with Solyndra.

The majority of the funding for the $1.9 billion, 845-megawatt Shepherds Flat wind project in Oregon is coming courtesy of federal taxpayers. And that largesse will provide a windfall for General Electric and its partners on the deal who include Google, Sumitomo, and Caithness Energy. Not only is the Energy Department giving GE and its partners a $1.06 billion loan guarantee, but as soon as GE’s 338 turbines start turning at Shepherds Flat, the Treasury Department will send the project developers a cash grant of $490 million.

The deal was so lucrative for the project developers that last October, some of Obama’s top advisers, including energy-policy czar Carol Browner and economic adviser Larry Summers, wrote a memo saying that the project’s backers had “little skin in the game” while the government would be providing “a significant subsidy (65+ percent).” The memo goes on to say that, while the project backers would only provide equity equal to about 11 percent of the total cost of the wind project, they would receive an “estimated return on equity of 30 percent.”

The memo continues, explaining that the carbon dioxide reductions associated with the project “would have to be valued at nearly $130 per ton for CO2 for the climate benefits to equal the subsidies.” The memo continues, saying that that per-ton cost is “more than 6 times the primary estimate used by the government in evaluating rules.”

The Obama administration’s loan guarantee for the now-bankrupt Solyndra has garnered lots of attention, but the Shepherds Flat deal is an even better example of corporate welfare. Several questions are immediately obvious:

First: Why, as Browner and Summers asked, is the federal government providing loan guarantees and subsidies for an energy project that could easily be financed by GE, which has a market capitalization of about $170 billion?

Second: Why is the Obama administration providing subsidies to GE, which paid little or no federal income taxes last year even though it generated some $5.1 billion in profits from its U.S. operations?

Third: How is it that GE’s CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, can be the head of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness while his company is paying little or no federal income taxes? That question is particularly germane as the president never seems to tire of bashing the oil and gas industry for what he claims are the industry’s excessive tax breaks.

Over the past year, according to Yahoo! Finance, the average electric utility’s return on equity has been 7.1 percent. Thus, taxpayer money is helping GE and its partners earn more than four times the average return on equity in the electricity business.

A few months ago, I ran into Jim Rogers, the CEO of Duke Energy. I asked him why Duke — which has about 14,000 megawatts of coal-fired generation capacity — was investing in wind-energy projects. The answer, said Rogers forthrightly, was simple: The subsidies available for wind projects allow Duke to earn returns on equity of 17 to 22 percent.

In other words, for all of the bragging by the wind-industry proponents about the rapid growth in wind-generation capacity, the main reason that capacity is growing is that companies such as GE and Duke are able to goose their profits by putting up turbines so they can collect subsidies from taxpayers.

There are other reasons to dislike the Shepherds Flat project: It’s being built in Oregon to supply electricity to customers in Southern California. That’s nothing new. According to the Energy Information Administration, “California imports more electricity from other states than any other state.” Heaven forbid that consumers in the Golden State would have to actually live near a power plant, refinery, or any other industrial facility. And by building the wind project in Oregon, electricity consumers in California are only adding to the electricity congestion problems that have been plaguing the region served by the Bonneville Power Authority. Earlier this year, the BPA was forced to curtail electricity generated by wind projects in the area because a near-record spring runoff had dramatically increased the amount of power generated by the BPA’s dams. In other words, Shepherds Flat is adding yet more wind turbines to a region that has been overwhelmed this year by excess electrical generation capacity from renewables. And that region will now have to spending huge sums of money building new transmission capacity to export its excess electricity.

Finally, there’s the question of the jobs being created by the new wind project. In 2009, when GE and Caithness announced the Shepherds Flat deal, CNN Money reported that the project would create 35 permanent jobs. And in an April 2011 press release issued by GE on the Shepherds Flat project, one of GE’s partners in the deal said they were pleased to be bringing “green energy jobs to our economy.”

How much will those “green energy” jobs cost? Well, if we ignore the value of the federal loan guarantee and only focus on the $490 million cash grant that will be given to GE and its partners when Shepherds Flat gets finished, the cost of those “green energy” jobs will be about $16.3 million each.

As Rolfe-Redding said, the more people know about the wind business, the less they like it.

SENATOR CALLS FOR MORATORIM AND HEALTH STUDY ON WIND TURBINES

By Kristin Byrne

SOURCE: www.wbay.com

October 10, 2011

A state senator is on a mission to make sure wind turbines don’t hurt peoples’ health.

“We owe it to ourselves as legislators, and as a state and country, to not harm people when new things come down the pike,” Senator Frank Lasee (R-De Pere) said.

Senator Lasee is introducing a bill calling for a health study on wind turbines.

The bill would impose a moratorium on future wind turbine construction until the Public Service Commission receives a study from the Department of Health Services on turbines’ health impact on people and animals in three ways:

The impacts of low-frequency sound

How turbines affect people and animals in different proximity to the systems

Any differences associated with various wind speeds and directions

Senator Lasee was in the Town of Glenmore on Monday promoting the piece of legislation.

“There’s information coming in from around the world where they’ve had windmills longer that there are health effects,” Lasee said.

Lasee says he’s done his research on wind turbines and he’s heard from his constituents.

“I’ve seen enough now in my own district and elsewhere of people actually moving out of their homes it’s gotten so bad,” he said.

Before more turbines are raised, he thinks a study should be done on how they can impact your health.

“I don’t know that it’s going to help us, because we already have the windmills here, but hopefully it will help other families from having to go through,” Darrel Cappelle, who lives in Glenmore, said.

Cappelle and his wife Sarah say ever since eight turbines started running right by their home about a year ago, the constant hum has given them headaches, a good night’s sleep sometimes isn’t an option, and they think that’s why they’re getting sick more often.

“If you get a cold, it’ll last three weeks instead of three days,” Cappelle said.

Cappelle doesn’t know for sure if his family’s health problems are directly related to the turbines, but a study might answer that question.

“We need to have a real scientific study or use data from around the world. There are plenty of other studies out there to prove that this is causing harm to people,” Senator Lasee said.

[video available]

Fond du Lac County home in Invenergy wind projectPROPOSED BILL WOULD PLACE A MORATORIUM ON WIND FARM DEVELOPMENT

SOURCE: The Fond du Lac Reporter

Expert witnesses have acknowledged that Industrial Wind Turbines (IWTs) can cause health problems including sleep disturbance, headache, ear pressure, dizziness, vertigo, nausea, visual blurring, irritability, panic episodes, depression and a variety of other ailments, according to a press release from Lasee's office.

Madison, WI –Senator Frank Lasee (R-De Pere) has introduced “Health Study for Wind Turbines” legislation in the State Senate. The proposed bill creates a moratorium on future wind turbines until the Public Service Commission (PSC) receives a report from the Department of Health Services (DHS) regarding the health impacts on people and animals.

[Click here to download the wind turbine health study bill]

Expert witnesses have acknowledged that Industrial Wind Turbines (IWTs) can cause health problems including sleep disturbance, headache, ear pressure, dizziness, vertigo, nausea, visual blurring, irritability, panic episodes, depression and a variety of other ailments, according to a press release from Lasee's office.

“There are three families that I am aware of who have moved out of their homes to get relief because they are getting so ill. One family’s teenage daughter was hospitalized, and when they moved, she fully recovered. We can’t let this kind of a thing go on,” said Senator Lasee. “It’s plain un-American to have wind turbines twice as tall as the State Capitol right next to someone’s house that they are forced to look at, which makes them dizzy, nauseous and sick.”

“This has been a nightmare, we’ve had to leave our beautiful home in order to get relief from the health issues we believe were caused by the nearby wind turbines,” said Sue Ashley an impacted property owner. Darrel Cappelle, another impacted property owner added, “my wife has been suffering from migraine headaches since the wind turbines were constructed. This has been a horrible impact on my family.”

“This bill will require the PSC to protect people and their property from being harmed by the effects of Industrial Wind Turbines,” said Lasee.

SECOND STORY

WIND SITING RULES STILL STUCK IN LIMBO

By CLAY BARBOUR,

SOURCE madison.com

October 9, 2011

Hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars in potential economic development are stuck in limbo as officials continue to argue over new wind siting rules.

The new rules, more than a year in the making, were suspended earlier this year just before they were to go into effect. A legislative committee sent them back to the Public Service Commission, which was tasked with finding a compromise between both sides.

Now, some seven months later, PSC officials say they are no closer to a deal than when they started. Meanwhile, wind farm developers such as Midwest Wind Energy and Redwind Consulting are sitting on their hands, and their money.

“Right now, we just don’t have a path forward in Wisconsin,” said Tim Polz, vice president of Midwest Wind Energy, a company that suspended work earlier this year on a large wind farm in Calumet County. “The uncertainty is just too much now.”

Polz said Chicago-based Midwest already spent three years and about $1 million on the Calumet County project. In full, the company expected to spend upward of $200 million on the project, employ 150 to 200 construction workers for up to 18 months and five to eight people full time after that.

The project is one of five major utility wind farms suspended or canceled as a result of the ongoing stalemate, costing the state a relatively quick infusion of about $1.6 billion in economic development and almost 1,000 temporary, full-time jobs.

“In this economy, where jobs are at a premium and people are struggling, this kind of inaction is inexcusable,” said Minority Leader Peter Barca, D-Kenosha.

Set back by setbacks

The sticking point, according to PSC spokeswoman Kristin Ruesch, is what it has always been: setbacks, noise levels and the effects turbines have on neighboring property owners.

The PSC spent more than a year working out the original rules, which bore the fingerprints of Democrats and Republicans, the wind industry and its critics.

Those rules were scheduled to go into effect in March. But after taking office in January, Republican Gov. Scott Walker introduced a bill to dramatically increase setbacks.

The original rules required wind turbines have a setback from the nearest property line of 1.1 times the height of the turbine, or roughly 450 feet. The rules also required turbines be no closer than 1,250 feet from the nearest residence. Walker’s provision pushed the setback from the property line — not just a house — to 1,800 feet, about six football fields.

That proposal appealed to wind industry critics and the real estate industry, a heavy contributor to Walker’s campaign. Realtors donated more than $400,000 to Walker by October 2010, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, an election watchdog group.

But officials in the wind industry said the governor’s proposal would ruin their business in Wisconsin. Barca said the original rules were the result of a bipartisan agreement and he thinks the governor just doesn’t like the industry.

“It has been a deliberate decision by Gov. Walker,” he said. “They are going to kill wind energy in this state.”

Time pressure

In the end, the legislative committee that reviews agency rules chose not to act on the governor’s bill and instead voted to send the original rules back to the PSC to see if an agreement could be ironed out.

If no changes are made by March, the original rules go into effect. However, two bills sit in Legislative committees designed to kill the original rules and force the state to start from scratch.

“But I don’t think they want to do that,” said Michael Vickerman, executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, a Madison nonprofit that promotes clean energy. “They would be immediately vulnerable on the ‘jobs’ issue.”

Walker said he is aware of the stress caused by the delay but feels it is important any rules be fair to both sides, respecting property rights and the future of the wind industry.

Meanwhile, state Sen. Frank Lasee, R-De Pere, plans to introduce a bill Monday to call for a moratorium on wind turbines until the PSC receives a report from the Department of Health Services on possible health effects of wind farms.

“It is more important to fully vet, understand and communicate to the public the potential changes than the specific timing of when they are adopted and enacted.” Walker said. “It is important to note that whatever proposed changes are made, there are effects on a number of different areas of the economy.”

From Illinois:

SCIENTIST SAYS WIND FARMS BAD FOR HEALTH

BY DAVID GIULIANI,

SOURCE: www.saukvalley.com 

October 7, 2011 

Anyone who argues that wind turbines don’t have bad health effects are either ignoring the evidence or “trying to mislead,”

DIXON – A scientist who has studied the effects of wind turbines argued Thursday that there was “overwhelming evidence” that they hurt people’s health.

A wind industry representative, however, said epidemiologist Carl V. Phillips didn’t answer many direct questions during an evening presentation.

Phillips, who lives in Pennsylvania, was allowed to present for up to an hour to the Lee County Zoning Board of Appeals, which is reviewing the county’s ordinance on wind turbines.

Then the public got to ask questions.

Phillips said that in his research, he has found that people who live up to 2 miles away from the turbines develop such things as sleep, stress and mood disorders once wind farms go up.

Wind turbines create noise, vibrations and shadow flicker, he said. But he acknowledged that scientists don’t know exactly how turbines cause the health problems.

That’s not unusual in science, he said, noting that experts have known for 60 years that smoking is linked to cardiovascular disease but don’t know exactly how.

Phillips said he didn’t know the exact percentage of residents within a mile or more of wind farms who suffer “substantial” health problems as the result of the turbines, but he said his best guess, based on research, was 5 percent.

Anyone who argues that wind turbines don’t have bad health effects are either ignoring the evidence or “trying to mislead,” Phillips said.

Victims of the health effects often move away and then see their health improve, he said.

“What had been their sanctuary is now a hostile environment,” he said. “People abandon their homes and sell at a loss.”

In questioning, Phillips acknowledged that he hadn’t compared people’s health both before and after wind turbines go up. But he said he would like such information.

Lee County now requires that the distance between turbines and homes be 1,400 feet – a little more than a quarter-mile. Phillips suggested that the setback should probably be somewhere between 1 and 2 miles, but he said there wasn’t enough evidence to determine what would be the best setback.

If the setback were at 1 or 2 miles, there may not be a feasible spot in the county for turbines, he said.

Near the end of the meeting, Susie Miller of Ashton questioned whether representatives of Ireland-based wind company, Mainstream Renewable Power, had anything to say.

Mainstream’s John Martin said the presentation was Phillips’ “philosophical” statements and “personal hypotheses.” He said Phillips essentially said that he wanted more studies.

Earlier in the meeting, Richard Boris, mayor of the village of Lee, said many landowners who allow turbines must sign confidentiality agreements with the wind energy companies. He suggested that such deals would prevent them from discussing health problems that they believed resulted from turbines.

At the end of the meeting, he asked Martin whether that were the case.

Martin said he couldn’t comment on the confidentiality agreements because they were “inherently confidential.”

Wind farm opponents laughed.

Another Mainstream representative, Keith Bolin, said no one would be barred from talking about their health. He said he was offended at the insinuation they couldn’t.

Mainstream is planning a wind farm in Lee, Bureau and Whiteside counties.

From Ohio

CAN TURBINES GENERATE HEALTH PROBLEMS?

By LOU WILIN,

SOURCE www.thecourier.com

October 5, 2011 

Sleep disturbance, memory and concentration problems, headaches, dizziness and nausea, and ringing or buzzing in the ears are among their troubles,

Living close to wind turbines can hurt your peace of mind, job performance and health, according to some health experts and researchers.

“If you’re within a mile, you’re asking for trouble,” said Alex Salt, an otolaryngology professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

Air Energy TCI, a company which plans to erect wind turbines between Arcadia, Fostoria and New Riegel, would locate some within one-third of a mile of a home, the company’s development manager, Rory Cantwell, said Tuesday. He said Air Energy’s standard exceeds the state standard by more than 500 feet.

“(Wind turbines) don’t emit enough noise to do any permanent damage,” said Brett O’Connor, operations director for TCI Renewables in North America, the parent corporation of Air Energy. “All thoroughly peer-reviewed, properly conducted scientific analysis has concluded that there is no impact to human health.”

But Salt, who has studied the ear for 37 years, said wind turbines can, and do, cause some people problems. He has company.

In her book, “Wind Turbine Syndrome,” Dr. Nina Pierpont of Malone, N.Y., tells about some neighbors of wind turbines experiencing ear and health problems.

Sleep disturbance, memory and concentration problems, headaches, dizziness and nausea, and ringing or buzzing in the ears are among their troubles, Pierpont said. Those problems can lead to further health deterioration, said Pierpont and Salt: high blood pressure and heart palpitations.

“There are really distinct effects on susceptible people,” Pierpont said. “You just can’t function in this. It’s like you’re wading through mud mentally. You’re sick.”

Susceptible are those older than 50; those with migraine disorder, motion sensitivity, and existing inner ear damage from, say, exposure to industrial or military noise; and toddlers and early school-age children, she said.

Wind turbines produce low-frequency sounds, which the industry says cause no trouble because people do not hear them.

“That’s absolutely false,” Salt said. “The ear is designed so you don’t hear low-frequency sounds, but it isn’t insensitive to them. Those sounds are still going in and they are still being transfused. Even though you don’t hear it, it wakes you up.”

Salt said people over time have adapted to not notice their own body’s low-frequency sounds, like breathing and heartbeat. But when it comes to wind turbine sounds, sooner or later the brain notices they come from outside the body, and that’s when the trouble starts, Salt said.

For some, the trouble starts within a few weeks. For others, it happens immediately.

“People have difficulty describing the problem they’re having. It’s not a sound you’re hearing. It’s an uncomfortable feeling in your ears,” Salt said. “It’s a perceiving. You’re not hearing. It’s a fullness or a stuffiness in your ear.”

“It’s an odd feeling,” he said. “It’s close to motion sickness.”

Unfortunately, by the time residents experience problems, the wind farm has set up shop and enlisting its help is difficult, said Carmen Krogh, a board member for the Society for Wind Vigilance in Killaloe, Ontario. Wind turbines are more pervasive in Ontario than in Ohio.

“Once the turbines are established, it’s hard to get any kind of resolution to health troubles,” she said.

The health of those affected can deteriorate while they battle for years with a wind turbine company, Krogh said. Some people have abandoned their homes, rented elsewhere or moved in with a relative, she said.