The Left Shows Its True Colors yet Again: NIMBY Rears Its Ugly Head.

You've heard me talk about energy in several articles; mostly I've been concerned with the issues surrounding petroleum, but now it's time to talk about one potential source of renewable energy.

Wind power.

Wind power requires an acre of land per turbine; each turbine results in around a 30% of rated capacity in actual energy production, based on the intermittency of wind; it's between 20-40%, but I'll shoot at the median. That's about 2,628 Megawatt hours of energy generation per turbine per year.

Now, the wind companies tend to recompense people handsomely for the inconvenience of having the turbines built on their land, or near their towns, or just to get them to shut the hell up. More on this in a minute.

Did you know there are now ANTI-wind activists?

I didn't know that.

It honestly never entered my mind that people would be that overt about their agenda. But apparently, stupidity not being in short supply, there are anti-wind activists now.

In New York state, an area known as Tug Hill has become the site of a modest wind farm - 195 turbines, called the Maple Ridge wind farm. Maple Ridge uses 1.65 megawatt wind turbines; at 30%, that's 845, 559 megawatt-hours of generating capacity per year; nearly a terawatt of power, plus the carbon offset equivalent of nearly 200 square miles of new forestation.

To give you a fair idea, that is - without pollution, without waste, without risk of meltdown or any of the other things anti-nuclear activists are up in arms about - double the generating capacity of all six nuclear reactors in New York State COMBINED.

Maple Ridge looks like this:

Yeah. Hideous, and stuff.

Each of these turbines, for this particular project - I told you I'd come back to this - gives the owners of the land it sits on $79, 200 per year in permanent leasing payments; the land the turbines stand on is leased in perpetuity, in exchange for $6, 600 per month in leasing fees.

That means someone fortunate enough to have seven acres of land up there - just seven - can expect leasing payments of HALF A MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR - $554, 400 - for the use of their land for windmills.

Since the windmills have been up, the budgets of the nearby towns have better than doubled; PPM Energy, owner of the Maple Ridge turbines, is very generous with the payments every month not only to the land owners, but to neighbors - they call it a nuisance fee - neighboring towns, school districts, everybody. They can afford to be; Maple Ridge produces enough energy to power about 100,000 homes, in a rural area with an incorporated population of a little under 27, 000 people; that means that nearly 3/4 of the power produced can be sold elsewhere, especially to power-starved New York City.

So, this energy development has brought prosperity, employment, residual leasing fees, steady municipal revenues, and clean power to this area; it has allowed many of the area's older land owners to secure - for their offspring - permanent sources of income; retirement funds that they didn't have to work for; a secure future.

So what do these offspring have to say about this undeserved bounty their parents have settled into their laps, guaranteeing their PERMANENT financial security, removing utterly their need to fear future events, removing utterly their need to worry about providing for their own offspring?

Well, they say this:

I was sold out by my own father.

And this:

I just want to be able to get a good night's sleep and to live in my home without these monstrosities hovering over me.

And this:

I told him if he allowed turbines in that field he would lose a son.

And this:

Dad taught us such respect for the land. For my father to be part of this...

And this:

We want clean energy as much as anyone, but we also want quality of life.

And it makes you wonder why more of them haven't been disinherited.

That last quote is the best for me; the resident who gave that quote, and her husband, both work for the New York Department of Environmental Conservation. Because respecting and preserving the environment by not pouring gas fumes and oil smoke and coal dust and nuclear waste is wonderful, and morally right, and everything we should all want - but not if it lands in MY backyard. Oh, HELL no.

That family was offered $1, 500 a month in permanent income by PPM Energy, because the turbines "disrupted their view;" the family rejected it and told the wind company that the turbine was watching them like a giant preying mantis. That's $18, 000 a year for the INCONVENIENCE, but no, they're protesting.

The older residents, of course, are having none of this. They are saying things like:

It's better than a nuclear plant, and it brings in good money.

And like this:

The sound don't bother me, and it sure beats milking cows.

And this:

It's the best cash cow we ever had, this cow doesn't need to be fed, doesn't need a vet, doesn't need a place to lie down.

And the town whose incorporated area hosts the most turbines - Martinsburg, population 1, 200 - has had its budget jump from $400,000 a year, to $1.2 MILLION a year - better than double - from the wind company's payments. They're not complaining.

The Lowville school district has received $6.3 million so far, and has been able to refit their schools with computer labs, all new lab equipment and sports gear, and anything else they could get their hands on to benefit the kids.

But to the left, you see, the issue is NOT "environmentally friendly energy." The issue is NOT "ending pollution." The issue is NOT "stopping global warming," or "save the forests," or "keep the groundwater clean," or any of those other things that you'd think it might be.

They don't actually care HOW you generate power.

As long as you don't do it where it could get in the way of their view. Or, in the case of one Tug Hill resident, in the way of his hang gliding.

Not In My Back Yard.

Oh, yeah, lest I forget, not where there's boating, either.