Monday, March 14, 2005
Wind Farms in the North Country
What could be better than nice clean wind generated electricity? Wind farms have been proposed for the Ellenburg and Malone areas. Ok, those giant propellers have some esthetic problems. They are huge! Two hundred feet (or more) high with prop arms of 90 ft. I guess they do mess up the sky line but worse than the towers, for me at least, are the power lines that need to be built. Nothing is uglier than power lines. But not to worry. The good folks of Malone believe that Wind Generators cause health problems. And, this has been verified by a local retired history professor and his 'behavioral' pediatrician wife. Supposedly the low frequency noise can cause a lot of depression in people. A quick search of Medline and a google search doesn't really support those claims however. Remember when people thought high tension wires caused cancer in people who lived near them? Haven't heard much from those folks lately. Well, no matter what the issue here in the Adirondacks, 50% of the people will support it and the rest will oppose it. Pretty much the reason nothing ever gets done.
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Ellensburg, WA, where I went to college also had a proposed wind plant in the works. Same deal - 50% for, 50% against. The biggest complaints I heard of were audible noise (I would imagine it's something like "weeeee-atch, weee-atch;' or maybe "watch, watch, watch" in a high wind). And death to birds, especially of the migrating variety. Of course, in this same town there was already a failed attempt at wind farming - a giant inverted egg-beater in someone's front pasture. Local legend had it that it was so windy in the Kittittas Valley (where E-burg is located) that the farmer burned more energy braking the thing from spinning too fast than he was producing.
-Brandon-
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