Dear Editor,
While Benton County did an admiral job of keeping wind farms out of the county, if NextEra Energy gets its way in Buchanan County, folks in the northern parts of Benton County will be subjected to the same destruction of their quality of life as those of us just "across the border". NextEra Energy has proposed placing a wind farm just north of the Benton/Buchanan Road and about a mile west of Brandon.
Wind turbines are also proposed for north of Brandon, east of Brandon and at Rowley. Currently, they are proposing 70 wind turbines. However, as has happened in other counties, once they get their foot in the door, the pressure may come to add even more. I can see the grain elevator in LaPorte City about 10 miles from my home. It may be around 200 feet tall. The wind turbines are going to be between 500 and 600 feet tall; possibly three times taller than the grain elevator. So, it would be real easy to see a wind farm from ten miles away. One of the proposed Brandon wind farms will be about a mile from my home. My family did not move out to the country to live amongst skyscrapers.
So, let's get back to you folks in Benton County. You will be able to see the wind farm from the Vinton airport, about 6 miles to the north. Wind farms can be no closer than 6 miles from the airport; just made it by a hair. Depending on where you are located in Vinton proper; you too may be able to see the wind farm from 9 to 10 miles away. Urbana will be able to see the Brandon and Rowley wind farms.
I am sure people will enjoy having their once beautiful horizon cluttered with a bunch of 600 foot twirling skyscrapers. The closer you get to your "northern border"; the more you will not only be greeted with this horrendous eyesore; but you can start weighing the other "benefits" such as various types of health issues, noise pollution, infrasound, shadow flicker, reduced crop dusting, harm to poultry and livestock, killed bats, bald eagles and other birds.
If Benton County folks are not looking forward to this travesty, a lot of people in southern Buchanan County would appreciate you contacting the Buchanan County Board of Supervisors accordingly. You can find a link to their three email addresses on the Buchanan County website page. If you would like to get a good dose of reality, simply go to https://bucoa.org/ .
Chris Urban
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Now, how about the hundreds of jobs that were lost when the nuke plant at Palo was shut down?
If the wind industry wasn't so heavily subsidized by the federal government, (your taxpayer dollars) I doubt that the wind farms could make it on their own. Senator Charles Grassley, said back in 2015: “As the father of the first wind-energy tax credit in 1992, I can say that the tax credit was never meant to be permanent.” Yet, here we are 31 years later still subsidizing big wind with our taxpayer dollars.
MidAmerican, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, snagged $249 million in federal tax credits in just one year. He is on record as saying “I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire's tax rate. For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without the tax credit." How telling is that?
Also out west where they have wind farms, crews that work on them tell about finding dear birds beneath them.
Make your voice heard, it may be our county next.
Clayton Ohrt (Chair) - 319-332-1766 - cohrt@co.buchanan.ia.us
Dawn Vogel - 319-332-1765- dvogel@co.buchanan.ia.us
John Kurtz - 319-332-1764- jkurtz@co.buchanan.ia.us
Because they want to tie into the existing Duane Arnold infrastructure, which is basically sitting idle right now after the shutdown of the nuclear reactor, there's a very good chance that Benton County will be next. They need to come up with 601 MW of capacity to make up for the lost generating capacity when Duane Arnold closed. Since wind turbines operate at less than 35% of their rated nameplate capacity on average, that means they will need approximately 640 wind turbines to make up for what the Duane Arnold nuclear plant produced.
Later
Dave
Do you know how many jobs we lost because of the closure of the Duane Arnold Nuclear Power plant? Around 600 so far. It will be over 800 full-time, good-paying jobs lost when the decommissioning of the plant is complete. Wind turbines cost more jobs than they create.
I would also point out that the residents of a rural area in Pennsylvania were told a wind farm there would create a couple dozen new jobs. In the end? It created only two.
Furthermore, are you aware that Kirkwood Community College is closing their Wind Turbine Technician program and no longer accepting new students? The stated reason is low enrollment and lack of interest.
So often we hear wind developers or solar developers claim that "X" number of wind turbines or "X" number of solar panels can produce enough energy to power "X" number of homes. Yup, about 30% of the time. But "what ya gonna do when the wind don't blow and the sun don't shine?" (I could turn that lyric into a song.) Why shucks, if the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining, we'll just rely on the back up; you know; coal, natural gas, nuclear. Problem is, the "green" developers have already decommissioned way too many, way too soon. Well, I guess we'll just have to try putting up with rolling blackouts or rolling brownouts until the wind starts to blow again and the sun starts to shine. No problem.