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Windmills not as safe as you may think
Credit: www.steubencourier.com 4 February 2012 ~~
Translate: FROM English | TO English
Translate: FROM English | TO English
If you think a 400 foot machine, weighing 164 tons, with enormous moving parts, isn’t a safety hazard, then you have simply been misinformed.
Wind turbines are colossal. The rotor diameter is nearly as large as a football field. Each turbine holds about 200 gallons of hydraulic oil. When they catch on fire, you have to wait for the fire to burn out. (You can see this happening around the world on your computer.) That becomes an issue when the blades are spinning, and burning debris is thrown. The problems with noise and shadow flicker are well documented. You can see that online as well. The evidence is out there – stringent setbacks are a necessity for any wind plant.
The problem is that wind developers just trot out any setback that their particular project can accept, saying that everything will be OK.
Recent letters to this paper distorted the facts, as usual. This is the typical way wind companies and their cronies confuse the population. In Prattsburgh, most people who claim there are no health and safety issues either live outside the project area or hope to make money personally from the projects, or both.
Will the streets of Prattsburgh be paved in gold if wind developers are given a free hand with insufficient setbacks? It’s not likely, considering the deal that Ecogen offered the town. But that is not really the point. More important is whether people outside the project area want to be responsible for driving out their neighbors in the hills. When considering the need for setbacks, what you need to ask yourselves is, how much money is it worth to sell your neighbors down the river? And if that doesn’t matter, then consider that when tax revenues fall because of the non-salability of peoples’ homes, it is the townspeople that will bear the burden.
Ruth Matilsky
Prattsburgh, NY
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