Sunday, March 14, 2010

Wind Turbines and Power

A March 14th Chicago Tribune story, Wind turbines stir up bad feelings, health concerns in DeKalb County, highlighted the concerns residents in DeKalb County, Illinois over the Giant Wind Turbine Farms which began arriving in the Summer of 2009 and now number 126 turbines with an additional 19 in neighboring Lee County.

The nearby residents are bringing up all sorts of lawsuits proclaiming the Giant Blades are causing them migraines, hypertension and Sudden Unexplained Goat Deaths and herald the end of the Rural Way of Life. The really terrible thing is the power generated is owned by the non-local company NextEra Energy Resources and goes to a distribution center from where it is sent to various other states and municipalities, including Chicago, with a very small amount staying in DeKalb County.

The people who own the land on which the turbines have been built receive a payment from NextEra but most don't live adjacent to the Turbines. However, this is, of course Capitalism at work, build "potentially hazardous" blights and eyesores in someone else's backyard and transfer the wealth to yourself.

Well, the easiest fix is to give those living in the shadow of the wind farms free power for their homes and farms. This would be an incentive to living nearby.

Of course, evil Capitalists would try and use the Power of Government as they always do and build giant stadiums, factories, mega agri-business pigtropolis and suck up the free power but this could easily be remedied by a cap on the amount of power (say enough for a small family farm and house of say 6-8 persons in a year) and by making it a certain distance from the wind farm.

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