“Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was the impetus for the modern environmental movement dating back to the early 1960s…. It is beyond ironic that some 50 years later, the environmental movement has come full circle in its zeal to support wind energy whose 500 foot tall towers support (occasionally) whirring blades that have done untold harm to avian populations throughout rural America.”

– Sen. Bill Seitz (letter below)

Ohio Senator Bill Seitz defends fairness over favors. More like him are needed at all levels of government. May Ohio Governor John Kasich et al. reconsider energy policy with pointers from the likes of Senator Seitz.

Of sharp mind and with tell-it-like-it-is prose, Sen. Seitz recently weighed in on the offshore wind proposal for Lake Erie, the subject of two recent posts (here and here at MasterResource).…

“A single 1.7 MW wind turbine, like the 315 Fowler Ridge units, involves some 365 tons of materials for the turbine assembly and tower, plus nearly 1,100 tons of concrete and rebar for the foundation. Grand total for the entire Fowler wind installation: some 515,000 tons; for Roscoe, 752,000 tons; for Shepherds Flat, 575,000 tons. Offshore installations of the kind proposed for Lake Erie would likely require twice the materials needed for their onshore counterparts.”

The alter ego of climate change in these renewable energy debates is sustainability: the argument that wind and other “renewable” energies are sustainable, whereas oil, gas and coal are not.

This assertion may have had some merit a few years ago, when it could plausibly be claimed that the world was running out of fossil fuels.…

“Overwhelming evidence has been formally brought forward to the OPSB concerning possible and inevitable damage to the fragile ecosystems of Lake Erie. This ‘incubator’ project is intended to spawn more like projects, up to, we hear, 1,700 industrial machines in this one Lake or any of the Great Lakes.”

Members of the Great Lakes Wind Truth group for years have pointed to the fact that there are tens of millions of migrating birds and bats, possibly billions, that would be seriously impacted by even the six-to-nine industrial wind turbines at Cleveland. The Hawk Migration Association of North America and Rick Unger, past president and current advisor, of the Lake Erie Charter Boat Association, also expressed concerns to the OPSB.

Additionally, quoted in the joint letter of 2014, is a statement about

staggering environmental damages.

“Groups fighting any industrialization of the Lakes … are requesting that federal funding for this expensive boondoggle, estimated to eventually run up to $125 million, or about $25 million for each turbine, be immediately truncated, and that a complete audit of existing monies granted be undertaken with fulsome reporting to taxpayers.”

“There is absolutely NOTHING ecologically friendly about an industrial wind turbine. It is designed for one thing: profits.”

The Icebreaker Windpower project, proposed by the Norway-based Fred. Olsen Renewables, would be the first proposed freshwater wind turbine project in the United States. The proposal, however, is running into serious opposition from ratepayer, taxpayer, and environmental groups.

As an offshore project (six turbines about seven miles off the shore of Cleveland Ohio), it should be compared to the $0.24/kWh cost debacle of Rhode Island’s Deepwater Wind project that is about to begin production.…