The wind industry is working hard to persuade Arkansans of the benefits of wind energy.
Onshore industrial wind turbines are oil cans on 700-foot-high lightning rods. Wind “farms” require massive deforestation and can damage underground aquifer water systems that rural Arkansans rely on for their farms and homes. Last year, three turbines collapsed at the Ameren Missouri wind farm in less than six months.
Collapsing towers and disintegrating turbine blades, composed mostly of fiberglass, can pollute nearby farmlands making them unusable. They can travel thousands of feet, causing fires far from the turbine itself. Good luck getting the wind company to fix the damage when it happens. Many landowners have destroyed their family’s farming legacies for the short-term gain promised by the wind companies.
Wind farm developers claim they create jobs. Most of those jobs are only during the short construction phase and aren’t local jobs. These companies are large, national specialists, not your local electrician.
Arkansas is projected to have an electrical energy shortage in the next few years. But none of this electricity is going to Arkansas. Instead, the money will go to the home countries of these corporations.
Wind companies promise huge property tax revenues. But, when it’s time to pay, they will fight to limit their tax liability. And they won’t talk about how the county tax base has actually been harmed because the homes and real estate surrounding their “farms” are worth less.
Wind companies talk about how “green” and “cheap” wind energy is. It takes a lot of environmental-unfriendly mining and manufacturing to make turbines and to build the transmission lines to carry their electricity. Wind companies can destroy carbon-capturing forests offsetting any environmental benefits.
Turbine blades last a few years and must be replaced. There are acres of non-recyclable turbine parts stacked up over the country. The only thing “green” about wind energy are the greenbacks the wind developers pocket. If wind energy is so cheap, why does it take massive federal subsidies to build wind farms? We Americans are all paying those subsidies to the foreign companies.
Arkansas’ future need for electricity needs to be met thoughtfully and with common sense. Our General Assembly needs to address the growing threat of unregulated wind farms to our state by establishing reasonable controls governing the siting, construction, operation and decommissioning of wind farms.
George Caudle, Concerned Citizens of the Ozarks, is an attorney with a home in Carroll County