Windmills on The Best Fishing Grounds?

First of all, why in the hell would anyone want to plant complex machinery such as wind turbines with approximately 800 to 900 moving parts in an offshore marine environment in over 100 feet of water ...if there were any alternative sites at all?  It makes no sense.  This plan is not cost effective, not long term business wise, and it is certainly not sound ecologically. 

Costs of an offshore wind farm due to installation and maintenance inaccessibility, salt deterioration, storms, steamer collision, security, submarine transmission lines, etc., are exponentially greater at sea (currently and conservatively estimated at 2 to 2.5 times greater) than on some farmer’s hill.  Farmers who I'm sure would be more than eager to accept the burden in exchange for the rent income. 

And even if some company is determined to build windmills in a cost-intensive hostile environment, why put them in an area that was declared so ecologically sensitive that it was off limits to fishing for over 20 years because of Yellowtail and other groundfish habitat and spawning activity ---deemed so crucial for the future of the stock--- "Essential Habitat"?  The Nantucket Lightship Area and The Great South Channel and Georges Bank are some of the richest fishing grounds in the world, producing scallops, lobster, squid,and groundfish.

 

Are our fishing grounds not worthy of more protection than this? They certainly have been well protected from fishing by NOAA over the years.  Are these areas now so vulnerable that they are there for the taking by the energy industry with the catchiest marketing spin or the deepest pockets and political connections---and the fattest payoffs? 

 

It's time to stop this insane intoxicated race for more and more power at any cost. 

 

We’re gonna’ put 11,000 to 12,000 windmills 300 feet tall up and down the east coast on the best fishing grounds?

 

Let’s stop this idiocy of trying to super-size, industrialize- privatize- commoditize- and profitize everything.  What’s our slogan: Do it BIG, Do it Fast, Do it Stupid? And above all Do it without an intelligent and well researched Plan?  Maybe we could start to think about putting money into projects that actually work.  Not projects that just make a few scam artists richer while massaging the ego of the masses with this garbage about windmills are the future of clean energy. The proposed windmills will be obsolete before they’re finished. 

 

In fact, windmills are obsolete now. The government could be putting some support and incentive behind geo-thermal, algae bio-diesel, artificial photosynthesis, micro-technology photo-voltaic windows and roofing, for instance.  These technologies are ready to go and need funding for additional R & D, and to start production moving. 

 

Windmills are old mechanical technology, and what these conglomerates of scam artists are trying to do off of Nantucket is nothing but pure greed, bilking the taxpayer as usual.  A few companies and a few shills will get rich and we will be left with rusting hulks on devasted fishing grounds.

 

It’s time to re-think the attitude that most everything is expendable in our insatiable pursuit of energy, including our productive fishing grounds that have fed people for centuries.

 

All the energy in the world won't mean a thing without clean food to eat.  We can't afford to unconsciously throw away millions of pounds of the best food on the planet by stupidly jamming these structures onto productive fishing bottom---no matter how big the payoffs might be for a few.

 

Please tell your political representatives to inject some integrity and intelligence---and some Common Sense--- into this process of deciding where to place wind farms---and oil rigs, and their transfer and storage barges, and the transmission lines, and their maintenance and supply docks. Or if offshore wind is even a viable concept considering cost and a discouraging world performance record.

 

The planning and design of crucial issues involving food, air, water, and energy, cannot be relinquished to profiteering and greed.

 

Talk about independence and national security... Let’s stand up for our fishing resource, a nationally vital food supply. 

And here's some more unsettling history of former windmill scams.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/wind_energys_ghosts_1.html (Thanks Ed Jones, newsvine)

 

And just a bit of concern about the viability of the companies involved in the wind farm scam.

http://bjdurk.newsvine.com/_news/2010/12/30/5737860-meet-your-wind-developers-upc-first-wind-deepwater-wind-cape-wind-associates-llc-emi-ivpc-

http://bjdurk.newsvine.com/_news/2011/02/21/6099211-enron-gave-birth-to-the-us-wind-energy-industry-

Dick Grachek

Comments

[Eric Harmon]

Why don't the links work for this story???
Anyone else have the same problem?

[Susan]

Sorry about that - links should work now.

[bore head]

This so reminds me of govt. intervention of the fisheries in the late seventies, and early eighties, when tax credits for investors led to the fleet buildup, post Magnuson. No one realised the damage caused, but the fishermen, and once again, tax credits for investors in wind offshore wind generation, will again, cost fishermen.When does this govt. get the credit of destruction that it has caused, and is causing, the US fishing industry?