GE Plans to Build Largest Wind Farm in the World
We've previously reported on the increase in renewable energy projects in California, such as Southern California Edison's ("SCE") Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project. When it comes to wind farms, General Electric now takes the cake: it has brokered a $1.4 billion contract to supply wind turbines and services for a wind farm that would be larger than any wind farm currently in operation in the world.
According to a December 10 Bloomberg article GE Wins $1.4 Billion Order for Oregon Wind Farm, the 338-turbine wind farm will stretch across 30 square miles in Oregon, and will help the slumping economy by providing 400 jobs during construction. With GE already obtaining most of the necessary government permits, the two-year construction project is set to begin in 2010, and will require building 85 miles of road and 90 miles of power lines.
What does this mean for California? The wind farm will provide enough clean energy power to power approximately 235,000 California households, and it will supply a tenth of SCE's renewable energy.
Are there NO bounds to greed? I live in the Tehachapi Pass. We are fighting for our lives to keep those 476 foot turbines out of here.
From Rosamond to Mojave the landscape has been transformed from homesteads, ranches and farms that fed people to the complete destruction of those areas for hundreds upon hundreds of wind turbines. They are right up to the roads. The residents have been literally pushed off their properties. Now, Nextera and LADWP plan to go through the most critical areas of Kern County. They have already put turbines into Jawbone Canyon. Some of you may think, well so what. The people here love and respect the land. Those turbines are not covered. Raptors like the endangered California condors, golden eagles and many other migrating birds inhabit these peaks and hilltops. This is also the last area for the California Mojave Desert tortoises.
Ten percent of the land for turbines become roads. Each turbine takes about 20 acres. The concrete will never be dug up. The noise from hundreds of turbines is deafening and travels in the hills for 6 or more miles that I have experienced, they leak petroleum distillates from the nacelle gearboxes...and this is without the Edison transmission lines. FAA requires structures like turbines to have both white strobe and red strobed towers. They have taken out the night sky and replaced it with red, muddy light coming up from the towers. This is heartbreaking for those of us that find the night sky IS like meeting GOD.
In Sand Canyon (58 freeway and Sand Canyon Road), there are 2 state parks, one being Tomo-Khani. The companies plan to go right next to this area. All of us living here have 1500 year old artifacts of some sort on our properties like petroglyphs, pictographs, caves and cemetaries. They should never ever be compromised, especially for a technology that should never have been allowed in their primitive state.
In areas deeper into the forest going north you will see on maps that have ACEC or areas of critical environmental concern. This exactly where they are going. I have a report of hundreds of buzzards (turkey vultures, I think) being found dead by a resident of Caliente that ran into transmission lines in the fog. The mountains do have frequent fog. There is a cloak of secrecy by utility companies about animal deaths because the lines are in remote locations and inaccessible surrounded with fences with threatening signs. There is no independent oversight at all, zero, none.
Other countries like Denmark are turning away from turbines because they are not very productive and have not put a dent into the use of coal or other fuels. So what has happened is that our President and Senators have bled the American people, turned each of us upside down and shaken our pockets empty. This is not green. It is pure greed.
The people of Tehachapi are dying on the vine financially. Instead of continuing to farm the land and convert to organic farming, there is a zoning overlay for ag land as wind energy.
If global warming is even 1/10th of what we hear and see, arable land must be kept in tact in Tehachapi, the south end of the San Joaquin valley and kept as a food source the people of Los Angeles. This is not a case of us against you. It is a case of pure greed.
Whatever happened to using our brilliant men and women from Cal Tech, Claremont Colleges, MIT, UCLA and the rest of the incredible scientists around our once proud country to develop clean energy without having to run hazardous lines and destructive to be on a central and very expensive grid. This is plain old stupid. This country needs to get past buying and selling other countrys' old junk and peddling it to us.
This is anything but clean energy. It is greed at the expense to the taxpayers in the amount of 30% of the total cost of each "billions of dollars" projects. It's the bubble that will break the back of America.