Opinions
Wind power's niche
In Michigan's Lenawee County and near the Ohio-Indiana state line, proposals to install wind turbines are attracting organized opposition. It is easy -- but unfair -- to dismiss this as an expression of classic Not In My Back Yard sentiments. If majority opinion and market forces lead to zoning ordinances that discourage developers from operating in an area, they must be respected.
August 16, 2011
in The Toledo Blade
Wind power has a role in America's energy future, at least until more-advanced technologies displace it. That reality does not give the wind industry carte blanche to rip up the countryside of northern Ohio and southeast Michigan and stick turbines wherever it wants, without adequate siting rules and other environmental and safety regulation.
Commercial-scale turbines are not the quaint windmills of travel posters. Large and powerful, their computer-driven heads rotate 360 degrees in accordance with wind gusts.
Such features enable the giant machines to harness a largely untapped energy resource that is clean and renewable. They also create potential problems that local governments... [continue via Web link]
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