No wind turbines in West Virginia

My back yard, West Virginia, is your back yard. Stop and think what made this state so unique and beautiful.

It isn't the stoplights, quickie marts and fast-food restaurants or the whole urban sprawl.

Why can't we see that our treasured mountains are too precious to sell to the next big land speculator or energy giant?

Can we stop before the cell phone towers are replaced with wind turbines, which are three times taller and uglier?

They're coming closer to you everyday. If this happens the skies will be filled with industrial blight.

Red lights will compete with the stars at night and we'll hear a grinding hum instead of a gentle wind rustling the leaves. Sound pollution, blinking lights and unsightly machines will replace tree-lined mountain ridges.

Western Greenbrier County is the site of a new coal power plant. Large-scale stripping operations are planned.

Now, to top it off, a Chicago (the windy city) corporation would like to put up over 100 giant wind turbines (as tall as 40-story buildings) blinking and twirling for all to see, across the highest, grandest mountain ridges of our state.

What happens here could easily expand to other majestic windy mountain ridges. This same area is enjoyed by hunters, backpackers, sightseers, mountain bikers, four-wheelers and fishermen.

This natural game preserve is where rogue bears from around the state are released back into the wild. At least seven trout streams have their headwaters on the site of this proposed wind plant.

Flying over this area at night, no lights can be seen for almost 20 square miles. This is everyone's back yard.

Please let the Great Plains have the wind turbines. Let the trout and black bear have the mountains.

Maybe I'm being selfish, but let my children and their children have what Mother Nature, what God, has graced West Virginia with. It's time to take a stand.