Lakes residents fight green plan [windmills spoil their view]

Valley Press ^ | Sunday, May 3, 2009. | ALEXA VAUGHN

[BenLurkin]

LAKE HUGHES [california] - Plans for the installation of 70 wind turbines on a ridge northwest of Lake Hughes and construction of power lines to connect them with an already-controversial proposed power line in Leona Valley have been submitted to Los Angeles County regional planners. But residents of the Lakes communities aren't too happy about it.

"We as a community are not getting a lot of oversight protection on these projects," said Jim Walker, president of the Lakes Town Council.

Speaking at a town council meeting Saturday, Walker said he is also concerned about the aesthetic and ecological impacts the project may have on the area.

The turbines - 417 feet tall at the uppermost reach of their blades - would be placed on 3,503 acres of private property near Tweedy Lake, about 1.5 miles north of Pine Canyon Road and about six miles northwest of Lake Hughes. Proposed to be completed in 2012, the turbines would generate electricity enough to serve at least 245,000 people in Los Angeles County, proponents said.

White Oak Wind Farm LLC, a subsidiary of Advanced Development Services LLC, is proposing the wind farm to sell electricity to Southern California Edison.

Members of the Lakes Town Council said they did not know yet how much of the project would be a visual blight for the Lake Hughes, Elizabeth Lake and Leona Valley communities.

But if power lines stretching from west to east and north to south intersected in Leona Valley, the area would become a "spiderweb of power lines and towers," according to a letter the council drafted to Supervisor Michael Antonovich.

According to Advanced Development Services' outline of the project, the location proposed for the turbines "is not a wilderness area, an area used for military operations or critical habitat."

[BenLurkin]

ping

[montomike]

Step up to the plate, you NIMBYers.

Do it for the Messiah.

If we try really hard, we might be able to replace our oil with windmills and really cool looking solar panels.

Should I turn the sarcasm off?

I think not.

[Slings and Arrows]

NIMBY strikes again!

[Wiseghy]

Stuff like this makes me wonder if there is truly anything like “clean” energy.

All have sources have public costs. Ironically, only carbon energy will be charged a premium.

[Army Air Corps]

One Nuke plant would have taken care of that...

[Argus]

I live just over the hill from this. The bottom line is, the NIMBYs are down in the city of LA - they’re the ones who’ll be using this “green power” not us. They like to congratulates themselves on how green they are, at our expense. They don’t want to look at windmills lined up along their own mountain ridges and ugly power lines crisscrossing the sky above their heads, so they screw over the rural dwellers up here. And BTW, this is the Red State part of California - we vote Republican and conservative.

What’s more, all this green power crap is a fraud and a hoax. It’s inefficient, unreliable and wouldn’t even exist without massive government subsidies. The real green and renewable power source is nuclear - but three decades of phony pseudo-environmentalist propaganda has done its work, so that option is literally radioactive.

So what we’re left with is fraudulent, undependable sources of electricity that disfigure the landscape, kill birds, waste water and increase the risk of wildfires in wilderness areas. The perfect “progressive outcome.

[kittymyrib]

The greenies in CA don’t want oil drilling off shore, don’t want nuclear power plants, and now don’t even want BO’s wind power. With their short-sighted NIMBY attitude, they should not have any power at all. Eating their sprouts in the dark should make them feel so superior to the rest of us.

[Venturer]

Let’s not forget Ted Kennedy doesnt want windmills at his place either.

Maybe they can put them at the top of the hill in Southeast Washington at Frederick Douglas’s home.

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

But Alice Benoit, a member of the Leona Valley Town Council, said the area contains important species. When Benoit reported the sighting of a tri-colored blackbird, she said it brought biologists from as far as the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, Davis.

[SunkenCiv]

What, no Kennedy family members involved?

[Dutch Boy]

Isn’t that an ordinary red winged black bird? It looks like the ones I have in my back yard.

[LisaS]

Generally, I respect and appreciate the perspective of the folks on this forum. But you guys have no clue how costly and destructive wind energy is. Would you be willing to notice the issues if you were tole Pelosi and friends are about to release on the US tens of thousands of wind turbines with 19000 miles of NEW 765 kv transmission lines. And at what cost? Try billions paid for courtesy of your friendly neighborhood taxpayers and ratepayers — that would be YOU! And what do you reap for all your billions? Try reading the DOE’s document “20% wind power by 2030” and find out. But I'll make it easy for you — an energy resource that makes no promises, nor is it expected, to offer reliable electricity when you need it. Meanwhile, poor and economically challenged individuals are being forced to live with these monster towers. Those people do not make it into the paper because they do not have the means to file lawsuits. Wake up FR. Instead, you're enabling the biggest rape of our rural areas ever known.

[BenLurkin]

Are you interested in responding to LisaS and Argus (post 5)?

These seem to be the objections to wind energy summed up pretty well.