Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Otis Voters Approve Windmill, Reject Scare Tactics

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Tiny bit of turbine

VIEW RUINED

Massachusetts voters delivered the latest in a long string of victories for local wind energy yesterday, this time in Otis, as Mary Serreze reports for the Springfield Republican:

Voters in this Berkshire County town have approved borrowing $6.4 million to build a 1.7 megawatt municipally-owned wind turbine.

Tuesday’s 189-96 vote came as the project, four years in the making, faced a last-minute opposition campaign from an anonymous OtisWind website, flyers posted around town, and letters to the editor of the Berkshire Eagle, including one from from the president of Massachusetts Wind Wise, a group dedicated to opposing wind projects.

The turbine will provide electricity for local government buildings and facilities. The rest will be sold to Lower Pioneer Valley Educational Collaborative, which represents dozens of Western Massachusetts school districts, said town administrator Chris Morris.

The project is also expected to generate revenue for the town in the amount of $250,000 to $300,000 in the first year of operation, Morris added.

It’s funny that the article also mentions “so-called ‘wind turbine syndrome,’ reportedly caused by a strobe-light effect produced by the turning blades.” Wait, I thought wind turbine syndrome was supposed to be caused by “infrasound”? The causes and symptoms may change, but the only thing that remains consistent is that wind turbine opponents are willing to sacrifice our health, our climate & our economy so they don’t have to look at windmills. Which are actually pretty. No wonder they keep losing.

So here’s my question: Why do local reporters keep calling wind turbines “controversial” when voters approve them time after time by huge numbers when they get a chance to weigh in?

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Comments

  1. are idiots that purvey the unstated assumption of false equivalence, but because she’s also working for the Republican, which means she probably covers too many beats for too little money and receives little of what functional newspapers call “editing.”

    The domain name for Otis Wind is registered to Janet Sinclair
    28 Ashfield Street
    Shelburne Falls, MA

    Don’t know if that name means anything to you. A quick search of her reveals that she is an acupuncturist. She was also Buckland’s Buckland’s “Wind Advisory Committee.” She was asked to leave a Shelburne Fall’s planning board meeting, “[PB Chair] Matt asked Janet Sinclair, a Buckland resident in the audience, to leave the meeting due to her making
    comments when not recognized by the chair. Tom Webler chose to leave the meeting as well in response to
    the chair’s action.” She submitted a letter to WNTAG . She’s probably affiliated with Shelburne Wind, but either she or another person registered the domain anonymously.

  2. The awful coal power plant in Salem wrecked the views, and the public health, of the community my grandparents grew up in while the wind power plants in the community my fiancee’s grandmother grew up in were hauntingly beautiful. It takes a real NIMBY phony environmentalist like Bobby Jr to argue these aren’t a beautiful testament to mankind’s ingenuity and cohesion with nature.

      • NIMBY= Not In My Back Yard
        NIMTO afflicts politicians = Not In My Term of Office
        BANANA is for the true lunatics = Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone

        There is a lot of lunacy around wind power, people who prefer power from carbon sources that will kill humanity rather than “spoil” a view.

  3. ….the Town of Falmouth has just had to spend hundreds of thousands to take back down a similar municipal turbine after losing several court cases. I do not know how to post links, but you could look it up as Yogi Berry said.

    The flicker was accepted by the court as a health hazard, especially for those with neurological issues like epilipsy, where such light is a common trigger for seizures, and is recognized for causing migraines. Think what it’s like to try to work under a failing fluorescent bulb to imagine the effect.

    The town is investigating taking nearby residences by eminent domain, but that looks to cost more than the decommissioning.

    This kind of consequence is why I always supported Cape Wind, but the Kennedys saved us from that.

    • The flicker was accepted by the court as a health hazard, especially for those with neurological issues like epilipsy, where such light is a common trigger for seizures, and is recognized for causing migraines. Think what it’s like to try to work under a failing fluorescent bulb to imagine the effect.

      …I do believe that, under certain circumstances, flicker such as that associated with windmills is related to epileptic seizures, but so what? I’m an asthmatic but nobody every closed a coal-fired power plant because I can’t breathe… yet the link between air pollution and respiratory diseases (of many kinds) is very much stronger than the link between windmills and neurological conditions.

      As well, I grew up hearing polluters first deny acid in the rain or that PCB’s or Dioxins caused harm, etc, etc… only to have them proven to have caused much harm without anybody stopping to say maybe we should curb the use of fossil fuels.

      It’s slightly depressing that courts and others are so pro-active with regard to harm from windmills where before they were so far behind the curve as to bear shame.

    • about the issue Peter Porcupine mentioned. The complaint in that case was actual noise caused by the windmills, not flickers. They said it sounded like sneakers in a washing machine. They did not take down all the windmills either.

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