[Sustain] SF Chron Front Page Attacks Wind Power

[Michael Boyd]

Hi Eric,
   
  If you notice Californians for Renewable Energy is mentioned as one of the Plaintiffs in the law suit filed to stop the County of Alameda from allowing these wind turbines to continue slaughtering large raptors in the Altamont Pass. I'll forward our expert's report (Dr. Smallwood) to you that includes pictures. (please post this if you can) The fear is that now that the turbines have been shut down for two months for the winter migratory session that if they turn those turbines on in the middle of the winter that large numbers of raptors will now be slaughtered. Any help you can give to stop this from happening will be highly appreciated.
   
  Mike Boyd-CARE

Eric Brooks <brookse32 at aim.com> wrote:
  

Hey all,

This was yesterday's top front page story from the SF Chronicle...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/01/02/MNITTM9FA.DTL&type=printable

THE DEADLY TOLL OF WIND POWER
Despite yearlong effort to curb bird deaths by turbines on the Altamont 
Pass, many still have perished

Charles Burress, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Wind turbines rise above the fog on the hills of the Alta... A golden 
eagle was found dead near one of the Altamont Pa... Members of Alameda 
County's avian-mortality monitoring te... Rick Koebbe, president of 
PowerWorks Inc., with some of t... More...

The long hot summers of the San Joaquin Valley suck great tsunamis of 
cool coastal air through the Altamont Pass, producing winds so powerful 
that a person can lean nearly 45 degrees without falling down.

Such awesome force gave birth in the early 1980s to the world's largest 
collection of wind turbines, pioneers in what is now America's 
fastest-growing form of renewable energy and an increasingly important 
weapon in the battle against global warming.

But the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area is also a symbol of the wind 
industry's biggest stain - the killings of thousands of birds, including 
majestic golden eagles, by turbines. The result has been a wrenching 
civil war among those who are otherwise united in the struggle to save 
the planet and its creatures.

It's been nearly a year since a controversial legal settlement was 
forged among wildlife groups, wind companies and Alameda County 
regulators. That agreement, opposed by some parties to the dispute, 
promised to reduce deaths of golden eagles and three other raptor 
species by 50 percent in three years and called for the shutdown or 
relocation of the 300 or so most lethal of the approximately 5,000 
windmills at Altamont.

But five scientists appointed by the county say the settlement and 
accompanying efforts to reduce bird deaths are not on track to meet the 
50 percent goal, and they recently surveyed the Altamont to determine 
which additional turbines should be removed or relocated to spots less 
likely to kill birds.

Known officially as the Scientific Review Committee, the panel agreed 
Dec. 21 that more turbines need to be removed or relocated. It issued a 
new list of 309 targeted turbines, plus 102 more if the wind companies 
refuse to continue a current, temporary shutdown of all their windmills 
into February. The wind operators had previously agreed to a two-month 
shutdown, for November and December.

The newly named lethal turbines are in addition to the dozens already 
shut down under the settlement's plan to gradually remove the most 
deadly windmills.

FPL Energy, the company with the most turbines in the Altamont, has not 
seen the specifics of the new recommendations from the scientists and 
cannot comment, company spokesman Steven Stengel said last week.

The scientists' findings are advisory for a continuing "meet and confer 
process" among all the parties, who are under instructions from Alameda 
County officials - who exercise regulatory authority over the wind farms 
- to negotiate mutually acceptable solutions.

"We are deeply distressed about the continuing bird deaths and about the 
companies not being on track for the 50 percent reduction," said 
Elizabeth Murdock, executive director of the Golden Gate Audubon 
Society, a chief plaintiff in the lawsuit that has reshaped the battle 
over the birds.

But Stengel said, "It is too early in the process to accurately judge 
whether we are on track." The scientific review is meant to find ways of 
protecting the birds without putting the companies out of business, he said.

No one knows for sure how many birds are killed by the Altamont turbines 
- a 2004 California Energy Commission report estimated the golden eagle 
toll to be between 75 and 116 a year, while total bird kills were put in 
the 1,766 to 4,721 range. The Audubon Society lawsuit targets four 
raptor species - golden eagle, red-tailed hawk, American kestrel and 
burrowing owl - which suffered 456 to 1,129 fatalities per year, the 
study estimated.

Subsequent data indicate that bird deaths have not decreased since the 
settlement was reached last January and that efforts to achieve a 50 
percent reduction in three years are far behind, said Shawn Smallwood, 
an independent consultant in avian ecology who co-authored the 2004 
California Energy Commission study and is one of the five 
county-appointed scientists.

James Walker, president-elect of the industry-backed American Wind 
Energy Association, said the wind companies also want to save birds and 
are helping to fund the study of the problem. He also said wind power 
helps save bird lives by combatting global warming, which the National 
Audubon Society acknowledges as a threat to many bird species.

Rick Koebbe, head of Altamont Winds Inc., another of the half-dozen 
firms that own turbines in the Altamont, said the impact on birds has to 
be weighed against the human deaths and diseases that are reduced by 
using wind power instead of pollution-producing fossil fuels.

Numerous surveys and studies of dead birds have taken place in the 
Altamont going back to at least 1992, but the analysis, according to a 
2005 Government Accountability Office review of the studies, "has been 
complicated by confounding variables."

The problem is not simply birds running into spinning blades. Many dead 
birds have been found around turbines that were turned off. Some have 
been electrocuted by live wires near operating turbines, while others 
apparently were killed by predators.

Despite the perplexing data, many experts agree that a chief cause of 
bird deaths is the sheer number of windmills at Altamont, which features 
many old, small turbines in the 100-kilowatt range. More modern wind 
farms employ taller, more powerful machines able to generate 1 to 3 
megawatts.

Replacing the many old turbines with fewer, more powerful ones - a 
process termed "repowering" - is official county policy and would be "a 
big part of the solution," Murdock said. The idea is that bigger 
turbines would not only dramatically reduce the spinning blades to about 
one-tenth of their current number but also turn more slowly and be 
higher off the ground, presumably moving them farther away from raptors 
that dive for mice and other prey.

"Repowering is supposedly the silver bullet, if there is one," said 
Chris Gray, chief of staff for Alameda County Board of Supervisors 
President Scott Haggerty, whose district includes Altamont.

But full repowering would cost about $1 billion - money that the wind 
companies may not be able to afford, Walker said.

Finding the right balance for wind and birds is the central focus of the 
settlement agreement, which brought a legal truce to a 3-year-old 
lawsuit by five chapters of the Audubon Society and Californians for 
Renewable Energy.

The plaintiffs had sued Alameda County, contending that the renewed 
wind-power permits approved by the county in 2005 violated the 
California Environmental Quality Act and didn't do enough to protect the 
birds. About 78 percent of the Altamont turbines are in Alameda County, 
with the remainder in Contra Costa County, which is not part of the 
lawsuit or settlement.

Implementing the agreement and its core mandate of figuring out which 
turbines are the most dangerous has meant spending a lot of hours among 
the windmills for the scientists.

"This is one of the places that had the highest mortality rates," said 
Rutgers University biologist Joanna Burger, pointing to a ridge of 
turbines as she and the four other scientists huddled against the chilly 
wind on their recent four-day tour.

It's a formidable task among the thousands of windmills that stand in 
irregular rows like a scattered army of propeller-headed sentinels on 
the rolling hills and ridges of Altamont. The site is spread over 50 
square miles, an expanse larger than the city of San Francisco.

An invaluable help in their search was Brian Karas, part of the 
bird-death monitoring group, which consists of six full-time workers who 
spend their days dodging rattlesnakes and cow pies to search for and 
count dead birds.

Holding a map flecked with different-colored Post-it notes, Karas 
rattled off mortality data. "Kestrel," he said pointing to one turbine 
where a dead kestrel was found. "Nothing, nothing," he said of the next 
two turbines, where no dead birds have been found. "Two red-tail," he 
said of the fourth windmill.

Although the settlement is supported by the county, most of the wind 
companies and the Audubon societies, it also faces opposition. Koebbe's 
company refused to join the pact, in large part because it didn't want 
to pay legal fees of the plaintiffs, he said.

Also opposing the settlement is the Center for Biological Diversity, 
which filed a separate suit directly against the windmill companies, 
saying the firms were illegally killing wildlife protected by state and 
federal law. An Alameda County Superior Court judge rejected the suit, 
ruling that migratory birds are not "public trust property." The 
decision has been appealed; no court date has been set.

Alameda County Supervisor Gail Steele voted against the pact because she 
wanted a more accelerated reduction in bird deaths. "I understand this 
is an economic hardship to the wind farms, but how do you know how much 
of a hardship?" she said. "Nobody ever opens their books."

Nevertheless, Steele said, both the wind industry and the birds need to 
be protected.

"All environmentalists should support both things," she said.
Online resources
2004 California Energy Commission report on Altamont bird deaths:

links.sfgate.com/ZBVR
2005 U.S. Government Accountability Office report on wind power's 
impacts on wildlife:

links.sfgate.com/ZBXU

In Bay Area: A National Park Service contest enlists public to help 
protect endangered species. B1

Get involved

To address the issue of wind power and bird deaths at Altamont, contact:

-- The Alameda County Planning Department, which is coordinating a legal 
settlement and scientific review: (510) 670-5400.

-- The Alameda County Board of Supervisors, which will eventually 
revisit the Altamont issues: (510) 272-6984; www.acgov.org/board.

-- The Golden Gate Audubon Society: (510) 843-2222; 
www.goldengateaudubon.org.

-- FPL Energy, the largest wind operator in the Altamont: www.fplenergy.com.

-- The American Wind Energy Association: (202) 383-2500; www.awea.org.

-- Center for Biological Diversity: (415) 436-.9682; 
www.biologicaldiversity.org.

E-mail Charles Burress at cburress at sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/02/MNITTM9FA.DTL

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

-- 
"I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate 
themselves." – Che Guevara



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