[Sustain] SF Chron Front Page Attacks Wind Power
Eric Brooks
brookse32 at aim.com
Thu Jan 3 12:43:33 PST 2008
I should make clear that I support doing everything possible to
eliminate the bird deaths. I was just pointing out that the way the
issue was portrayed by the front page photos and headlines is a direct
attack on renewable energy.
peace
Eric
Michael Boyd wrote:
> 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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>
--
"I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves." -- Che Guevara
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