Somerset County wind farm project halted

[phantom power]

SOMERSET, Pa. (AP) - A Somerset County resort owner has halted plans to build seven wind turbines after three residents sued.

King's Mountain Resort Incorporated agreed not to build the turbines as long as it owns the property. The resort planned to use the turbines to power a sanitation station, golf course watering system and road lights and sell the remaining power to green-energy providers.

But residents sued, claiming the turbines would violate restrictive covenants contained in deeds to the properties, which prohibit using land for anything other than private homes.

They also claimed the turbines would be noisy and could lower the values of nearby homes.

Wind energy has become a divisive issue in the county, which already has a number of windmills. Some property owners say they are noisy and intrusive, while others maintain they provide a clean source of energy and economic development.

http://www.whptv.com/news/state/story.aspx?content_id=4FB15289-D466-48E7-99E2-83F5ACBF1E7F

[Norquist Nemesis]

1. The NIMBY syndrome

Can't say I'm familiar with the area, but it sounds like this an affluent club community. :shrug:

[phantom power]

2. So far, all of the nimby-ism I've seen regarding wind power

has been from wealthy communities, and it's all about "property values".

I'm curious about these claims about "noise". A wind-turbine strikes me as a quiet machine, but I've never actually seen one up close.

[madrchsod]

3. had the same problem here in

lee county,illinois..but everything was worked out and there are 30+ windmills slowly turning in the northern illinois breeze. they are not noisy unless they are in the backyards of these houses..just a slow whooosh sound. oh well i guess some people have alot of money and very little foresite

[NNadir]

4. This is most interesting and most telling: A brief history of NIMBY.

One of the great setbacks in the history of nuclear energy development, as many people know, was the failure to get the Shoreham plant on Long Island. I will confess that when I was young (and stupid) I played a part in this outcome. Shoreham protests in the 1970's and early 1980's were a great place to score pot and meet cute airhead girls.

What many of us didn't know back then was the etiology of the opposition to nuclear energy back then. Initially LILCO, the local power company planned three nuclear reactors on Long Island, Shoreham, Jamesport and - here's the killer - Lloyd's Neck. Lloyd's Neck is the most golden of Long Island's gold costs; the Vanderbilt's lived near by and the those who went to Sand's Point, of "Great Gatsby" fame were slumming it. When the locals learned that a powerplant, even one that was really cool (and nuclear energy was thought "cool" in the sixties, was being planned, an instanteous anti-nuclear organization was funded; politicians were pidgeonholed and anti-nuclear articles began appearing, series after series, after series, in Newday right along side the hourly "what happened at Hiroshima" reminder.

It didn't help that the engineers at Lilco where mightly confused about whether they were building a coal plant or a nuclear plant and that some very corrupt union rules were making dogging the construction or that the President of Lilco was a confrontational ass: Untimately, set up by the very wealthy, Lloyd's Neck was cancelled, while Shoreham was required to install increasingly absurd and increasingly unnecessary safety patches to address problems that were impossible to imagine actually happening.

Nevertheless, we stopped the plant, setting our country on a path for an energy abyss from which we man never recover.

Now Long Island is fueled with coal, fuel oil, and natural gas, and sometimes with diesel. I always like it when the wind shifts and the coal ash blows across Huntington Bay where it settles on the BMW's on the cars in downtown Huntington, where the sulfuric acid eats through the paint.

Now we have the rich folks complaining about windfarms. If you want a power plant to run their fountains, their plasma TV's, their thousant watt stereos, their electrically heated pools, their tanning machines, electric can openers, vibrating chairs...we can't they generate that power in Philadelphia.

The problem of NIMBY will be the death of our future. I'm sorry to break it to the average American joe, but energy really does come from somewhere.