Wind Energy Is Good for Whatcom County

Dear Watchers

This letter provides comments and corrections on the perspective piece published last month by Bill Cox entitled: Proposed Galbraith Mountain Wind Energy System. The Cox article contains multiple distortions and errors.

Being concerned about a project you don’t understand that is within view of one’s investments is understandable. Intentionally spreading misinformation is not. Please direct anyone who has real concerns or questions about this project to come to the Cascade Community Wind Company office (314 E Holly Suite 202, Bellingham), call 360-306-5331, or check our website at ww.cascadecommunitywind.com to learn more about it.

We also recommend your readers look at the websites ‘Windustry.org’ and ‘DistributedWind.org’. Each of these sites provides information to make wise decisions about local wind power, what works, what doesn’t. While touting the benefits of local wind power, each also recognizes its limitations. Now turn your eyes to ‘Wind-Watch.org’ the site which Mr. Cox gathered his information from. There is nothing but negative information about wind on the site, and there are exaggerations mixed with lies, mixed with misrepresentations, all to provide negative information that seems reasonable on the surface to the uninitiated. There are even instructional videos about how to bring this misinformation to your local government.

Thank you for the chance to set the record straight on Cascade Community Wind’s proposal.

We all depend on safe and reliable electricity for dozens of uses every day. At the same time, fossil sources of energy burned for electricity are among the biggest source of pollution facing our state, our nation, and our world. Providing adequate energy for our growing population and for new uses while trying to reduce pollution is a complex problem.

Wind power isn’t the only solution, but it is part of the mix of renewable and efficiency solutions needed. Wind power can provide as much as 30 percent of a utility’s load before its variability starts to become an issue. Community wind, with its geographic diversity (the wind blows at different times at different places) and its connection to local distribution lines near loads often makes it a net benefit to the grid. In western Washington our wind comes primarily in the winter when we are using the most energy, a great fit. Our current mix with Puget Sound Energy includes about a third of our energy from coal and another third from natural gas. Wind power keeps natural gas plants from firing and water behind the dams can be dispatched later. A combination of wind and hydro can provide base load power replacing coal; regional coal plants were shut down the past two springs when both wind and hydro power were abundant.

Wind like solar is a distributed resource. In this country we have a pattern of developing concentrated energy production facilities, such as nuclear, big hydropower, and coal, that require massive capital outlay and large transmission infrastructure. So far wind energy production has been developed in Washington using a similar approach; an international firm develops a massive project all located in one small area. For each dollar received from typical Washington-generated wind power, less than ten cents stays in the state.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Minnesota, Iowa, Ontario, and much of Europe have a brisk business in community wind: smaller wind projects that still use commercial sized wind turbines, but in groups of one or two. These projects are owned by farmers, towns, cooperatives, and pools of local investors. For the two operating turbines that have been constructed by Cascade Community Wind more than 90 cents of every dollar received stays in Washington. Another community wind project in Washington is the Grays Harbor Community Action Agency project, which you can see from the beach. That six megawatt project funds their low income energy assistance program. Even closer is the Grouse Mountain wind turbine owned by the ski resort of the same name just north of Vancouver, Canada. These are examples of locally owned wind turbines benefiting the local community.

The town of Hull Massachusetts (pictured above) is a great example of community wind. In 2003 they installed this wind turbine outside of the football field of their high school. They were so pleased and proud of their newfound increase in self-sufficiency and sustainability that a few years later they installed this turbine in their capped land fill in 2006.

Each of these turbines was the largest available at the time and are both within hundreds of feet of the nearest residence. Go to www.Hullwind.org to see interviews with neighbors and get more information.

• Wind turbines can be great neighbors.

• Jobs are created in development and installation as well as maintenance.

• There has never been, anywhere in the world, a passerby injured by a wind turbine.

• There is great community pride in the areas that have community wind turbines.

As a community we can start solving one of the major global problems of our time.

Cascade Community Wind has donated a share of project revenue to local environmental charities, and provides turbine access to educational institutions.

It is also possible to site a wind turbine inappropriately and there are some justified complaints when large wind farms have gone in with only dollar signs to consider and the developers ignored the local community.

Wildlife is an important concern. While it is extremely rare for a wind project to have significant wildlife impacts there are unfortunate exceptions. For this project a respected biologist was commissioned to make sure this wouldn’t be one of those exceptions. Only after a review of the extensive available data was conducted and revealed a very low likelihood of impact did the project even go forward. As part of the permit process there will be a review with the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife to examine where the available data has a reasonable chance of being incomplete and follow up studies will be performed to fill any gaps. But in general, a wind turbine’s impact on birds is less than a large plate glass window or a house cat.

Wind turbines should not be sited directly above homes of people who didn’t approve their installation, or have the shadow from their blades flickering over their windows, or have the sound level in their yards be an un-ignorable presence. That is why responsible development of wind energy projects includes reasonable setbacks from non-participating residences and considers shadow and noise impacts in selecting the site for installation.

Let’s talk honestly about noise. Mr. Cox is purposely misleading by taking the sound of a wind turbine (if you put your ear up to it right up at the top of the tower where it is 106 decibels) to a jet taking off, from a distance of 305 Meters (that is more than three football fields away). Sound level calculations were made for the project as part of the permit application, which Mr. Cox has seen and so should know better. These calculations show that possible sound levels folks would experience at the base of the turbine is ~60 decibels (normal conversation volume) and at the nearest residence ~25 decibels (quiet recording studio volume), this is of course on a windy day when just the wind blowing past your ears is often louder than 60 decibels.

Mr. Cox also expressed concern that the project is being subsidized. The truth is that in the United States, every form of energy is subsidized - fossil fuels to a much greater degree than renewables. An entire Whatcom Watch article could (and should) be devoted solely to listing and describing the complete list of subsidies that fossil fuels receive in the U.S. and Washington. The main subsidy for wind is a 30 percent tax credit which is set to expire at the end of this year. It is unfortunate that our ‘free market’ society sets the playing field with the tax code and by absorbing external impacts and costs (military, environmental destruction, health impacts). If all subsidies for all energy sources were removed, wind would be a clear winner. We would much prefer a business environment where all products and services were simply priced with all costs included. Until that day, we have to play within the rules that we have. As it is Wind turbines add to the tax base reducing property taxes for everyone. In the Kittitas School district property taxes were cut in half when the wind farm went in and started paying their taxes. While it would not be as dramatic here (a smaller project adding to a larger tax base) it shows how when we decide to invest locally everyone benefits.

While we could go on point by point, there is one final thing to straighten out — Mr. Cox insists that this is not a local project. The Cascade Community Wind office is in downtown Bellingham. The owner, Terry Meyer, has lived in Whatcom and Skagit counties since 1999 and owns his home in Fairhaven. CCWC was started with his family’s savings, and the hope that a good living could be made following good values, not only of green power, but local self sufficiency, community empowerment, and prosperity through doing good. One of the first CCWC projects was intended to be Whatcom County until others like Mr. Cox initiated Whatcom County’s wind energy moratorium with misinformation (after two years the council is almost through debunking it all). This and other instances of intentional misinformation to key decision makers here and elsewhere have greatly slowed the growth of a local, value-centered small business.

Bellingham, like Hull, is a coastal community with a sense of independence and willingness to do the right thing. Hull has embraced turbines in town; we think our community can handle a turbine located next to communications towers on Galbraith Mountain, surrounded by clear cuts. While some will see this as a beautiful symbol, others will not like the look. A new structure on the horizon is an impact we take on locally rather than insisting that “somewhere else” take on far larger impacts of fossil fuel generated electricity. The real issue is a symbolic one, it is about how we see ourselves and about what we want to leave to our children and grandchildren. While wind turbines can be taken down in a month, many impacts of other sources of electricity generation will take decades to millennia to reverse. It is time we stopped paying others to pollute in order to give us the electrical amenity we have grown accustomed to. Instead let’s make clean energy and keep our energy dollars with our local small businesses, small investors, and consumers, while taking responsibility for the environmental impact of our power supply.

Terry Meyer

Cascade Community Wind

Alex Ramel

Sustainable Connections

Llyn Doremus

Sierra Club