Blowing Smoke

I have never been a proponent of the wind turbines, and, in fact, I used to scrape out my soap box in front of anyone who would listen to my thoughts on such. Then I came to see it as just another government program that would probably come to pass, and cooled my jets on the subject. Also, I have worked for some people who owned a few and I am a fairly firm believer that thou should not bite the hand that feeds thee.

In 2002, when the wind thing was just getting started, I started working for a local paper. I shadowed another reporter to an interview with the administrators of a new wind project in Fluvanna, and the company men were friendly and open.

Later in the year, we asked for another interview and we were turned down. So, I snuck in on a tour with the county commissioners, on the premise that I would prevent them from forming a quorum. I got busted taking photos, and after being asked to desist, promptly took more, some with the commissioners themselves standing inside the large turbine supports. It was quite a coup, although none of the photos were published, after the wind farm PR agent claimed that company patenting secrets would be divulged by printing the pictures publicly.

I guess there is no point to that anecdote. It was just a lot of fun riding around with the naughty commissioners.

Years after working for the newspaper, I worked a short stint for that same wind farm company and I remember seeing an instructional packet on how to pitch windmill sales. Directions for taking publicity photos were to use a backdrop of green grass with a blue sky or lovely sunset. Not the mish-mash of thousands of unattractive and every-which-a-way blades that look like they've been thrown down in a game of pick-up-sticks. Drive down SH 153 near Nolan and you'll see what I mean.

Every new field constructed claims high output of megawatts, able to provide energy to several thousand or a million homes. You have to wonder where the electricity has been going, since transmission lines are just now being erected, cluttering the countryside even more.

The night horizon has been unappealingly altered. No more is the mysterious Texas range. It is now a sea of red blinking lights, urbanized and tainted.

I look forward to the day when the wind farm tax break program runs the course. Windmills have a place in our energy program, but as a true energy source, not as a government program. Transforming the bulky turbines, diminishing the structures to smaller, more efficient models would be a relief to the panorama.

I already know that I am out of style on this subject. While I see this as the ruination of the aesthetic West Texas prairie, it won't be an important topic until someone much more savvier and influential than I am takes notice. Plus, millions and billions of dollars are being made from the projects, while I am providing no financial incentives at all.

By the way, if you think I'm a goody-two shoes, granola-crunching tree-hugger (I'm crazy with the hyphens today!), we had an "Oil Field Trash and Damn Proud of It" bumper sticker on our car when I was growing up, and I will stick to those guns.

As usual, I am sure my opinion is just a matter of perspective. Perhaps I would be lighting sparklers and blowing a horn if I had a few windmills myself.