Posted on 05/11/2006 1:22:17 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
AUSTIN, Texas - The nation's largest offshore wind farm will be built off the Padre Island seashore, a critical migratory bird flyway, Texas officials announced Thursday.
Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson lauded what he said would be an 40,000-acre span of turbines about 400 feet tall able to generate energy to power 125,000 homes.
"The wind rush is on," Patterson said. "We want to be number one. We want to attract the businesses that build the turbines, that build the blades. ... We want to be the leader in the United States, if not the world."
Superior Renewable Energy Inc., based in Houston, would build the farm and pay the estimated $1 billion to $2 billion construction costs.
But some environmentalists say the promise of clean energy may not be worth the deaths of countless birds that migrate through the area each year on their way to and from winter grounds in Mexico and Central America.
"You probably couldn't pick a worse location, unless you're trying to settle the issue as to how damaging they are to migratory birds," said Walter Kittelberger, chairman of the Lower Laguna Madre Foundation. Laguna Madre is the strip of water between the mainland and Padre Island.
The offshore wind farm is the second announced in less than a year for the Texas Coast, joining 50 wind turbines planned off Galveston.
It would have up to 500 turbines looming off Texas ranch land and spinning up to 500 megawatts of electricity.
The nation's largest currently operating wind farm is on the Stateline Wind Energy Center on the Oregon-Washington border, which produces about 300 megawatts of electricity. According to the American Wind Energy Association, the U.S. produces 9,149 megawatts of wind power, enough to power 2.3 million homes annually. President Bush has said wind energy could produce 20 percent of the nation's electricity.
Wind farm plans have also sparked disputes, including a bitter fight over a proposed 130-turbine wind farm off Cape Cod, Mass., where the residents fear the turbines will be unsightly.
In Texas, the state controls waters up to 10.3 miles off the coast and can make quick deals with developers, Patterson said. He said this project would be located off a remote, unpopulated part of Padre Island National Seashore.
"Those who are concerned about view sheds shouldn't have a problem," he said. "There's nobody there to look at it."
If the stupid birds can't NOT hit something that big, then they need to get outta the gene pool. :)
The hell? They're birds! They can fly! And I imagine that they are able to fly over or around the turbines! If the stupid ones fly through them and get diced, it's evolution in action!
I think we should stop providing electical power to environmental wackos. Let them live their philosophy.
Well, now, to be fair I think a lot of people would question a windfarm on the moon. :)
Why is someone that is concerned about migratory birds, a wacko?
To make this thread complete... I must.. i must...
Bring up the fact that all those migrant birds are crossing the border illegally.
Ted Kennedy and the other members of the Senate could wear those little beanies with the propellers on top....all that hot air might generate enough power to run a still.
Here's a story in New Scientist magazine that mentions a study in Denmark published last year:
Wind turbines a breeze for migrating birds
* 18 June 2005 * From New Scientist Print Edition.
MIGRATING birds seldom dice with death among the spinning blades of wind turbines. Instead, they give them a wide berth, according to a study of a Danish offshore wind farm.
To see whether the 13,000 offshore turbines planned for European waters would be a hazard to migrating birds, Mark Desholm and Johnny Kahlert of the National Environmental Research Institute in Rønde, Denmark, used radar to track flocks of geese and eider ducks around the Nysted wind farm in the Baltic Sea. The farm's 72 turbines are laid out in rows with their blades 480 metres apart.
Desholm and Kahlert found that the birds flew almost exclusively down the corridors between the turbines, with less than 1 per cent getting close enough to risk collision. The birds gave the turbines an even wider berth at night, sticking more closely to the middle of the corridors. Many also avoided the wind farm altogether. The researchers found that while 40 per cent of flocks in the survey area crossed the wind farm site before construction started, only 9 per cent ventured among the turbines once they were operating (Biology Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2005.0336).
That's the kind of view we have from 3 sides of our house and it doesn't bother us one bit. We even forget they are there until something is mentioned about them.
Not in Texas!
The stupid hippie says: "This windfarm will interfere with the moon's fragile ecosystem!"
That was my first thought.
Damn them! Maybe we should put turbines on the land border then ;-)
Humans kill animals to achive what humans want = Cruel, evil, selfish, vile, short-sighted, stupid Republicans.
The birds can fly over and or around the turbin blades. Did this guy ever see our servicemen on aircraft carrier pulling chocks from Navy fighters? And he thinks a bird might be dumb enough to fly into a turbine? (excessively rolling eyes).
"I bet the fishing will be great around these man-made "reefs".
"That was my first thought."
Dead birds make free chum...
So this is where Kennedy put it......
""a critical migratory bird flyway"
It's not about the birds; it's about hurting America."
Migratory birds, silver shad, lease turns, water-fowl preservation. Between 2000 and 2003 I heard these terms used to explain to the New Orleans Corps of Engineers why they didn't have money for levee improvements, among other projects. I saw them all but BEG for money and get shot down by environmentally sensitive congress-critters.
They never learn.
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