Nightly News broadcast regarding Lowville

Last night (Saturday, 8/5), the final report on the Nightly News about the Lowville wind farm was of great interest to me. I’m pleased to see that this important issue is getting some long overdue national broadcast media attention. I understand the time constraints inherent in a Nightly News segment and hope that some of the issues you were not able to cover in this piece will be vetted in subsequent broadcasts on your show or shows like Dateline.

Of particular importance to taxpayers, utility customers, and environmentalists are issues such as:
-the huge publicly funded incentives (there are many) that make wind turbines extremely lucrative,
-the origin of many of these incentives (secret ‘consultations’ between Ken Lay and Dick Cheney),
-the position of energy companies that the current wind technology does not make economic sense,
-the fact that investment bankers, not energy companies, are building ‘wind parks,’ (the Lowville installation portrayed in the piece is half owned by Goldman Sachs, with JP Morgan planning to construct thousands of turbines in New York and Michigan),
-the unreliability of wind power, the destabilizing effects this has on the grid, and GE’s estimate that the net avoided generation from traditional sources is 10 per cent of rated turbine capacity,
-the counter-cyclical nature of wind generation of electricity (highest during the middle of the night when demand is lowest, and smallest at dawn and dusk when demand peaks),
-the requirement that the grid buy wind power whenever it is produced even if it is not needed,
-the pattern of the manufacturers to solve problems by building ever-bigger turbines,
-the fact that the current generation of turbines is almost four hundred feet tall with a footprint bigger than the largest pyramid (Cheops),
-that there are problems with everything from bird and bat deaths, to changes in the microclimate under the turbines, to stray voltage, to unmetered power being used by the operators to run the generators as motors to spin the turbines fast enough to then produce power to sell back to the grid,
-to the developers’ myriad of lies and broken promises for everything from large numbers of jobs and lower electric rates, to ruined roads and lower property values and ‘gag’ clauses in leases and ‘neighbor agreements’ that prevent open and truthful discussion of the problems caused by turbines,
-to the conflicts of interest, questionable business dealings, and outright illegalities of local officials in favor of development,
-to the rush by developers to build tens of thousands of turbines in populated areas of the Northeast before opposition can organize and educate the general population to the magnitude of this scandal.

I would be happy to provide documentation to back any of these statements. I would also be happy to put you in touch with experts in a variety of fields who can elaborate on these and other reasons industrial wind plants are a bad deal for host communities, our country, and the environment.
Best,

Wayne Miller
2852 State Route 11
North Bangor, NY
518-483-0816

P.S. The town of Lowville is not pronounced like ‘low’ as it was at the end of your report, but in a manner that rhymes with the ‘bow’ of a ship.