Workers atop West Virginia mountain ridges are putting together 389-foot windmills with huge blades that will turn Appalachian breezes into energy. Retiree David Cowan is fighting to stop them.
Because of the bats.
Cowan, 72, a longtime caver who grew to love bats as he slithered through tunnels from Maine to Maui, is asking a federal judge in Maryland to halt construction of the Beech Ridge wind farm in Greenbrier County, W.Va. The lawsuit pits Chicago-based Invenergy Wind LLC against environmentalists who say the cost to nature is too great.
The rare green vs. green case went to trial this week in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt.
It is the first court challenge to wind power under the Endangered Species Act, lawyers on both sides say. With President Barack Obama's goal of doubling renewable energy production by 2012, wind and solar farms are rapidly expanding. As they do, battles are being waged to reach a balance between the benefits of clean energy and the impact on birds, bats and even the water supply.
At the heart of the Beech Ridge case is the Indiana bat, a brownish-gray creature that weighs about as much as three pennies and, wings outstretched, measures about 8 inches. A 2005 estimate concluded there were about 457,000 of them, half as many as when they were first listed as endangered in 1967.
Indiana bats hibernate in limestone caves within several miles of the wind farm, which would provide energy to tens of thousands of households. The question before the judge: Would the endangered bats fly in the path of the 122 turbines that will be built along a 23-mile stretch of mountaintop?
Eric R. Glitzenstein, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in his opening statement that both sides agree the windmills will kill more than 130,000 bats of all types over the next 20 years.
"The question comes down to whether there is some reason to think Indiana bats will escape that fate," Glitzenstein said. "
Invenergy argues that there is no sign that Indiana bats come to the ridge. When a consultant put up nets at or near the site in the summer of 2005 and 2006 to search for bats, no Indiana bats were captured. Some bat experts say the females prefer lower areas when they have their young, and the ridge is simply too high. The company also stresses that there is not a single confirmed killing of an Indiana bat at any wind farm nationwide.
To Cowan, the risk is simply too great. "I think if the turbines kill one Indiana bat that ought to end it," he said. "That ought to shut it down."
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