Windmills and Wildflowers: Debate Over Gorman Hills

The column by Barnbaum was quite misleading--not surprising since he did not bother to notice that the windmills will essentially be out of sight, behind the hills he mentioned. Furthermore, the windmills are actually in an area with major existing microwave relay towers, electric and gas transmission structures, and also happen to be adjacent to a cement plant which burns toxic materials and operates open-pit mining activities covering some 1,000 acres of hillsides--hardly an appropriate area for any future condor release.

The Interstate 5 freeway, with over 10,000 vehicles per day, borders the full length of the hills which have the springtime wildflower displays, and, of course, it is the exhaust gases of these vehicles which are the real threat to this vegetation.

However, the key point that Barnbaum failed to make is that windmills and other forms of renewable energy are a vital part of the solution to halting the environmental degradation now occurring due to atmospheric pollution, because their operation abates substantial fossil-fuel combustion needed to generate electricity.

The planned wind farm will supply the equivalent electricity used by 35,000 to 40,000 homes, and abates a total of 1.2 million pounds of nitrous oxides, sulfur oxides, carbon monoxide, and particulates per year, providing a $3.33 million annual clean-air benefit to the basin. Also, the wind farm’s electric generation abates an amount of carbon dioxide emission (a greenhouse gas) equivalent to that which would need 4.5 million mature trees annually for comparable absorption.

By far the greatest threat to the environment--and humanity--is atmospheric pollution, now causing global warming and disruption of weather patterns.

Atmospheric pollution is one of our most critical problems, so to treat the clean air benefit of wind power generation as a mere “nicety” to be outweighed by the visual aspects of windmills (although surveys indicate that people view windmills favorably), reflects a sense of priorities somewhat akin to being concerned about the arrangement of the furniture in the ship’s ballroom as the Titanic sinks.

JAMES G.P. DEHLSEN

Board Chairman and CEO

Zond Systems, Tehachapi