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Dear Editor;
In 2002 the Wisconsin legislature passed a law that allows foreign or out-of-state industrial wind turbine (WT) or solar installers to sign up landowners in our state for a project and then get the Wisconsin Public Service Commission (PSC) to essentially rubber stamp their project without consideration for economic need or environmental, health, and safety concerns. We the people, residents of Wisconsin, have no say or control over whatever these industrial wind turbine and solar installers want to do to our homes and farms and quality of life. It also appears that landowners who sign wind turbine contracts are being misled and or ill-informed about what they are signing up for. The PSC 128 wind turbine document that dictates how turbines are to be installed is outdated, having been designed in 2014 for turbines that are 1/3 the size of the 650-foot-high WT that would be installed in the Uplands driftless area project.
Wisconsin is NOT in the wind corridor with less than 1% of our state is rated as fair for offshore wind turbines while the rest of the state is rated as poor. Wisconsin is NOT in the sun belt. Areas in the south and west USA have 2 to 3 times the solar radiation that Wisconsin has. We have more cloud and snow cover as well.
So why would a company want to build industrial wind and solar installations in Wisconsin? There are two reasons. First as discussed earlier the laws in Wisconsin were written by industrial solar and wind installers for the legislators giving all the rights to the installers and no rights or control by the citizens and landowners over their own land. The second is that subsidies from the federal government (actually our tax dollars) pay for all of the installer's expenses. After construction the wind and solar installers sell their project to utilities for a huge profit. Warren Buffett who has put up hundreds of turbines said he wouldn't put up any wind turbines unless he got a subsidy. He said, "without the subsidy it wouldn't pay". We people pay for the subsidy and then we pay higher electric rates to help the utility pay for their WT or solar purchase. This has moved beyond the realm of greed into corruption!
After decades of experience with industrial wind and solar it is starting to appear that they decrease little if any CO2 levels. There is evidence that wind and solar may actually increase global warming! Green wind and solar are intermittent and unreliable energy sources that must be backed up by reliable sources of generation when they are not producing electricity. Right now, most of that backup is fossil fuel coal and natural gas. Unless we go nuclear the CO2 free by 2050 is a fool's dream. Also, there are not enough rare earth metals (REM) for all the wind, solar, battery storage and electric cars in the green new deal. Mining and refining REM is incredibly toxic and destructive to our earth.
A large and rapidly growing number of people in Grant, Lafayette and Iowa counties are concerned about these devastating wind and solar projects. Take a drive around the tragedy occurring now in the Montfort area Badger Hollow industrial solar fields. We do not appreciate the way they are being sneaked onto the land around our homes and farms where we try to make a living and enjoy life. These industrial projects are disrupting our lives and the social fabric our communities. We would like to request an informational meeting with our legislators to express our concerns and have the laws changed before there are any more industrial wind turbines or solar fields are installed. We would like to see an IMMEDIATE MORATORIUM on these industrial wind and solar installations until we can resolve these issues.
George Schwarzmann
Platteville WI