Wind Wise Tells it Like it Is

Thirty members of Wind Wise ~ Massachusetts carpooled to Beacon Hill from all over the state on Thursday 6/14/12 to let legislators know that two bills will wreak havoc on local control, affordable electricity, and human health.

The bills, expected to be released from committee in the last week of June, are highly controversial but to date have maintained a low profile. Wind Wise members, already alarmed at the number of people reporting adverse health effects from turbines in several locations, want their representatives to know that the details of the bills are far from transparent.

In her article Windwise lobbies against renewable energy bills, Ariel Wittenberg reported in South Coast Today that  one bill, “‘An act relative to competitively priced electricity in the commonwealth,'” worries members of Wind Wise that

“net metering will actually put pressure on local municipalities to build wind turbines to support the new demand. They also are opposed to the bill doubling the amount of renewable energy utilities must obtain through 10- or 20-year contracts.

“Our concern is that this bill will actually have an opposite impact than the Legislature expects,” said Eleanor Tillinghast, an environmentalist who organized the Windwise lobbying effort. “You have these long-term contracts that lock in high, above-market rates.”

The other bill Wind Wise ~ Massachusetts opposes, H.4112, gives a quasi state agency, the Energy Facilities Siting Board, the power to create regulations for siting industrial wind turbines without any input from towns where the wind power plants would be located.

For more on this, see coverage in Green Berkshires.

The forum organized by Kingston Wind Aware on Thursday June 7, received local press on the 15th from Wicked Local Kingston, including this video, in the piece by Kathryn Gallerani.

Christine Legere, writing in the Boston Globe, captured the health concerns voiced at last week’s Kingston forum in her article, Kingston residents press for wind turbine testing.