HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP) -- Two Maryland environmental leaders who favor wind power development have demanded the ouster of a Sierra Club official who opposes wind turbines in the western Maryland mountains.
The Sierra Club's Maryland chapter said Tuesday it saw no reason D. Daniel Boone should step down as the state conservation chairman.
The dispute reflects the paradox of a technology that promises cleaner electricity production but which may pose a significant threat to migrating birds and bats in the Appalachian Mountains.
It also reveals a split among environmentalists since the San Francisco-based Sierra Club adopted a position favoring extensive study of wind power projects. As recently as May 2002, before scientists documented surprisingly high bat mortality at a West Virginia wind farm, a Maryland chapter official said a comparatively low number of bird deaths were an acceptable trade-off for the benefits of wind power.
On Monday, Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, and Gary Skulnik, executive director of the Clean Energy Partnership, asked the Sierra Club's national leadership to remove Boone.
In their letter to Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope, they portrayed Boone as an ''extremist'' who is suppressing scientific data on avian migration patterns at the site of a proposed 67-turbine wind farm atop Backbone Mountain, a north-south ridge running through Garrett County. The numbers are the results of a study that the developer and project opponents, led by Boone, agreed in early 2003 to keep sealed until after the turbines are running. Developer Clipper Windpower Inc., of Carpenteria, Calif., has since said it wants the study released.
''Dan Boone is committing a huge disservice to this state and to environmental advocates everywhere who know that clean wind power and birds can coexist,'' Tidwell said.
Boone, a conservation biologist from Bowie, said Tuesday that it was ''highly inappropriate'' for Tidwell and Skulnik to link his personal involvement in the Clipper project to his Sierra Club activities.
''It's a sad day when another conservation group sort of stridently attacks, personally attacks, leaders of another conservation organization,'' he said.
Michael Martin, a spokesman for the Sierra Club's Maryland chapter, said Boone had done nothing wrong. ''Unless Dan violated Sierra Club policy, the national wouldn't be getting that involved,'' Martin said.
The Sierra Club contends that each wind-power project application should include a three-year avian migration study, as recommended by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Concerns about avian mortality were heightened by a finding that an estimated 200 birds and more than 2,000 bats were killed in 2003 by the 44-turbine Mountaineer Wind Energy Center near Thomas, W.Va.
Tidwell and Skulnik, a former national Sierra Club lobbyist, lobbied for a renewable energy bill passed by the 2004 General Assembly and signed into law by Gov. Robert Ehrlich requiring utility providers in Maryland to use more energy from sources such as wind turbines and solar panels. The minimum percentage would ramp up slowly to 7.5 percent by 2017.
The Clipper project is one of two proposed western Maryland wind farms approved by the state Public Service Commission. The other is a 25-turbine project atop Savage Mountain in neighboring Allegany County planned by U.S. Wind Force of Baden, Pa.
Another company, Synergics Wind Energy LLC, is seeking PSC approval for a 24-turbine project on Backbone Mountain. And U.S. Wind Force plans to apply by the end of 2005 for permission to build 24 to 32 turbines atop Dan's Mountain in Allegany County, the Cumberland Times-News reported Tuesday.
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