Several Mass. Communities Eye Wind Power
Sep 05 - Associated Press/AP Online
HULL, Mass. - Wind power projects are in various stages around the state, from the Atlantic coast in the east to the wooded slopes of the Berkshire Mountains in the west, gigantic towers whose hurtling blades are designed to create clean energy.
The proposal has become a major point of conflict on Cape Cod with opponents
saying it would wreck a beautiful seascape, be harmful to bird life and
undermine an important ecosystem.
The wind turbines - each hundreds of feet high and located about five miles
offshore - could generate 420 megawatts of energy at peak times. Supporters say
it would supply nearly three-quarters of the electricity used on the cape and
islands, without producing greenhouse gasses.
Other projects are also in the works around the state, including the 10
turbines planned on Brodie Mountain in the western Massachusetts towns of New
Ashford and Hancock and a proposal to erect 20 turbines on mountains in the
western Massachusetts towns of Florida and Monroe.
In addition, more than 40 of the state's cities and towns have expressed an
interest in wind power. And the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, a
quasi-public agency that promotes renewable energy, is actively working with 23
of them, including Orleans, Lynn, Kingston, Falmouth, Lenox, Dartmouth, said
Warren Leon, director of the agency's clean energy program.
"I think most towns would like to do right for the environment. Most
towns know the serious problems that are caused by our current dependence on
fossil fuels," Leon said. "And on top of that, there's the potential
for helping the town's bottom line."
The agency, which commissioned a study of wind speeds in places around the
state, found that the most conducive areas are in the Berkshires, some central
areas of the state, and, of course, the coast.
Over the past five years, wind power capacity in the United States has
tripled nationally. As technology has improved, the price of generating power by
wind has declined.
The country gets three-tenths of 1 percent of its electricity from wind. The
American Wind Energy Association, a trade group, predicts no more than 6 percent
by 2020, a far cry from the 50 percent of electricity currently produced by
burning coal.
Wherever they go, wind power proposals have to overcome the qualms of
residents over the turbines' appearance, the sound they make, their effect on
the environment, and the possible effect on their property values.
In Hull, where the rotor hub is 164 feet off the ground and the rotors
themselves reach another 77 feet into the sky, the gigantic steel tower, which
stands next to the high school and its football field, was spinning busily on a
recent bright summer day with an eerie, but not unpleasant, supersonic whistle.
At a nearby clam shack, an older woman said she wouldn't mind having one in
her backyard, while two young girls joked that their father, a wind power
believer, made them periodically "worship" the turbine.
The town's municipal light board is moving forward with plans for a second
turbine at the town landfill and is now interested in building a wind farm
offshore, said John MacLeod, operations manager for Hull Municipal Light.
"We think it's a good thing and people in town seem to want to continue
pursuing it," he said.
Whitcomb, however, said it wasn't easy to live with the huge machine.
Even more than a 1,000 feet away, Whitcomb said, she can hear it. The
aircraft warning lights on top sometimes bother her at night and, at certain
times of the year, the sun sets right behind the rotor, creating a colossal
strobe effect.
"It's just one more time you want to look at the windmill and shoot
it," she said. "Would you want to move into Windmill City?" For far more extensive news on the energy/power
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