This is the first in a series of columns on wind power development in the Berkshires. Next week: Which Gov. Romney do we believe?
“He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind.â€
— Proverbs 11:29
Ten years ago, on the cover of Windpower Monthly, an international organ of the windpower community, appeared a full-color photograph of a bloody vulture cut in half by a windmill blade at a site in Tarifa, Spain. The journal editors explained the seriousness of their choice: “The decision to print this month’s cover ... will have a significant impact, both on the world of wind power and elsewhere ... There is a real problem with bird deaths at Tarifa. It cannot be kept quiet and it will not go away of its own accord ... There are parallels between the problems of raptors in the Altamont Pass [a California windpower site] and the Tarifa controversy.â€
The Altamont Pass windpower project, a 50-square-mile site in the Diablo Mountains between San Francisco and the agricultural Central Valley, was one of our country’s first, and it has been producing clean, renewable electricity for 20 years. But also, for 20 years, its huge fiberglass blades on more than 4,000 windmills, have been chopping up tens of thousands of birds, including migratory geese and ducks, raptors like red-tail hawks and owls and the world’s highest density of nesting golden eagles. The windmills pass along an international migratory bird route under government regulation, which puts the windpower companies at risk of federal prosecution.
But despite over 20 years of studying this problem, the companies, environmental groups and the government have made very little progress in finding a remedy, and the size of the body count at Altamont remains at about 5,000 birds a year. One ecologist put it succinctly: “They didn’t realize it at the time, but it was just a really bad place to build a wind farm.†(USA Today, 1/2005)
This colossal lack of planning and foresight, with such catastrophic results, is an example we can’t ignore here in the Berkshires, because very soon our own house is going to be troubled on the question of windpower sites: After opposing a windmill project in Nantucket Sound following pressure from local groups there, Gov. Mitt Romney, in early December, gave his support to windmill projects in Franklin and Berkshire counties — the Hoosac Wind Project — in which European-based enXco Company plans to build 20 windmills in Florida and Monroe, each 340 feet tall, on two of our most visible mountain tops.
A second company, Berkshire Wind Power LLC, is poised to build 10 turbines in Hancock. Additional windpower sites are being planned by the Romney administration for Brodie Mountain and are being proposed for Berlin and Lenox mountains and more on the Hoosac range. Romney’s secretary of environmental affairs has approved every inland windpower project without asking for a complete review by environmental experts and is not considering setting up a statewide planning process for choosing the sites. (www.GreenBerkshires.org).
Killing birds is not the only problem to be resolved in siting windpower projects. Other major dilemmas are that windpower hasn’t yet proven to be viable economically for a region; it is intermittent and not readily storable, and it is land intensive and destructive to the environment during and after it is built.
But using mountain tops and the sky for gathering the wind is a question that has blood on it: Our mountain ranges are primary migratory routes for golden eagles, hawks, bald eagles — and generations of bats. Our communities are under pressure from the Romney administration and international power companies to accept these projects, but we need to talk first. Remember Altamont.
Tela Zasloff, a writer living in Williamstown, frequently writes on environmental issues for The Advocate. Reader response is welcome via e-mail, news@advocateweekly.com, fax, 664-7900, or mail, the Advocate, 100 Main St., North Adams MA 01247.
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Air Quality Alert Issued for Berkshire County
Staff reports
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The state's on an air quality alert through midnight Thursday because of the smoke from wildfires in Canada.
Berkshire residents woke up to smoky, hazy skies and a red glowing sun on Wednesday morning, but with less oppressive heat.
The Department of Environmental Protection issued an air quality alert for elevated levels of fine particles (PM2.5). This refers to microscopic airborne particles measuring 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter — about 30 times smaller than a human hair. These particles come in many sizes and shapes and can be made up of hundreds of different chemicals.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says the size of these particles can cause serious health problems because they can get deep into your lungs and even into bloodstreams. Particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter pose the greatest risk to health.
The air quality statewide is expected to be unhealthy for sensitive groups. These include people with heart or lung disease such as asthma, older adults, children, teenagers, and people who are active outdoors. People with either lung disease or heart disease are at greater risk from exposure to air pollution.
MassDEP advises people in sensitive groups to reduce prolonged or heavy outdoor exertion, take more breaks, do less intense activities, follow asthma action plans, and keep quick relief medicine handy. Watch for symptoms such as coughing or shortness of breath.
EPA's air quality index rates levels from "good" at 0-50 and "very unhealthy" from 201 to 300. Residents of Williamstown can track the AQI through PurpleAir, which displays results from monitors in five sections of town.
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