Guest Blogger: Journalist Joseph D'Agnese on the Battle for Wind

Joseph D'Agnese, who writes about all things scientific for such publications as Discover, Seed, and Wired, authored the cover story of OnEarth's Summer 2007 issue, a report on Upstate New York's burgeoning, homegrown wind-power industry. Here he follows up on some recent developments relating to that story.

Wind is in the air -- and in the news. The Associated Press and the New York Times recently published three articles on the ups and downs of wind power. All three reference small towns in New York state that have been transformed, for better or for worse, by the erection of wind turbines.

Nicholas Confessore's Times article highlighted regrettable instances where the sizable payments wind companies offer residents in economically challenged hamlets may have sparked municipal corruption. New York State's attorney general is currently investigating allegations in and around the small town of Burke, New York, just north of the Adirondack Mountains and seven miles south of the Canadian border.

The Associated Press's Helen O'Neill revisits the tug-of-war between residents of Tug Hill, New York, who are pro- or anti-wind. (The very same wind farm was the subject of my feature for OnEarth in Summer 2007, Falling in Love with Wind. Neither Maple Ridge, its owners, nor any of their other wind developments in New York have been implicated in the attorney general's investigation.)

And in by far the most interesting of these three pieces the Times' Matthew L. Wald correctly points out that the U.S. power grid is so antiquated that regional power lines are often too congested to bring wind power to the grid. When this happens, wind farms such as the 95-turbine Maple Ridge in Tug Hill must power down or pay higher fees to bring their product to market.

Most Americans live on the coasts, but most wind is generated in the middle of the continent. To get wind power to where most of us live, the article says, the nation must construct a kind of wind power superhighway. Needless to say, the cost and hassle of such a system has scared off most potential builders.

The article coughed up a gem of a factoid: North and South Dakota alone can generate enough wind to power half the United States, but lacking that power-transmission superhighway, "half the country would have to move to the Dakotas in order to use the power."

Reached for comment, Bill Moore, the entrepreneur who brought big wind to Tug Hill, pointed out in an emailed statement that when wind farms are up and running, they still provide a valuable service: they displace air emissions from coal-burning power plants.

Since OnEarth last visited Tug Hill, Moore adds, the biggest issue to emerge is a higher-than-expected bat mortality. (See Molly Webster's post about some recent science.) "It's still a matter of puzzlement to bat biologists," says Moore. He adds: "Maple Ridge has now been through two years of the most intensive post-construction avian/bat mortality field study, and so there's a lot of data to discuss about the key environmental issue: to what extent are the direct air quality benefits of wind generation...sufficient to offset a wind farm's direct bird/bat mortality? How much direct mortality at the site does it take to overwhelm the system benefits?"