America’s Wind Farms Continuously Delayed by Department of Defense

A virtual moratorium on the construction of new wind power plants has been declared by the Department of Defense (DOD). Since military experts are still studying the issue of wind power, permits have been withheld on all new turbines “within radar line of sight” of any military radar.

A good chunk of the nation and almost all of the Midwest is within military radar’s line of sight, so this rule has become a de facto moratorium on new power projects. According to media reports, at least 15 wind farms proposals have been shut down. One outside of Bloomington, IL would have been the nation’s largest source of wind energy, generation enough electricity to power 120,000 homes in the Chicago area.

Wind power is what the United States needs in order to decrease our dependence on fossil fuels. With the construction of new wind turbines, which constantly provide cheap, clean power, the United States could produce enough electricity to halt the construction of hundreds of new coal fired power plants and prevent an increase in global warming emissions.

Congress asked for this nonsense to be over with already. Senator John Warner (R-VA) amended this year’s Defense Authorization Act to require the study of wind turbines to be completed by May 8, 2006. Over a month later, on June 28 when the DOD still had not completed the study, the Sierra Club’s legal program filed suit against Rumsfeld to “compel agency action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed.” Just this week the DOD told the Sierra Club that they won’t be able to meet the court’s August 28 deadline to answer the lawsuit. What makes the DOD continue to drag their feet? I certainly hope it’s not a desire to stall construction for so long that most turbines can’t be built in time to be eligible for the federal tax credits on wind projects, which runs out in the end of 2007.

About

As a sophomore at Walter Johnson High School in Maryland, Yochi was recruited to join the SSC's Montgomery County Student Environmental Activists. After a couple of weeks of hanging out with the SSC'ers, he started organizing what turned into a county-wide campaign that gained media attention and attracted the support of the county council. While an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment, Yochi founded a business partnership called Brewing Hope with farmers in Chiapas, Mexico. Working with students, faculty and businesses interested in promoting the fair trade system, Yochi set up a program that not only sold coffee, but also created a relationships between coffee growers and latte drinkers. Brewing Hope's student delegations visit Mexico to learn about coffee production and meet with indigenous communities while farmers from Chiapas travel to speak at educational events in the Midwest. He turned over the management reins of Brewing Hope to study the connection between biodiversity, economic sustainability and coffee certifications in Central America. Yochi now works at Co-op America, the national green business network, expanding the market for fair trade products and pressuring businesses to adopting forward thinking policies on climate change. Yochi's first blog was titled "The Neoliberal Chopping Block"