Quote:
Originally Posted by spadlet
There are a whole host of reasons why it is virtually imposible to find a good wind farm site in a city as covered by Commercial Wind Turbine Siting Restrictions . Wind turbines are not the only indurstrial machinery on a farm. Tractors, combine harvesters and the like are all industrial machines. Some of them have sharp blades and the like and so have to be kept and used in accordance with health and safety procedures, just like wind turbines do.
Farming is a commercial business. Often in the UK the value of land which has received permission for the sititng of a wind farm increases dramatically. The revenue from the sale of the electricity produced also increases the farmer's income. This is worth noting when a few years ago the news was full of the plight of British farmers going out of business etc because consumers would not pay high enough prices to make producing economic.
Livestock can be kept in the same field as wind turbines because cows and sheep tend to have the sense to move to the other end of the field out of the way if the turbine begins to make a funny sound or starts to wobble like it might break (as per the youtube video someone posted). Cars don't tend to be so intelligent or diverse in the directions they can move. If a wind turbine might fall on to a road, if there's a car driving along it can only either stop, go forwards or backwards. If there is alot of traffic it can only either stop (and risk getting hit) or go forwards faster and risk an accident due to breaking the speed limit. Cities are full of roads. Avioding risking the wind turbine falling on a road alone excludes a lot of the city area.
Do you want us to start building nuclear power stations in the middle of cities too? |
All the issues you bring up with respect to equipment associated with farming are certainly true; however, none of them are anywhere near the same scale. IMO the biggest issue with wind turbines in a populated rural environment is the "visual pollution" (to use a overworked and tacky term) associated with them. 400 foot tall wind turbine assemblies in a rural area are as much of an eye-sore as a 40 story office building stuck in the same environment...its just obtrusive and doesn't "fit". Other areas it might not be as much of an issue. The US "great plains" have large distances between residences and might be more suitable than a populated area like upstate NY.
Fundamentally though, IMO power generation, as well as waste disposal and other issues should be more localized with the population that utilizes them. With regard to locating nuclear power stations in cities, IIRC it's already done in France, and should be the same here. Coal, natural gas and oil fired plants are often located in industrial areas near cities, or at least were.
All too often urban dwellers want to dump the environmental impacts of their lifestyle choices on those in rural areas. This includes issues such as wastewater treatment, garbage disposal/landfilling as well as power generation. I'd like to see regulations passes such that all waste is kept/treated within the county (not sure the equivalent political subdivision in Europe) that produces them.