North East Windmills


Without government subsidies to the wind industry,
there is no wind industry.

  • Home
  • Articles
  • North East
  • Wind Problems
  • Wind Turbines
  • Wind Energy

Wind Turbines and the Promise of Money

September 6, 2013 by Paul Crowe

Wind turbines tower over homes

Wind turbines tower over homes

Wind turbines bring the promise of money and that can cloud a person’s judgement. It certainly doesn’t have to, but sometimes, if a person isn’t careful, he’ll do things out of character, things he would otherwise not do, things he later regrets, simply because the thought of money was so overpowering. Wind developers know this and spin tales of money for nothing, … well, almost nothing, all you have to do is allow them to build 500 foot tall wind turbines on your property, as many as will fit and the money will just start rolling in. Hmm, …

Rural life in a rural community

In rural communities like North East, most everyone minds their own business and respects his neighbor. Everyone is friendly and gets along and we support the local businesses and charities. It’s a great way of living that brings a lot of satisfaction, but every now and then, someone forgets. He forgets about his neighbor, he forgets about his community and he starts to listen to a smooth talking salesman who promises him money.

If your neighbor decided to paint his house purple with red polka dots and green stripes, you might (privately) question his judgement. You might ask him why he did it, but if his house was a thousand feet down the road, you could just go back to your own business and ignore it. On the other hand, if he decided to allow wind developers to build one or more 500 foot wind turbines on his property, some less than 900 feet from your property line, you can’t ignore it. The sight alone is overwhelming, people 30 or 40 miles away would see it, and now you have a real problem.

Your concerns are not his concern

Your neighbor has decided his personal dreams of money trump any concerns you might have. That smooth talking salesman has told him his neighbors don’t understand, besides, who are his neighbors to tell him what he can do with his own property? If his neighbors are not farmers, then the salesman tells the farmer how his neighbors don’t care about him and creates a divide in the community that never existed before the wind turbines came to town.

What’s hard to understand is how the farmer so easily forgets those same neighbors he now ignores and will not listen to are the same people who were buying his produce and coming to his store. They are the same people who would mention his store to friends and relatives. It makes you wonder, how many of his neighbors would ever do that now or ever will again.

If his neighbors find it hard to bear the sight of 150 foot long blades sweeping through a 300 foot circle in the sky above their homes, if the long moving shadows are disturbing when the sun is low, if the sound of the turbines penetrates their homes and can’t be muffled and they decide they need to move, then the neighbors are faced with homes that won’t sell because no one else wants to knowingly move into a house with a turbine nearby. If the house does eventually sell at a greatly reduced price, does the farmer with his turbine money make up for his neighbor’s loss? Unlikely, because he’s already shown that he doesn’t care.

How do you fix the mistake?

Once the turbines are in and the mistake is clear to everyone, how does it get fixed? Will they be taken down with a quick apology for being so thoughtless? No. They will stand for decades because the cost of removal is very high, ask those communities who are facing this issue.

Once the turbines are in, will the community just forget what happened and treat the farmers who installed them as the friends they once were? If other communities are any guide, the answer is a resounding no.

What are they thinking?

It’s hard to know what is going through the minds of the small number of landowners who have decided to do this to their neighbors, you can ask, but they’re already angry that you are standing in their way. It’s hard to understand what is going through the minds of the township supervisors who are seemingly doing their best to push a wind ordinance through that will make it very easy to build wind turbines in a community that is far too populated to erect these gigantic structures anywhere.

The wind developer, in our case, Pioneer Green Energy, stands to profit from community division. They treat our community the same as every community where they are trying to build turbines, trying to capitalize on promises of money and residents who are trying to understand how anyone could come in and convince some of their neighbors and friends to do things that are so out of character, so thoughtless, so inconsiderate.

It’s hard to understand, but unless we stop this project, it will be a monument to short sightedness for decades to come. This is our community, we all deserve better, our township officials and the wind developer should be ashamed of themselves for pushing this project forward and the landowners who have decided to host these monstrosities should think long and hard about what they are trying to do.

Our community is in danger of finding out that some mistakes are just too big to fix.

Filed Under: Wind Turbine Community Involvement Tagged With: destroy communities, destroy view, growing resistance, pioneer green energy, population density, property value

What can you do?

  • Be informed! Read as many articles on this website as you have time for, so you can understand the issue. Do your own research. Check us out.
  • Tell your neighbors about the wind turbines, point them to this website so they can learn more.

Comments

  1. Andreas Marciniak says

    September 9, 2013 at 4:54 am

    There is no safe distance for wind Turbines, NOT GREEN, NOT CHEAP, NOT RELIABLE, and come with a very BAD side EFFECT on people and the ENVIRONMENT. there is Nothing GREEN about TURBINES. SAY NO TO WIND TURBINES.

  2. Tony says

    September 9, 2013 at 11:36 am

    Minimum of 1640ft ??? You’ve gotta be kidding -6000 ft is the absolute minimum they should be – and even at that distance there will still be some people who will get sick.
    But actually why would you want them at any distance ? – they are nothing but a symbol of stupidity and greed -ostracize or even sue the landowners who sign up and the township officials who fail in their Fiduciary Duties

  3. brian fallon says

    September 9, 2013 at 9:40 pm

    I will never step foot in that store again, neither will any of my family members. It is a shame.

    • Abby Lynn says

      September 10, 2013 at 11:45 am

      Brian, I totally agree with you, and we are also on the boycott of that Market. At the township meetings, the farmers get up and say they don’t want to see any more subdivisions ruining the land (but it’s OK for the turbines to ruin the land?). It was eye-opening to me to learn at these meetings that the farmers have such contempt for the non-farmers. Don’t they know it’s the people in those subdivisions who are buying their products? I used to buy their products, but I will not do so anymore.

Unfortunately

The less you know about wind energy,
the more you'll like it.

Why wind developers never understand …

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

~ Upton Sinclair

Don’t know – Don’t care

Is willful ignorance necessary
to promote wind energy?

No, but it helps.

Climate Change

Another thing I must point out is that you cannot prove a vague theory wrong. … Also, if the process of computing the consequences is indefinite, then with a little skill any experimental results can be made to look like the expected consequences.

~ Richard Feynman, 1964

It’s not on-demand, it’s no-demand

Wind energy is "no-demand" electricity. If the wind isn't blowing and you demand electricity, the answer is no.

Wind – expensive, inefficient, unreliable



December 1923 Popular Science cover dreaming about generating electricity from windmills, and though the dream never dies, the dream doesn't work, didn't then, doesn't now and without huge government giveaways of your money, no wind farms would get built anywhere. The government forces utilities to buy wind power so payments to landowners are simply wind welfare.


Wind energy runs on tax credits

"I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire's tax rate, for example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without the tax credit."
~ Warren Buffett - from interview with Fortune magazine

Wind investments and high cost green energy

“I’m in the wind business … I’ve lost my ass in the business. ... Hey, we can get on everything green. We can get on everything renewable. Then the cost of power will go up ten times."
~ T. Boone Pickens - on Morning Joe on MSNBC

Wind Turbine Map

Information you'll only see here.

The complete map of all of the wind turbines proposed by Pioneer Green Energy in Erie County, PA and filed with the FAA. Plans not yet filed are not shown.

Recent Comments

  • Susan Dudley on Omnibus Spending Bill Extends Wind Energy PTC for 5 Years with Phaseout Over Last 3 Years
  • Jack Christman a on Omnibus Spending Bill Extends Wind Energy PTC for 5 Years with Phaseout Over Last 3 Years
  • Suzanne Albright on Omnibus Spending Bill Extends Wind Energy PTC for 5 Years with Phaseout Over Last 3 Years
  • Chris on Pioneer Green Energy Quits Wind Project in North East, PA
  • Tammy C. Truitt on Pioneer Green Energy Quits Wind Project in North East, PA
  • Shannon Mackey on Pioneer Green Energy Quits Wind Project in North East, PA
  • Tammy C. Truitt on Defense Department Rebuffs Pioneer Green Energy in Maryland

North East Windmills

  • Vestas Shares Sink with Donald Trump’s Election Win
  • Supreme Court Halts Enforcement of Clean Power Plan
  • Omnibus Spending Bill Extends Wind Energy PTC for 5 Years with Phaseout Over Last 3 Years
  • Pioneer Green Energy Quits Wind Project in North East, PA
  • Defense Department Rebuffs Pioneer Green Energy in Maryland

RSS North East PA Online

  • Greenfield Township Seeks Bids for Community Park Asphalt and Concrete Work
  • Congressional App Challenge is Opportunity for Middle and High School Students
  • PA Environmental Regulations Choke Economic Development in North East
  • Did You Know Communities Can Request Railroad Crossing Quiet Zones?
  • NE Borough Enacts Water Project Financing Agreement

RSS Erie County Report

  • Remember This Photo From the Erie Airport? Did You Ever See It?
  • Here’s a Quick Way to Increase Your Resistance to COVID-19
  • Test What Works Before Building a Community College
  • How Many College Students are Hospitalized From COVID-19? – Zero?
  • Dangerous and Safe Gatherings Due to COVID-19 – a Helpful Guide
  • The Reported Number of COVID-19 Cases May Be Up to 90 Percent Too High

Copyright © 2025 · North East Windmills · Website by Crowe Computer Services
This website proudly Made in the USA!
Made in the USA