Windmills On The Best Fishing Grounds? Let’s stand up for our fishing resource, a nationally vital food supply.

 

3/13/2019

First of all, why in the hell would anyone want to plant complex
machinery, such as wind turbines, in an offshore marine environment in
over 100 feet of water …if there were any alternative sites at all?
It makes no sense. Only if, perhaps they are so repugnant that on land
they will not be tolerated within sight of civilization. So put them
“Safely out to sea” and out of sight!

This push for offshore wind on the best fishing grounds is motivated
by irresponsible and mindless greed! It is not cost effective, not a
good long term business plan. And it is certainly not healthy for the
ocean ecosystem, or for food security.

Costs of an offshore wind generated electric power due to wind
extremes and inconsistency, installation and maintenance
inaccessibility, salt deterioration, storms, steamer collision,
security, submarine transmission lines, etc., are exponentially
greater at sea. Offshore wind generated electricity is conservatively
estimated to cost 2 to 4 times more than existing rates. That in
itself might not be prohibitive—if they actually worked to improve
the environment! But they don’t!

And even if some company is determined to build windmills in a
cost-intensive hostile environment, why even consider putting them in
an area such as off of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket? This is an
area that was declared so ecologically sensitive that it was off
limits to fishing for over 20 years because of Yellowtail and other
groundfish habitat and spawning activity —deemed so crucial for the
future of the stock— “Essential Habitat”? The Nantucket Lightship
Area and The Great South Channel and Georges Bank are some of the
richest fishing grounds in the world, producing scallops, lobster,
squid, and groundfish. And this area is a corridor for spawning and
essential post-spawn feeding grounds, for a major yearly Squid
migration to and from Martha’s Vineyard Sound.

Are our fishing grounds not worthy of more protection than this? They
certainly have been well protected from fishing by NOAA over the
years. Are these so vulnerable areas suddenly there for the taking by
the energy industry? BOEM is awarding fishing bottom to the highest
bidders, especially ones with the catchiest marketing spin or the
deepest pockets and political connections—and the fattest payoffs?
It’s time to stop this insane intoxicated race for more and more power
at any cost.

We’re gonna’ put thousands of windmills 600-800 feet tall up and down
the east coast on the best fishing grounds?

Let’s stop this idiocy of trying to super-size, industrialize-
privatize- commoditize- and profitize everything. What’s our slogan:
Do it BIG, Do it Fast, Do it Stupid? And above all Do it without an
intelligent and well researched Plan? Maybe we could start to think
about putting money into projects that actually work. Let’s not fund
projects that make a few scam artists richer while massaging the ego
of the masses with this garbage about windmills are the future of
clean energy. The proposed windmills will be obsolete before they’re
finished.

In fact, windmills are obsolete now. The government could be putting
some support and incentive behind geo-thermal, algae bio-diesel,
artificial photosynthesis, micro-technology photo-voltaic windows and
roofing, for instance. These technologies are ready to go and need
funding for additional R & D, and to start production moving.

Windmills are old mechanical technology, and what these conglomerates
of scam artists are trying to do off of Nantucket is nothing but pure
greed, bilking the taxpayer as usual. A few companies and a few shills
will get rich and we will be left with rusting hulks on devastated and
barren fishing grounds.

It’s time to re-think the attitude that most everything is expendable
in our insatiable pursuit of energy, including our productive fishing
grounds that have fed people for centuries.

All the energy in the world won’t mean a thing without clean food to
eat. We can’t afford to unconsciously throw away millions of pounds of
the best food on the planet by stupidly jamming these structures onto
productive fishing bottom—no matter how big the payoffs might be for
a few.

Please tell your political representatives to inject some integrity
and intelligence—and some Common Sense— into this process of
deciding where to place wind farms—and oil rigs, and their transfer
and storage barges, and the transmission lines, and their maintenance
and supply docks. Or if offshore wind is even a viable concept
considering cost and a discouraging world performance record.

The planning and design of crucial issues involving food, air, water,
and energy, cannot be relinquished to profiteering and greed.

Talk about independence and national security… Let’s stand up for
our fishing resource, a nationally vital food supply.

And here’s some more unsettling history of former windmill scams.

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blog/list?user=thevoiceless

Dick Grachek