Wind farms are all about money

To the editor:

I keep hearing the ads on WPGW paid for by Scout Clean Energy about how great they will be for the community.

All of their ads, mailers, website posts, etc. talk about nothing but the financial benefit to Jay County by allowing the wind farms.

How is it a benefit?

They’re using our tax dollars to pay the local farmers for the leases, our electric bills are going up, not down, the jobs they create are temporary, and the loss in property values far outweighs the so called “benefits” of allowing the turbines to be erected.

They also claim that they will produce enough energy to power 35,000 homes, probably a true statement, but they fail to mention the power that will be generated does not benefit Jay County in the least. It is all being sold through the grid to cities and towns along the east coast, the communities that won’t allow wind farms.

It is, and always has been, about the money, from the stockholders of Scout Clean Energy, all the way down to the farmers who will receive from $6,000 to $10,000 per year, per wind turbine.

I have always been of the understanding that property zoned “agricultural” was used for growing crops and raising livestock, not producing electricity on an industrial scale.

It’s time we stopped prostituting our community and rural lifestyle. 

I don’t know the exact number of landowners who have, or soon will have, wind turbines, and I’m sure several of them are my friends and neighbors, but only those individuals have truly anything to gain from the wind farms.

Think about this, the Bluff Point wind farm consists of 57 wind turbines. Seventy-five percent of those — 44 — are on “farm ground” owned by just three individuals. Assuming each turbine pays, conservatively, $6,000 per year, that’s $264,000 annually, split three ways, over a 20-year lease, that’s $5.28 million in tax dollars doled out for the benefit of just a few local individuals.

It’s all about the money.

Steve Fennig

Redkey