My good God! Right next to a constantly traveled service road between wind turbines at the Green Mountain Power (GMP) Searsburg wind turbine site, there is a huge turbine blade section, about 75 feet in length, and weighing several hundred pounds, suspended high up in a tree it crashed into more than two years ago when one of the turbines had a catastrophic failure and blew apart.
Another piece is dangling head high from another tree. And yet other large pieces lay on the ground on the other side of the road. I noticed this mess last Monday, after a representative of GMP directed me up this road to get to the top of the mountain.
Do the people at GMP have so little pride in this site that they don't care to clean up after themselves? By creating a dump there, with junk hanging out of trees and scattered on the ground, they are showing a lack of care for environmental stewardship.
If GMP wishes to berate me for being on this dangerous site, I would like to remind them that they are the ones who are ignoring the dangers there. With no response from GMP, I have been speaking to the public in print and in person, for a long time now, about the danger to surrounding homes resulting from catastrophic and explosive turbine failure.
An industry paper says that engineers can't seem to get a handle on this problem, which is mainly caused by massive vibrations traveling between the blade tip and the base, stressing the turbine's various parts.
Europeans, who have far more experience than we do with wind turbines, have noticed parts flying as far as 8/10ths of a mile, some of which have crashed through roofs and walls at distant homes. Because of this problem, some compassionate and caring European officials are now requiring 1.25-mile setbacks of turbines from homes. How compassionate and caring are Vermont officials?
Do the lives of Vermont families count as much as the lives of European families? And does GMP care?