Windmills Sow Dissent for Environmentalists
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
HOMAS, W.Va. — Vincent Collins, a lawyer from nearby Morgantown, has been vacationing in this scenic area for 35 years. A few years ago, he bought a 1.2-acre lot near here and planned to build a house on it. But once he saw the windmills, and learned of plans for more, he scrapped that dream.
Soaring above the treetops are 44 sleek white steel cylinders, 228 feet high. Churning on each tower are three glinting fiberglass blades, 115 feet long. Like quills on a porcupine, they spike the emerald spine of Backbone Mountain for six miles along the Allegheny Front.
They have also generated huge turbulence within the environmental movement. Proponents of wind farms view those who oppose them as heretics, obstructing the promise of clean renewable energy, while opponents decry them as producing insufficient power to warrant their blight on the landscape.
For now, the wind farm here is the largest east of the Mississippi, but the wind-energy industry, long a staple of the California landscape, is blowing eastward. Unobstructed winds, favorable economics and the absence of local zoning laws are attracting developers, and soon more than 400 turbines could be sprouting across 40 square miles of West Virginia's most scenic mountaintops.
"I can't believe how large and hideous they are," Mr. Collins said. "When you hear the word `windmill,' you think Holland and Don Quixote. That's wrong. They look like alien monsters coming out of the ground."
The growing industry has caused a kind of identity crisis among people who think of themselves as pro-environment, forcing them to choose between the promise of clean, endlessly renewable energy and the perils of imposing giant man-made structures on nature.
To some environmentalists, the opposition to wind power from within their ranks not only stifles the growth of a new source of energy but also calls into question the integrity of the environmental movement itself.
Charles Komanoff, a longtime economic consultant to environmental groups, said the opposition by "well-heeled environmentalists," stoked the preconception that they were more concerned about their own backyards than about the common good.
"They want to have it all and they won't brook any trade-off, especially a trade-off that sacrifices their own comfort," said Mr. Komanoff, who is based in New York.
At the same time, the wind farm developers appear to have the environmental high ground.
"We believe in clean energy," said Steve Stingel, a spokesman for Florida Power and Light, which bought the rights to the wind farm here and then built it. The company is the largest generator of wind power in the United States, with 30 wind farms in 10 states.
Wind now accounts for less than 1 percent of all electricity produced in the United States. But the American Wind Energy Association, the industry's trade group, predicts it will grow to 6 percent by 2020.
The case for wind has been fortified in recent years by advances in technology that make it more efficient and a federal tax credit that makes its financing more feasible.
But the reality for people like Mr. Collins is something else. Windmill farms must be large to be financially viable. Critics worry that beyond the blemish on the natural landscape, these industrial-sized towers can chop up migratory birds. One farm in California was dubbed the "condor Cuisinart," and the ornithologist monitoring the wind farm here just reported that at least two dozen song birds winging their way north had been killed.
Another complaint is that wind farms can do little to reduce overall dependence on fossil fuels, because of the unreliability of constant wind and the inability to store its power.
"They put out such a minuscule amount of electricity," Mr. Collins said. "It's nuts."
Similar complaints, coming from prominent environmentalists like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have stalled installation of the nation's first off-shore wind farm, proposed for the waters of Nantucket Sound off Cape Cod. And they have forced the Long Island Power Authority to scrap its plan for wind turbines off the eastern tip of Long Island. But the utility has now proposed putting up to 50 turbines, each 488 feet high, off Long Island's south shore between Fire Island and Jones Beach, two immensely popular summer resort areas.
Mr. Kennedy, for one, said he found "zero" irony in the fact that he had devoted himself to environmental advocacy and yet opposed the wind project on Cape Cod, his Kennedy grandparents' summer home.
"There are appropriate places for everything," he said in a telephone interview. "You would not want a wind farm in Yosemite, and you wouldn't want one in Central Park."
Mr. Kennedy added: "I love wind energy, but let's develop some rules about how you divide up the commons. You're essentially giving the commons over to a profit-making enterprise."
