Issue #4: June, 2020 Welcome to KARRE's June 2020 Newsletter!In this issue:
Free(d) Energy!Industrial-scale wind turbines (Please stop calling them windmills. They don’t mill grain, pump water, or nurture tulip beds beneath their blades) are models of rotational inertia, momentum, and occasionally gravity. It’s because they sometimes become untamed that we ought to take a hard look at the risks versus the rewards. (See "Kansas Turbine Failure", above) WINDExchange states that “Turbine failures are considered rare events”. The industry euphemistically refers to blade failures as component liberation. In 2015, Windpower Monthly estimated the overall wind turbine failure rate to be 0.54 percent. This sounds rather insignificant … unless you live in the shadows of industrial wind turbines towering more than 600 feet overhead (the Saint Louis Arch is 630 feet tall). In the county north of us, a 139-turbine project is under construction with more than three hundred occupied homes in close proximity to turbines. Even if you only consider the industry’s own estimates, once operational, residents there can expect to host at least three turbine failures, of unknown severity, in any given four-year period. In other words, each turbine site has an annual probability for a failure event of 1/185. Those are pretty long odds, but I wouldn’t bet my life, or the life of a loved one, on odds like that. Nacelle fires are usually caused by seized bearings. If the rotor-braking system successfully stops the blades, most of the damage should be contained fairly close to the base. Local fire departments are instructed to let these fires - 400 feet above ground - burn themselves out while standing by to manage burning debris and toxic lubricants near the base of the turbine site. In liberation events, like portions of blades detaching (liberating) while they're rotating, the safety risks increase. During normal maximum RPM for a 607-foot turbine, the speed at the blade tips exceeds 200 miles per hour. If the rotor-braking system fails and the RPM is no longer restricted (known as a runaway condition), all bets are off. Consider that the nacelle rotates 360 degrees across the horizon; that a liberated piece of blade can weigh between a few pounds and several tons; that there’s no way to know the precise angle of departure when debris becomes airborne; that the departure velocity could be well over 200 miles per hour. Now calculate the safest place to be. My gut calculation tells me that even a mile away is too close. Another interesting event, one that’s not considered a component failure and not figured into that 0.54 percent failure rate, is ice throw-off. When ice sheets or ice chunks, some big, some small, are flung from turbine blades the industry calls it “ice shedding” and claims fragments rarely weigh more than a couple of pounds. But they can’t predict how fast, or in which direction, these two-pound popsicles will fly. It’s a serious safety issue that’s not a popular discussion topic by the industry. Component failure and ice throw are only two reasons that responsible setbacks are critical. Other pesky gremlins, like audible sound, shadow flicker, and infrasound exposure, also compound the urgency for providing reasonable protections to residents in the proximity of commercial wind turbines. Many of these residents (non-participating landowners) don’t financially benefit at all from living beneath them . Setbacks are simply the distances wind energy developers and local governing commissions have agreed to for siting each wind turbine from non-participating landowner’s property and from public roads. An alarming number of these negotiated setbacks are actually less than the distance that construction and maintenance personnel are required to wear hardhats within. A common setback for siting turbines from public roadways is 1.1 times the height of the turbine, or a whopping 661 feet for those 607-footers. State and federal laws mandating safe setbacks don’t exist. Recommendations by state or federal wildlife agencies and various safety oversight organizations are just that, recommendations; they don’t carry the weight of law. When recommendations don’t fit a project’s development plan, they're often ignored altogether. Our safety and property interests rest entirely in the hands of local city and county commissions. Imagine that you are a renewable energy developer with more money than scruples. Would you…
If I were a renewable energy developer with more money than scruples, I believe that's exactly what I would do. Dave Oas, Labette County From the TrenchesThis month I am going to write about something that I have been pondering for quite a while. A few months ago several things crossed my desk that grabbed my attention. I was reading about the foundations of Rotary Club International. It is an international service organization whose stated purpose is to bring together business and professional leaders in order to provide humanitarian service and to advance goodwill and peace around the world. It is a non-political and non-religious organization open to all. There are over 35,000 member clubs worldwide, with a membership of 1.2 million individuals, known as Rotarians. In the early 1930’s Herbert J. Taylor, endeavored to save his business from bankruptcy. He decided that the best way to do this was to change the ethical climate of the company. He wrote down what he called "The Four-Way Test" of the things we think, say or do. After applying only 24 words over time, his company turned around completely. In the 1940’s, when Taylor was an international director of Rotary, he offered "The Four-Way Test" to the organization, and it was adopted by Rotary for its internal and promotional use. It lasts to this day. "The Four-Way Test" - 24 words
So, I asked myself, if it’s worked so well, for so long for the Rotarians, why wouldn’t this work for the land-use battles in the state of Kansas? Unfortunately, we are dealing with people whose business practices would fail on all four points. They can’t tell the truth or their turbines would never be built. Do you remember their talking points in the beginning? “All your neighbors have signed leases, so you might as well too and get some extra money.” We knew that not all of our neighbors had signed leases. So we knew from the start of the onslaught, they could not be trusted. Land use disputes are notorious for not being fair, not building friendships, not being beneficial to everyone concerned. The takers are usually not truthful either. The companies we are dealing with in the State of Kansas and their billion-dollar investors do whatever they can to get their way; emboldened by governments from the top-down supporting their projects with taxpayer money, and lots of it. They are abetted by politicians, lobbyists, banks of lawyers and investors who don't seem to have considered Mr. Taylor's "Four-Way Test". Their four-way test of what they think, say, or do is just the opposite.
This method has to end. There is nothing about the current process that is fair, truthful, transparent, or beneficial to all concerned. KARRE stands for bringing ethics back to this process and to our government that allows and enables this broken process to occur in our beloved state. This is a travesty that is causing great harm to innocent people who just want to live their lives as they were before the wind companies came to Kansas. Individual citizens are being sued and subpoenaed for not complying with bribes from one company who came to our state. Whatever happened to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? This is happening now to innocent families in the middle of a pandemic! Special message to voters: remember this in the 2020 elections and in every election hereafter! Vote in ethical candidates. Vote out non-ethical candidates. When you take a look back across history, there are examples in almost every land-use battle that follows the unethical path. Most of the time in our past, it has ended in bloodshed. It eventually gets resolved, but it’s devastating and barbaric. It doesn’t have to be this way. Beverly Kavouras, McPherson County, Kansas Wildlife ConcernsEagles: Our Symbol of National SchizophreniaOur country is of two minds about eagles. On the one hand, eagles are sacred in some indigenous traditions and revered by Americans as our national symbol. They are protected by two federal laws—the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Those laws make it illegal to “pursue, shoot, shoot at, poison, wound, kill, capture, trap, collect, destroy, molest, or disturb” eagles, or to possess or transport eagles or eagle body parts. It is the federal government’s responsibility to enforce those laws. But on the other hand, the federal government, under Republicans as well as Democrats, generously subsidizes industrial wind developments (IWDs). Operating in the same air space as eagles, turbines are often deadly. And too often when it comes to eagle-killing, the government looks the other way. How many eagles do wind turbines kill? There is no independent assessment. The Department of the Interior asks wind operators to self-report, but compliance is voluntary and kept secret from the public. Though eagles are part of our national trust and IWDs are publicly subsidized, Interior treats information about eagle deaths as the private property of the companies. Nevertheless, eagle advocacy groups do their best to assess the situation. They monitor the National Eagle Repository, run by the law enforcement arm of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (the Service) on the grounds of the old Rocky Mountain Arsenal, now a wildlife refuge, outside of Denver, Colorado. The Repository is charged with collecting eagles accidentally or illegally killed, collecting scientific information, and then distributing the eagles to enrolled members of federally recognized tribes, who use them ceremonially. Explaining to outsiders the importance of eagles in his tradition, Geoffrey M. Standing Bear, principal chief of the Osage Nation, told the Smithsonian, “My elders once told me to look at an eagle wing like the Catholics do a crucifix.” Eagles embody “holy powers” that can be invited into human communities through reverent ceremonial use. “We show our respect and distill blessings to another person by taking the feathers and touching them on the head and on the heart and on the hands to bless their minds, their emotions, and their experiences in life,” Standing Bear said. Though established out of respect for indigenous spiritual traditions, the National Eagle Repository is also a source of information for wildlife advocates. Save the Eagles International says that the Repository’s intake of dead eagles has at least tripled since the rise of IWDs. They estimate that since the mid-1990s, 30,000 corpses have been recovered from turbine sites and transported to the repository. The tension between protecting eagles and promoting wind turbines has never been evenly balanced. Despite all the publicity surrounding eagle deaths at the infamous Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area—where turbines had been located in the middle of prime eagle migration, dispersal, and foraging areas, resulting in thousands of gruesome killings—it wasn’t until 2013 that an IWD was prosecuted for the killing of eagles. Duke Energy was the unlucky first: It plead guilty to killing 14 Golden Eagles and 149 other migratory birds at an IWD in Wyoming. A second prosecution and a few civil settlements followed, but it was the end, not the beginning of a trend. Citing “limited law enforcement resources,” the Obama administration decided to de-emphasize enforcement and work with the wind industry. Explaining their new approach, the Service said, “We need to issue permits that align better with industrial activities, such as electricity distribution and energy production.” It had always been possible under existing law for the Service to issue permits for the limited “taking” of eagles. By applying for permits, wind companies could legalize killing a certain number. But IWDs weren’t doing so; most companies simply ignored the opportunity. The Obama administration hoped to draw more IWDs into the process by making the permits more attractive. They raised the number of “takes” from 1100 to 4200, and they increased the permits’ duration from five to 30 years. “Our primary means of conserving eagles is to encourage more proponents to obtain permits,” the Service declared. They reasoned that a permitting process could assess fees and impose conditions requiring mitigation, thus producing some benefit for conservation in return for the deaths of eagles. They assumed eagles would die no matter what they did: “Unpermitted activities have taken and will continue to take eagles with or without this [new] permit program,” they explained. They thought it was better to find a way to permit activities “that otherwise would continue to take eagles without implementing the conservation measures that are critical to eagle conservation.” The Service trumpeted this expanded permitting program as a win for both eagles and “green” industry. Director Dan Ashe said, “The new rule will conserve eagles while also spurring the development of a pollution-free energy source intended to ease global warming, a cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s energy plan.” But the “spurring” outweighed the “conserving.” Without the “stick” of enforcement, the “carrot” of legality didn’t have much appeal to the wind industry. It largely went its way without acknowledging the new process. In addition, the fossil fuel industry cried foul, citing selective enforcement of the law. “Seven oil and natural gas companies were prosecuted for killing 28 birds at the same time that wind energy companies were allowed to kill thousands of birds, including bald and golden eagles,” stated Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance. Her association welcomed measures taken by the incoming Trump administration to level that particular playing field. The Trump administration did so, not by re-regulating IWDs but by relaxing enforcement against all industries, including fossil-fuel-based ones. The administration declared that they would prosecute only “intentional” killings of protected birds. “Incidental” killings—deaths that were simply a by-product of industrial activity, such as birds drowning in open oil pits or colliding with turbine blades—would no longer be considered a violation of the law. And so the deaths of eagles are now classified as collateral damage. The laws have not changed—only their interpretation and enforcement. Eagles are still theoretically protected. But in reality, they are disposable, a waste product of industrial production. However, the government’s actions do not necessarily express what’s in the minds and hearts of the American people. At least half of all legal actions on behalf of the environment are initiated by citizens, not by the agencies charged with protecting the environment. Sometimes, the legal protests are against those very agencies for not doing their jobs. (All of this relates to the story of Altamont Pass, an update on which will come in a future installment.) These citizen actions spring from connections to nature outraged by the policy. “The eagle is one of our closest relatives,” says Tink Tinker, professor at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver and an enrolled member of the Osage Nation. “Eagles are not just symbols. They have actual power.” People from other cultures who have worked with eagles say the same. Donna Schmitz, a raptor rehabilitor in Wisconsin said after she released a healed eagle back into the wild, “You can feel the power of the bird. You can feel the spiritual being of the bird.” In an Osage ceremony, volunteering with raptor rehabilitation, a regular bird walk--any practice of respectful interaction with the natural world, any openness to its powers--can help to dispel our dangerous delusions of grandeur. They can cure our schizophrenia. In fact, we are more genetically akin to eagles than to our proliferating machines, and our survival depends more on a healthy natural world than on endless industrial expansion. Living respectfully with “all our relations” could help us bring policy into line with our values and our well-being in line with reality. It could help us be of one mind. Margy Stewart
CALL TO ACTIONIMPORTANT UPDATE TO THIS CALL TO ACTION dated 5-29-2020 (Editor's note: As we approached our newsletter deadline, the US Treasury granted an extension of one year on 5-27-2020. In light of this recent decision, please write them and tell them how disappointed you are with their actions.) (Original Call to Action) - When Covid-19 hit, the first issue raised by the wind industry was the interruption in the supply chain.
Please contact each member of the Senate Finance Committee, especially the R’s and especially Sen Cornyn (R-TX) who is 2nd in command.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! Letter from US Department of the Treasury to Chairman Grassley
From My Front PorchI’ve always felt that living in Kansas kind of placed a bubble around me that insulated me against the craziness of the world. Life is slower here, especially in rural Kansas. We seem to have different values than what I see projected by the media in other states. We value time with family, friendship, good neighbors, honesty and hard work. We cherish our freedom that others have fought to provide us. We watch and listen to some of the craziness in the news, shake our heads, and thank God that we don’t live in “those” communities. Then COVID-19 happened. I watched with intrigue at the reports about this virus that was killing thousands in China and how the Chinese government locked down their cities. I watched in horror as they enforced the lockdown by shaming people who needed to get out to get food, or by welding doors shut so that people could not leave their homes. I was thankful that I didn’t live in that country. Then COVID-19 reached the coast of the US. I continued to watch the reports of thousands of people being infected and how hospitals were overrun with patients. I watched as politicians argued about the best way to handle the situation, with no precedence in place. I saw Governors close down their states and arrest people that did not comply with the lockdown instructions. I saw the reports of people beating each other for a roll of toilet paper and stores requiring police presence to keep shoppers in line. I was thankful that I didn’t live in those states. Then COVID-19 reached Kansas. It ran through Kansas City like wildfire and they immediately shut down the area. People I knew were required to stay home, order their groceries to be delivered to them and do without paper goods and hand sanitizer. I found myself thinking how thankful I was that I didn’t live in Kansas City. Then, of course, COVID-19 reached my small town and the surrounding areas. For a few days there was panic in the air as our local government assessed the best way to handle the situation. Meetings were held, input was requested and decisions were made to keep people safe and healthy. Eventually local governments were overruled by our Governor who decided to issue a stay-at-home order for the entire state. So, we all went home and continued to watch the media reports about how our local, state, and federal governments were going to handle this pandemic. But then, something changed. I started finding stories in the media about families spending more time together and enjoying it. I saw stories of parents stepping up to become teachers and realizing just how thankful they are for those that educate their children on a daily basis. I read about commercial building landlords telling employers to pay their employees instead of their rent so that the employees would have a paycheck. My heart swelled at the outpouring of support for small, local businesses and the campaign to help keep their doors open. I saw yard signs telling those on the frontline thank you for keeping our country going and keeping our neighbors alive. I noticed that rainbows were painted in windows to show support and give encouragement to others and I got emotional hearing about how our local fire personnel and police officers drove around town with the Easter Bunny waving from the fire truck to bring joy to others. I saw teddy bears placed in windows for school children to count on their walks. I was inspired by the stories of strangers delivering groceries to those who could not leave their homes and felt so proud when the Governor of New York posted a letter from a rural Kansas farmer asking him to give his last N95 mask to someone on the frontline who needed it. When I went to the hospital, I got teary-eyed reading the thank you notes that someone had written in chalk on the sidewalk in front of every entrance. I laughed at the jokes someone had posted on signs along a walkway with the intent to bring joy to strangers and I marveled at how fast people became experts at making masks and donating them to hospitals, nursing homes, and anyone that needed one. I have noticed that people are resetting. Kindness, understanding, and spreading joy and comfort have become the new norm. It’s as if the rest of the country has finally begun to recognize what we in Kansas have valued forever: time with family is important, good friends and good neighbors take care of each other, honesty is the best way to handle any situation, hard work matters and our freedom and our way of life are worth fighting for. We’ve lived these values our entire life and they are what make Kansans unique. It makes me think of how proud and thankful I am to live in rural Kansas and how I will continue to fight to preserve our values, our countryside, our neighborhoods and our way of life. -------------------------------------------------- We would love to hear from you. Please share your front porch stories and pictures with us. You can email them to frommyfrontporchKS@gmail.com. If you post pictures on Instagram, etc. please use the hashtag #frommyfrontporchKS or #frommyfrontporch so that we can share our stories and pictures with each other. Thank you. Column and image: Sunny Milleson Send questions, corrections, and story suggestions to editor.karre@gmail.com.
Image Credits
|