[at-l] Windmills

[RoksnRoots@aol.com (RoksnRoots@aol.com)]

In a message dated 11/11/01 11:02:05 AM Eastern Standard Time, lab@glis.net 
writes:


> to insist that they be placed 
> "away from the trail" is just professing the "NOT IN MY BACK YARD" attitude.
> 


***   No, if you read a little closer, it's more than that. Thank goodness 
the NPS doesn't look at it on this level. The "backyard" you are talking 
about is a designated natural wilderness corridor desiring the preservation 
of a totally wild experience. Simply put, 400 foot industrial generation 
grade windmills do not conform to that description. Viewing it in terms of 
kindred technology or political cause is dangerously misplaced.

> 
> I'm willing to put up with some deterioration in a portion of my world, as 
> long as the overall benefit is greater than my sacrifice. I may even 
> consider the experience of walking through a windmill farm as a nice break. 
> Kind of like many of the earlier hikers considered the Cumberland road walk 
> a "change of pace" and didn't really mind it.
> 

      ***  The sacrifice is total. The Trail corridor is either wild and 
primitive or has large, lighted, whirring blades with a large metal 
industrial pylon supporting it. I think you are seeing this picture through 
green-tinted spectacles here. Keep in mind that a windmill this size will 
comprise the equivalent of a large string of enormous power poles and lines 
set right smack in your view. The alternative energy factor is only 
incidental to this. If you go to Audubon sites you will see the significant 
collection of bird kills from various endangered species under mountain top 
towers. California admits that it is killing an unhealthy rate of raptors and 
endangered re-released condors by windmill.

   The "break" you are talking about is only relative to a through-hike. If 
you were a person on a short hike or visit, your single day AT experience 
would be that of large, obtrusive whirring blades distracting you from the 
tranquil viewscape. There is absolutley no impact difference between this and 
a large ski facility lift tower terminus spinning and whirring at the 
ridgecrest. Add lights to that at night and you have a real 
experience-destroying spectacle violating any sense of remote wilderness with 
its lighted, noisy intrusion. (Make no mistake, rotating power blades sing 
like a mountain death song)

    If you go back and read the AT's original plan you will see it was 
designed as a challenge to man to try and preserve a totally wild corridor 
against the tide of human development, technology, and encroachment. Being a 
nice guy with the Trail's wildness to accommodate a power project that could 
easily be paced on one of the many ridges in Maine in no way conforms to the 
AT's written purpose. I suspect the cable cost and power flow resistance 
caused by a further away site is the reason behind strapping the AT with it. 
Humans love to build, engineer, and develop. They don't like to respect 
untouched nature. Nature abhors a vacuum, man abhors undeveloped land. Hence, 
you have the AT (free of windmills)... 



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