Un-green ‘farms’ ruin landscape

Published 11:26 pm Tuesday, March 30, 2010

I buried my bird dog, Annie, on a high ridge east of Ellensburg, overlooking the many side ridges and draws that carve their way to the shores of the Columbia River below. It is a wide-open land of cheat grass and talus slopes, elk and mule deer, and the abundant chukar that drew me and Annie back to this magical place every year. But no longer.

Thanks to this nation’s fractured energy policy, Annie’s grave now overlooks a 1,000-acre electrical generation plant (deceitfully called a windmill “farm”) — a mountain-side of 140-foot-long whirling blades, steel towers, electrical turbines and flashing red lights that blight the landscape for dozens of miles in every direction — built in homage to “environmentalism” and the almighty dollar.

This is an ecological disaster, and is only the beginning. Dozens of turbine “farms” are springing up all over Washington. Now an international investment consortium bought Puget Sound Energy and plans to erect 760 more wind turbines in the rolling hills of Southeastern Washington, no doubt to sell power to California. Why? What is ecologically sane about despoiling our scenic countryside with thousands of towering, whirling steel blades and flashing lights? Sure, wind is renewable. But the unmatchable beauty of this land is not.

Wake up, Washingtonians! Demand your representatives stop this madness now! Tell your environmental groups to get real or get lost. Let us not forever sacrifice the irreplaceable beauty of this state to foreign consortiums, a dysfunctional Congress, and an environmental lobby that has lost touch with reality.

Bill Odell

Everett