Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu
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In defense of the rest of the people who are opposed to the project, however, there are many reasons other than spoiling views why they are worried.
I have actually spent some time out on the water very close to the area where the wind turbines will be built. Their presence would have had a detrimental effect on our ability to move through the water since we were on a sailboat.
Though there have been people harnessing the wind for power in the sound for hundreds of years, the Cape Wind project has somehow convinced some people that it has a right to take that wind from those people. (Sailing in a wind farm would be exceedingly frustrating because of all of the turbulence and reduction in energy of the wind.)
Another group of people that are opposed to Cape Wind are the fishermen who have been working the prolific sound for generations. They are not sure what the effect will be, but they are pretty sure that massive construction projects for foundations and transmission infrastructure will not have the effect of making their fishing grounds more productive. They are also worried about the vast increase in navigational hazards especially for conditions of reduced visibility (fog).
The fact is that massive wind farms are a classic case of "tragedy of the commons". Their success is based on a small group taking what used to be public property (views, fishing grounds, wind) and turning into private property without compensating the public.