Who is Meddling in Wind Energy Policies, What is the Pantego Wind Farm Really About??? | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Talk about split personalities, undefined goals, and confusing the information. You may be surprised to know what the real motives are behind the players. What looks like a mermaid is really an octopus. Who is using whom? It is hard to know where to begin. I will start by describing what I believe are the motives of the players. This is about the construction of the Pantego wind(mill) farm in Beaufort County.

    Beaufort County wants the tax revenue and jobs from the construction of the windmills. That is about one million dollars in taxes each year. There should be about ten jobs. Beaufort County property owners want the rental revenue from the windmill sites.

    The military, both Navy and Air Force, want to continue to train pilots in eastern North Carolina using the Dare County bombing range.
Hood Richardson: Above.     photo by Stan Deatherage
    The State of North Carolina wants to keep the military here because of jobs and tax revenue.

    The environmentalists want green energy (the windmills) birds and wildlife. The environmentalists also do not want windmills. That is right, they want both at the same time. They are as confused as ever, so their purported facts do not mean a lot unless you know what they are thinking at that particular moment.

    Facts are a really big problem in this situation. I ask the reader to use his common sense. If you do, everything will work out fine. If you don't, you will get a head ache.

    John Droz, Jr. wrote a very good front page article in the May 29 issue or The County Compass. His time line presentation of the facts is accurate. But, Mr. Droz, interpretations of what these facts mean leaves much to be desired. In the world of politics most things are not actually what they appear to be. That mermaid is probably and octopus. That pig could be a fine show horse.

    We in Beaufort County are having trouble locating people who have observed any of those 5,200 flights that cross Beaufort County each year at between 100 and 500 feet above the ground traveling at more than 500 miles per hour. I suspect, if even one of those Hornets flew across the county at that elevation and speed, my phone would ring off the hook. I would hear the corn crops are damaged, wheat crops are damaged, all the soy beans are now on the ground, and the children are screaming to say nothing of the bird and wild life population.

    Apparently it was Colonel Leavett, the Seymour Johnson base commander, who set into motion the legislators who gave us the laws we have regulating wind farms, scared the citizens of Wayne County into believing the base would be closed and all of them would be destitute. .No one but Colonel Leavett and her minions in Wayne has said anything about closing the Seymour Johnson Air Force base. Her thoughtless statemens still echoe through the legislative halls in Raleigh and has become the tool of choice for those who do not want windmills in Beaufort County.

    Our governors (Perdue and McCrory) and many legislators look upon the military as being a growth industry. They believe our military will continue to grow and they want it all concentrated here in North Carolina so one atomic bomb can take them all out at one time.

    Because of the uninformed behavior of high ranking officers as to how the world works outside the military, the Department of Defense formed a unit to deal with energy and other compatibility situations. Colonel Leavett has been transferred to the Pentegon and is now on staff for the Secretary of Defense. Mr. Droz infers her transfer is a promotion. She is obviously well qualified or she would not have been moved to such an important position. However, she fiddled with the chain of command when she did not go to the Pentegon"s Energy and Mission Compatibility Office with her complaints. Instead she went to the Governor and the locals. Colonel Leavitt panicked the politicians, opened the door for the environmentalists and stoked the furnace of the energy policy wonks.

    For the record, I am a strong supporter of the military. I believe subsidizing windmills is a bad economic policy. However, this, for me as an elected official is a property rights issue. There is no question our North Carolina elected officials have used bad judgement in their struggle to grasp a military dollar at all costs and to deny the public property rights. Legislators made a bad decision in requiring part of our electricity come from green sources. They raised our power bills by requiring investment in negative total return industry. We need positive cash flow investment that creates jobs and wealth.

    Environmentalists have failed to prove their claims about damage to wildlife done by wind mills. Environmentalists simply do not have proof of high rates of bats, eagles and birds being killed by windmills. However, the economic effect in Beaufort County is positive. We get the jobs, the taxes and the lease payments.

    John Droz criticizes the Public Utilities Commission for not making a strong case against wind mills. He fails to point out the state policy is to support subsidized windmills. It is not up to this public agency to set policy or to try to defy the legislature.

    With all the lobbying and misinformation being spread around by all the various interest groups, the politicians panicking because their special interest may loose a dollar, the Siting Clearinghouse group in the Department of Defense got into the act. Wayne County and the City of Goldsboro was and is lobbying the Legislature to stop construction of the Pantego wind farm. Goldsboro and Wayne County had hired a lawyer.

    With all the bad information in circulation, something had to be done. All the various stake holders met in Raleigh on several occasions to hammer out an agreement. We thought this agreement satisfied all the parties. An agreement was reached that was signed by the Air Force and the company desiring to build the windmill farm. There were about 25 people involved in these meetings. Beaufort County was represented, the governor's office, the Department of Defense, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, other branches of the military, NCDENR, Wayne County and the City of Goldsboro and the Department of Defense. When the final agreement was reached, no one pounded the table and said they could not live with it. No one even spoke about any complaint. All were present and had ample opportunity to complain. A written agreement was produced and the lawyer for Goldsboro and Wayne County took plenty of time to examine and make minor adjustments to the document. I thought the issue was a dead duck. I had represented Beaufort County through out the majority of the process.

    Invenergy, the builder of the wind farm, filed, again, with the Utilities Commission to provide power to the grid. Right away the Wayne County Groups filed an objection alleging they were not a party to the Air Force agreement and therefore there was no agreement among other things. They claimed the Colonel had been gagged by the Pentegon and forced to go along with the agreement.

    Even more ridiculous is their basic argument that this one route across Beaufort County will cause the Seymour Johnson Base to be closed. Take a look at how huge easten North Carolina is. Look at all the places to train with all the military training routes and try to convince any one with common sense that one route across Beaufort County is so important it will cripple our nations ability to do low level attacks from the air.

    With this kind of panicked behavior by local and state governments and the pure brass of some myopic commanding officers, is it any wonder the Department of Defense started the group to deal with these issues in a professional and factual way. I believe the Defense Department understands that resolving these issues before they come to a boil, as has happened at Seymour Johnson, is best for all.

    This entire situation is a good example of what happens when special interest groups, focused only on what they want, take a simple situation and deliberately make it into and emotional nightmare for their own gain. Our elected officials on the state level have embarrassed themselves with their "shoot from the hip mentality". Wayne County, the City of Goldsboro and the special interest groups at he base, have shown how greedy they are. Colonel Leavitt tinkered with the chain of command and is now not in the chain of command. The environmental groups, as usual, have put out a lot of really bad information. The price of energy has gone up because of delays and expense to the builder of the project. Beaufort County and our citizens are denied the revenue from the delayed project. Activists still do not understand the best place to change policy is in Washington DC and Raleigh N. C. not when projects are being built.

    Mr. Droz did a good job with this article until he convinced himself, in the last paragraph, that military concerns must be addressed by the State of North Carolina and not the Federal Government. Mr. Droz, please spend some time with both the US and State Constitutions before delving into policy matters.

    Put a little common sense into this emotional panic. It begins to make sense. We thought an easy solution had been worked out. Instead we have Air Force training, the tax payers and Invenergy suffering while those who do not have one dime invested, the environmentalists, are trying to stand in the way of progress.