The Strauss Wind Energy farm would never be allowed in its home country of Germany.
It does way too much environmental damage. It will kill more than 200 ancient oak trees. It puts 500-foot-tall windmills on top of a mountain so they’re visible all over, when anyone who’s building a house must keep their roofs below ridge lines.
These turbines kill birds. The oscillation shakes the ground, so who knows what it does to the critters living underground. San Miguelito Canyon is too precious an ecology to have it destroyed for this type and quantity of supposed renewable energy. For how long? Only 30 years, they say.
This type of energy farm should be placed where the land is already disturbed, such as at the Santa Barbara County dump, the Tajiguas Landfill. Or it could be placed out on the oil platforms that are being decommissioned. Or we could all have solar panels on our roofs and in our yards. The panels are getting smaller. The storage batteries, better.
We could also try wave energy. We could also do hydrothermal energy.
Tajiguas will be providing energy by using the methane it creates.
Let’s start cooperating and using our already destroyed ecosystems instead of destroying new ones.
This Strauss Wind Energy farm needs to go elsewhere on land that is already used.
Maybe we need single turbines on farmland. Spreading these out will do much less damage to birds and may be more useful too.
Paulina Conn
Santa Barbara
This article appears in Jan 23-30, 2020.