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Industry representatives have approached the Prattsburgh Town Board with talk of “well-paying jobs” to support the industrial wind turbine development, improvements to local roads, and money for the school district. But what are the tragic costs these transparent offers hide?
The “well-paying jobs” are mostly temporary construction jobs that would soon be done. The few permanent jobs remaining would most likely be given to workers with preexisting specialized training in wind turbines from outside the town, leaving local workers empty-handed and robbed of their most precious assets.
The industrial wind turbines and their harmful health, environmental, and economic effects would be permanent. The developer’s negligible, momentary monetary enticement, presented to a few, represents but a small blip on the screen that is the economy of Prattsburgh. That blip would be followed imminently by a truly significant free fall, with no end in sight. Plummeting property values, sick and medically disabled residents, and ruined land are not hallmarks of fulfillment or prosperity by anyone’s honest measure.
Industrial wind turbine projects are known to entail fundamental damage to local infrastructure, environments, and properties. Turbine construction involves transportation of massive machine components and maneuvering of heavy duty equipment over rural residential roads not designed to withstand such pressures. Made barren of life, trees, and the potential for future local engagement and enjoyment, vast natural areas that have been leveled for industrial turbines and transmission lines would effectively be killed. Corresponding rough, careless access roads would pollute and scar the landscape.
In truth, the developer would do in Prattsburgh what they and other big wind energy companies have done elsewhere. In the interest of completing the construction of their own energy infrastructure in a timely manner, they would repair some of the damage to local roads they caused over the course of their operation or rebuild the roads to suit their own needs. The developer would then abandon the town to deal with the ongoing harm the corporation inflicts on the town’s infrastructure, the regional land, air, and water, both in intervals between and during the corporation’s power plant maintenance activities. Given the known developmental injury, great suffering, and decreased academic horizons imposed on children by vibroacoustic disease, the infusion of a token amount of money into the local school system seems overwhelmingly cynical and brazen. No amount of money, even if it weren’t so utterly insignificant relative to what the wind developer stands to gain, could ever be worth the health and future of even a single child, let alone the children of an entire area.
The links on the Effects on Nearby Residents page include personal experiences regarding infrastructure damage in towns where industrial wind turbines have already been built, as well as scientific and medical studies regarding industrial wind turbine installation in residential areas.
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