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Safe setbacks: How far should wind turbines be from homes?

Safe setbacks: How far should wind turbines be from homes? Let's start with what one manufacturer considers to be safe for its workers. The safety regulations for the Vestas V90, with a 300-ft rotor span and a total height of 410 feet, tell operators and technicians to stay 1,300 feet from an operating turbine -- over 3 times its total height -- unless absolutely necessary. That already is a much greater distance than many regulations currently require as a minimum distance between wind turbines and homes, and it is concerned only with safety, not with noise, shadow flicker, or visual intrusion. In February 2008, a 10-year-old Vestas turbine with a total height of less than 200 feet broke apart in a storm. Large pieces of the blades flew as far as 500 meters (1,640 feet) -- more than 8 times its total height. The Fuhrländer turbine planned for Barrington, R.I., is 328 feet tall with a rotor diameter of 77 meters, or just over 250 feet (sweeping more than an acre of vertical air spa...
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What Can You Do?

We need to take action IMMEDIATELY to halt this project. The people of Champaign County are just now becoming aware of Everpower's proposal to change ALL of our lives forever. Let your friends and family know that this is happening without your consent. A project of this size, sited this close to people, is unprecedented. Are you prepared for you and your family to be an experiment? Especially without any meaningful due process, as is the right of every citizen? There are approximately 60 leaseholders (no one can be sure as the wind companies refuse to release the information). There are approximately 38,900 non-leaseholders in the county. Why are a few dozen people dictating the future of all of us without more debate? The only people benefiting from this scheme are a few leaseholders and a multi-national corporation, who has no plans to engage in any profit-sharing from the sale of Champaign County's wind. They specialize in pitting neighbor against neighbor and mak...
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Editorial in the Urbana Daily CItizen

http://www.urbanacitizen.com/ news/editorial/5035999/ Turbines-imperiled-by- shifting-political-winds Turbines imperiled by shifting political winds After seven years of development, controversy and exhaustive legal examination, the two wind farms planned for Champaign County might soon be put on the scrap heap because of recent state legislation that discourages their construction. It’s too soon to say for certain because the proposed projects continue to be affected by ambiguity on many fronts, but EverPower’s comments to the Columbus Dispatch on Sunday sounded like the beginning of the end of Buckeye Wind. “It’s clear this development isn’t wanted here … and it gives us less confidence in where Ohio is moving forward,” Michael Speerschneider, EverPower’s chief permitting and public-policy officer, told the Dispatch . “We’ll take that message to heart.” After Gov. John Kasich signed legislation on Friday that stops increases in requirements f...
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