[CPEO-MEF] ENERGY, ENCROACHMENT: "The Military Is Locked in a Power Struggle With Wind Farms"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

THE MILITARY IS LOCKED IN A POWER STRUGGLE WITH WIND FARMS

by ERIC NIILER
Wired
May 28, 2019


WHEN LIEUTENANT COLONEL Joseph Goana takes off in his T-38 Talon training jet, he flies a loop north toward the Red River, which forms a meandering border between north Texas and southern Oklahoma. For decades, the remote farming area has been an ideal training ground for Air Force pilots like Goana. But in recent years, he says, there’s been a new obstacle: wind turbines that now generate a third of Oklahoma’s electricity and 17 percent of the power in Texas.

"We need the space above the ground unimpeded so we can fly low to the ground," says Goana, commander of the 80th Training Wing at Sheppard Air Force Base. "Sort of like driver’s ed."

A year ago, military leaders at Sheppard joined state officials to beat back a proposed wind farm in nearby Oklahoma. But base officials now worry about more proposed wind farms that keep cropping up. They say they have been forced to close three of 12 low-flying training routes in the past decade because of “wind farm encroachment.”

“One or two is OK, we will move over,” Goana says about shifting Sheppard's training routes, which also have to avoid cell towers and radio masts. “But now it’s almost completely clogged.”

Similar disputes between some military officials and wind farm developers are underway in North Carolina, Tennessee, and upstate New York. In California, the Navy wants to declare the Pacific Ocean from Big Sur to the Mexican border off limits to proposed offshore wind farms, because they would conflict with "the requirements of Navy and Marine Corps missions conducted in the air, on the surface, and below the surface of these waters.”

…

For the entire article, see
https://www.wired.com/story/the-military-is-locked-in-a-power-struggle-with-wind-farms/

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650/961-8918 
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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