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It would seem that Arrowhead Electric struck a nerve when it was revealed that Great River Energy was still going to be buying coal generated electricity into the future. I guess in a perfect world we would all drive electric cars, have unlimited power produced by sun and wind and “clean” would cover the landscape. The problem is, we are not there yet with our idealistic green energy solutions. We do not live in a perfect world and so often our “clean” way of living up here is just another “not in our backyard” situation. Arrowhead did state that more power was going to be purchased from another wind farm. In our environmentally clean state of mind, did we ever stop to think about where these “beautiful” wind farms are at and consider their environment?
I grew up on a small family farm in Southwest Minnesota. As a kid, one of my fond memories was lying on the lawn in the summer nights and marveling at the nighttime sky. The multitude of stars and the Milky Way and the Constellations were a marvelous wonder of nature to a curious mind. The family farm is now surrounded on three sides with hundreds of wind generators. The nighttime sky looks like an alien invasion with hundreds of red blinking lights. And then there is the miles of transmission lines connecting all the windmills, the birds that are killed and….. Oh well. For us folks up here at least it’s not in our back yard. I find it rather ironic that not too many years back when the talk of putting up a communication tower in northern Cook County was discussed it triggered an outrage that a couple of red blinking tower lights might be seen from the BWCA. Oh, the horror! But we solved that with a shorter, less efficient tower.
If less CO2 is our goal, why is there so little talk about nuclear power. Would converting the coal burning power plants to nuclear be well received? Wyoming is working on a proposal right now to convert one of its old generation stations to nuclear. The electrical infrastructure is there so wouldn’t this be a win / win? Or maybe we should produce our own regional power in our own back yard. We could convert the old Schroeder Power plant to a nuclear facility. Or if wind generators are a better fit perhaps, we could look at all those peaks in the Sawtooth range. I’m sure we could harness the breeze of Lake Superior with a number of well-placed windmills. Or maybe an offshore wind farm on Lake Superior? Wouldn’t we all feel better about keeping it all local? Probably not. Knowing most individuals up here they would rather just keep it in somebody else’s back yard. Our global mindedness leaves a lot of holes.
Some random thoughts from a displaced farm kid with great memories but only progressive ugliness to go home to.
Terry Spieker,
Hovland
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