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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (27185)	7/26/2011 8:01:59 PM
From: Brumar89	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86355

... The plan by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) would allow for killing endangered whooping cranes. The government’s environmental review will consider a permit, sought by 19 energy developers, which would allow constructing turbines (over 300 feet tall) and associated transmission lines on non-federal lands in nine states from Montana to the Texas coast, encroaching on the migratory route of the cranes. The permit from the FWS would allow the projects to “take” an unspecified number of endangered species. Under the Endangered Species Act, “take” is just the euphemism for killing or injuring an endangered species. The government can issue permits to kill or injure listed species with no penalties or risks of lawsuits to developers if they agree to craft conservation plans. The Administration’s latest wind energy proposal raises concerns because the developments would imperil the habitat of the whooping cranes, including the Central Flyway (shown in purple), a migratory path that cuts through North America, not surprisingly where wind developers want to build, because of prevailing winds. The leading cause of death for the nation’s last historic population of whooping cranes, which stand at 5 feet and have a wingspan of more than 7 feet, is overhead utility lines, the Fish and Wildlife Service has said. FWS Director Dan Ashe said that wind energy is crucial to the nation’s future economic and environmental security, which is why the agency is paving the way for a renewable energy project with an undetermined number of wind turbines generating an unidentified amount of electricity along the 200-mile-wide corridor. How, oh how, will they guess at the number of whooping cranes to be sacrificed. I hope it’s not 280, the estimated number now, after decades of protection and up from an estimated 16 in 1930. ..... Other Species: More Favoritism As Darren Nelson writes in an upcoming edition of Heartland’s Environment and Climate News, wind turbines at Altamont Pass are killing approximately 67 protected golden eagles each year, as well as thousands of other birds. In a June interview with the Los Angeles Times, Doug Bell of the East Bay Regional Park District’s wildlife program warned that: “It would take 167 pairs of local nesting golden eagles to produce enough young to compensate for their mortality rate related to wind energy production [assuming no net positive immigration of these raptors]. We only have 60 pairs.” State and Federal wildlife regulators were set to let the areas Golden Eagles go extinct, all in the name of wind energy. It took a court order to finally shut down some of the turbines during the most hazardous times of the year. Whether it is enough to save the Eagle is yet to be seen. The 420 wind turbines now in Pennsylvania killed more than 10,000 bats last year — mostly in the late summer months, according to the state Game Commission. That’s an average of 25 bats per turbine per year, and the Nature Conservancy predicts as many as 2,900 turbines will be set up across the state by 2030. The wind farm mortality is an example of how harnessing renewable energy can lead to negative outcomes. Bat populations go down, bug populations go up. While wind energy is given a pass for killing endangered species, other natural resource users are less lucky. In Wyoming regulators fined a refinery owner $850,000 for violations that killed several dozen birds. ....... Back in California, because of environmental regulations designed to protect the three-inch long delta smelt, one of America’s premier agricultural regions is suffering in a drought made much worse by federal regulations. The state’s on-going water emergency is thanks to the latest mishandling of the Endangered Species Act. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a “biological opinion” imposing water reductions on the San Joaquin Valley to safeguard the federally protected delta smelt. As a result, tens of billions of gallons of water from mountains east and north of Sacramento have been denied farmers and just emptied into the ocean, leaving hundreds of thousands of acres of rich farmland scorched and non-productive. The National Marine Fisheries Service also concluded that local salmon and steelhead need to be defended from the valley’s water pumps. The result has already been devastating for the state’s farm economy. In the inland areas affected by the court-ordered water restrictions, the jobless rate has hit 14.3%, with some farming towns like Mendota seeing unemployment numbers near 40%. Food prices nationwide have seen increases as a result of the lack of water delivery. Fairness Isn’t it time that the Endangered Species Act is applied uniformly? Given the death of environmental benefits afforded by wind energy, isn’t it time to end the favoritism? .... masterresource.org