Fatal Attraction: Birds and Wind Turbines
With California’s ambitious renewable energy goal, the state needs wind power. But California’s largest wind farm cluster at Altamont Pass unintentionally kills golden eagles, burrowing owls and other threatened birds. Now, wind companies, scientists and environmentalists are working to bird-proof these massive wind farms.
You may view the “Fatal Attraction: Birds and Wind Turbines” TV Story online, as well as find additional links and resources. Also, you can see additional photos for this story.
Gabriela Quirós is a Segment Producer for KQED-TV, and is the producer for this story.
This is an extortion racket. The attorney was right…it will never be over (”10 years”) because he and the wildlife biologists will keep raking in the bucks.
The very same people who demanded alternative sources of energy are now making that source prohibitively expensive. And they will NEVER be satisified as long as they can file suits and collect fees and attorney costs.
wow, I’m going to have to agree with the above. that lawsuit was completely bogus. Even more disappointing was that PBS (the “public’s” network, right?) covered this topic in a completely lopsided manner. Maybe the video could be reproduced to shed some light on the other side of this issue?
This was a good beginning but before you can make the blanket assumption a species is endangered in any eco-system, it is important to establish the numbers it can be supported and the numbers resident in the system. No studies have ever undertaken this objective task. It is easy to say that the population is endangered much harder to determin it objectively.
The bigger problem over the last few years is the death of birds and other animals from West Nile Virus. Thousands of birds and other animals die from this each year and it also take its toll on the human population. No effort is made to control the insect populations that cause its spread. Which is much easier and cheaper than walking around the hills looking for dead birds. Just add fish to the cattle ponds and spray the smaller wetlands. Of course if we don’t then we don’t have to worry about the wind mills killing the birds and we can point to their lower numbers and make the assumption, wind mills must have killed them off. Lifetime job security for the eco-grads pouring out of our higher fonts of learning but a lot less animals to count.
The real story is the wind mill industry, these are a eye sore, produce little or no real energy in a cost effective manner, require massive government tax breaks, have a negative impact on the entire eletrical grid system and are the largest construction project in the entire state in native habitat. The only thing worse is solar energy production which clears and kill off everything for the installation of solar reflectors and boilers.
We would do more for the reduction of our dependance on oil and coal if we unplugged our TV’s, AC units, computers and appliances but of course we want the painless solution that makes us feel good too.
And yet, again, man is bad, very bad, for trying to do the right thing. It figures that the windmills, put into place with millions of tax credits and other incentives, are now responsible for killing birds! Really what happened is that the eco-terrorists discovered a new cash cow to exploit as anti-animal.
Did anyone ever do a dead bird count before the windmills? How about in other migratory places near Altamont? What about Mt. Diablo? or Mt. Hamilton? No, what would be the point. Who could they sue if cattle ranches produced the same numbers of dead birds?
To make the windmills safer, they made them taller, and saved some burrowing owls. And killed more red-tail hawks, which have a much more important role in this ecosystem. Well done!
I hope that the eco-freaks realize how well they have insulated their jobs for the next dozen years. I can only wish for that kind of job security (and I am a HUMAN health care worker!)
You bloggers don’t know what your talking about the attorneys didn’t get their costs covered in the Altamont law suit. I know because my organization CAlifornians for Renewable Energy, Inc. (CARE)spent three years fighting the County of Alameda over the wind farms cutting up large raptors with impunity from federal and state law until 2005 when we filed suit against the County. I spent $4,500 (which the attorney got) to file the suit of which $2,600 came out of my pocket. I don’t get paid anything for my work for CARE. When we settled the suit we got $15,000 of which $10,500 went to the attorney. Sorry to burst your blogger bubbles but I wouldn’t count on doing this for a living.
I appreciate Audubons help but they didn’t get involved util after CARE had done all the heavy lifting. In the mean time despite endless promises by the wind industry to clean up their act the slaughter continues in the Altamont Pass, while the federal and state enforcement authorities look the other way.
Would you mind giving us the details of the case so we can verify that the attorneys were not paid???
And are you telling that the “inspectors” are being paid?
The extortion racket of the environmental movement involves filing suits so attorneys and inspectors and trust funds get big bucks.
The EPA is famous for giving grants to groups like the American Lung Assoc, so it can file a suit, which the EPA does NOT defend, which results in a judgment against the EPA (that is us…the taxpayers), paying huge court costs and imposing draconian regulations.
The EPA relies on these tactics to get regulations in place that cannot be justified by science or cost analysis.
Congratulations to you, Michael, if you have managed to have the only suit in environmnetal history not reimbursing the attorneys and inspectors and trust funds big time.
And my hat’s off to you if you are one of the few who put his money where his mouth is.
I live on the Altamont Pass, I feed the rabbits that feed the raptors that everyone is concerned about. From my bedroom window I can watch 3 different holes that contain families of Borrowing Owls. Each hole contains about 10 or 11 birds including the parents These little guys, on top of NOT being an endangered species,{ species of interest currently} wouldn’t have any problem avoiding anything moving towards them .
Almost daily a family of Eagles, a large male and female with a smaller, and I assume younger, bird accompanies them. They hunt the hill behind my house. They roost in the platforms of ABANDONED and active windmills to stake out their area before the kill. I have never seen them have any trouble with avoiding the blades, but they may have. In regards to the Niles virus killing birds up here, that’s what I hear about the dead crows and other birds we find , I don’t know if true but if it is why are things not being done to correct this serious problem.
As for filing suit against the county? You would have done more good putting shiny things on the blades I think, but I could be wrong.
AS FOR SELF RIGHTEOUS DO GOOD ENVIRONMENTALIST WHO COME ON MY PROPERTY TO TELL ME THEY HAVE MORE CONCERN FOR MY ANIMALS THEN I DO! THEY REALLY PISS ME OFF NO END!!! AND THEM MAKING $100,000 TO INSULT MY INTELIGENCE .
Joe
Gina & Joe,
Sorry for the delay in responding. My attorney did get paid exactly $10,500.00 for about 500 hours time over three years that works out to about $20/hour. Show me another attorney that works for $20/hour?
Gina your wrong about EPA grants any EPA grant requires the grant recipient to waive their right to sue EPA as a condition of recieving the grant.
I know because I’ve received grants before and I can assure you no one gives you a grant to sue anyone you have to do this on your own and usually out of your own pocket. I’ve brought about a dozen environmental suits (funded out of pocket) but I still have to keep my day job to pay my bills. As much as I wish I could make a living off of law suits I wouldn’t risk my home for this one. If you ever meet any evironmentalists living off of law suit tell me who it id do I can get some pointers since I’m obviously doing something wrong.
Why hasn’t someone come up with the idea of putting protective covers on these wind turbines? Similar to the covers you find on most portable electric fans for home use. Using a mesh small enough so that birds don’t get sucked into the blades but wide enough so wind blows easily through the mesh.
Another oversight is how many birds are dying from oil based products and other pollutants getting into the water and food sources for the birds. Thin egg shells and other problems diminishing the populations. It is easy to blame the wind mills as the birds lay dead beneath them…. but once put into perspective the wind mills are the least of the worries. Once the ecosystem fails from too high pollutant levels there won’t be birds left to fly into the wind mills.
Re: Protective covers, probably won’t work because they disrupt the wind flow.
Wow! If you ever get a chance to get up close to one of these wind turbines, known to slice and dice the birds, you will find the cutting edge of the blade varies in thickness from 6″ to 18″ and like a wing on an airplane the wind over the blade provides “lift” which turns the blade. The blade causes a disturbance in the wind much like a sailboats sail, hence the need to stagger there locations. Unlike a propeller the birds cannot be drawn or blown into the blades. The newer taller units have a base over 20 feet in diameter and stand over 150 feet with blades of 50 feet; a cutting edge much thicker than the older units and the blades move at a slower rate of speed.
All this movement and the noise created by the generators really attracts the birds and they fly through, not looking, and get hit with the razor sharp cutting edge and are hacked to pieces? How come we don’t hear about the Buzzards killed? They should be piled up at the base since they only look for dead animals and move in slow circles but maybe they can see the blade coming?
I submit, rather than slice the bird a blade hit would crush it. However, in order for this to happen the bird would need to fly through the back pressure caused by the compression of air over the moving blade. This is the same as hitting a bird with you car, it can happen but it is very unlikely given the nature of the animal and the dynamics of the wind over the surface. If this was not the case we would have dead birds strewn along our highways much like the dog, cats and other small creatures we see there everyday.
Pictures of decapitated birds help garner support but are more likely due to the eating habits of the local animal population and not the blades.
In the wild we would expect to find dead birds since they are not immortal they due die of old age, other predators, gun shot, poison and West Nile Virus and just because we find them near turbines has more to do with the number of turbines and not the number of bird hits. You find dead people in hospitals, doesn’t mean that hospitals cause dead people. Come to think of it, I could be wrong there?
Was that a reference to DDT I read? You have just got to do some reading on this subject or just stay duped, your call.
I always like the one about the oil spill in Santa Barbara. Oil has washed up on the shore there since the Chumash Indians used it to pitch their canoes. Put in a few oil wells and you have the makings of a state wide ban on all off shore drilling. They have installed drill rigs in the North Sea and never spilled a drop but that is not the pristine beaches of the gold coast of Southern California with live in moron movie stars.
Rather than a fan cover, like the one on my desk fan, it may be possible to install noise makers like pop guns. These are used at local dumps to keep away the birds. I am sure many of those living or visiting the country wouldn’t mind the bang and pop caused by thousands of wind mills! No! Well then it’s the fan covers, sound feasible and it is an eye pleasing idea. Let’s see they have to stand a good 50 to 150 feet tall wrap around the blade leaving little or no room for mistaken entry, piece of cake!
In the alternative we could fall back on Darwin. The birds that survive will be the ones that learn not to hunt around the generators. Of course the creatures on the ground will find they survive best if they hang around the things. So that may not work either.
Let’s take a look at those Diablo Canyon plans again and just how much would it cost to restart that plant in Sacramento?
No matter, wind turbines don’t generate that much power anyway and given the costs and constant legal battles it is just a matter of time until they are gone too. I particularly like the abandoned old wind mills with there generators missing and that fan just turning to beat the band 24/7/365.
There is the future of wind power, owners bankrupt and the cost to remove them exceeding the value of the ranches they sit on, this eye candy is going to keep on giving and giving and giving and if we are lucky maybe we have a few with covers, like the one on my desk fan.
Use one sound repellent in each tower that only birds hear, it is so easy and inexpensive.
Please see the TMA wind solution: http://www.tmawind.com, Bird friendly, Bat friendly, and scaleable to almost any location, a roof for example. Imagine that, generating energy anywhere, not just energy farms.
Gee thanks Bill,
Thanks for un-dupeing me about everything. Let’s let those stupid non-human species just figure out how to live around all the crap we are covering the earth with, let Darwin sort it out.
Never mind they have no natural mechanism to do so and we keep throwing crap at them with more speed than Darwin could ever have anticipated when he observed the tendencies of evolution all those years ago.
If you want to live on a planet as the only species, you are well on your way. Good luck with that.
In 2003 the industrial windplant at Altamont, CA had 576 MW of installed capacity and generated 1,071 GWh of electricity – operating with an annual capacity factor of only 21.2% (very low). Effectively, a very small 150 MW generation facility powered by natural gas and operating with only an 80% capacity factor (easily do-able) would have produced the same amount of electricity in that year as the many thousands of wind turbines at Altamont (and with a vastly smaller “footprint”). California already has over 70 electricity generators that are this large or larger (as of Dec 2004). The power produced by Altamont’s wind turbines represented only 0.45% of CA’s annual consumption of electricity in 2003.
Nonetheless, the 120 aMW of effective wind generating capacity (i.e., 21% of 576 MW) from the wind turbines at Altamont in 2003 may have offset about 340,000 tons of CO2 emissions - assuming that each kWh produced by wind turbines “saved” on average an amount of CO2 emissions per kWh that was equivalent to the per kWh emissions represented by the mix of all of CA’s other generators. This is a very big assumption which needs to be examined more closely to see if wind energy could disproportionately displace other renewables such as hydro or possibly nuclear - for which it would have no air pollution or climate change benefit - or if it displaced dirtier forms of power generation and should get more credit.
Since CA fortunately does not use any significant amount of coal to generate power, and relied mainly on much cleaner (and carbon-light) natural gas, the actual emissions benefits of wind energy are much smaller than if the same renewable energy generating capacity was operating elsewhere in the US. About 92 tons of SO2 may have been offset by the generation of electricity by Altamont’s wind turbines in 2003, as well as displacing about 30 tons of NOx (a precursor ingredient to ozone formation).
Again, since coal is not a meaningful part of the CA’s generation capacity, there was virtually no offset of mercury emissions as a result of Altamont’s wind turbines.
Although these offsets of CO2, SO2 and NOx imply a “benefit” in terms of air pollution and global warming, they are nonetheless not very large. It begs the question of whether the tradeoff in terms of birds killed is adequately offset by the presumed air pollution and climate change benefits.
I couldn’t find any estimate for CO2 emissions by powerplants in CA in 2004, but EPA claims there was 61.2-million tons of this greenhouse gas emitted in 2001 - which represented an increase of 5.5-million tons over emissions levels in 2000. So, Altamont’s potential benefit in lessening CO2 emissions by CA powerplants is that a net increase of only 5.5-million tons of CO2 were emitted as opposed to a net increase of 5.8-million tons being released between 2000 and 2001.
Furthermore, CA’s total annual CO2 emissions dwarf those released by powerplants. Again, I could find no more recent data than 2001, but it appears that powerplants were responsible for only about 15% of the CO2 emissions attributable to man-made causes in CA. 419.38-million tons of CO2 were emitted in CA from all combustion sources - and without Altamont a total of 419.7-million tons may have been released (a “reduction” of 0.077%). However, since total CO2 emissions from all man-made sources also increased between 2001 and 2002 - there was no actual reduction – only a very, very small decline in the rate of increase of CO2 emissions.