Wind Energy Plans Could Disappear Over Flicker and Other Rules. Advocate Blows With the Wind When Turbines Get Close to Home.
State Representative Vicki Nardello (D-Prospect) was a leading advocate of clean energy production in Connecticut until some clean energy began swirling about her district. Her enthusiasm has, in Margaret Mitchell’s enduring phrase, gone with the wind.
Nardello is co-chairman of the legislature’s energy committee. The committee is considering a bill that would put the brakes on wind power in the state for months–maybe years. Nardello, who last year told WNPR’s John Dankosky that “the status quo is not acceptable,” may be having second thoughts about the virtues of innovation when it appears in Prospect, where BNE Energy, Inc., is seeking to build 2 wind turbines, along with 6 more in Colebrook.
House Bill 6249 would impose a moratorium on the Connecticut Siting Council’s consideration of wind turbine projects until the Council, in collaboration with other state agencies, develops and adopts comprehensive regulations. Those include addressing the pressing issue of “flicker,” the intermittent shadows cast by the turbine blades. This does not sound like a bill intended to speed the arrival of clean energy to Connecticut.
The public hearing on the bill is scheduled for Thursday, February 3rd.
3 comments
NIMD…..Not In My District……if she stuck to HER principles she would be voted out!!
I guess the good Missus Nardello does not believe in freedoms as she has stated, in this case freedoms of the wind power. Thank you for bringing this politico’s hypocrisy to the sunlight. In the radio interview you posted here, Nardello said furthering the renewable energy development “is extremely important for our jobs issue” in Connecticut. Listen to the interview…she also talked about such urgency to pass her huge legislation that “seeks to develop in-state renewables” because our state faces wasting millions of dollars in fees if Connecticut does not hit renewable energy source thresholds. If missus Nardello is calling for a moratorium, is that issue now not so pressing? Was she just trying to startle us last year? Here is the question, Mister Rennie: How will her good friends and supporters in the renewable energy special interest camps react to her moratorium proposal? Will they begin playing politics, or will they just keep their silence? Please investigate, sir.
As I’ve often noted here in the affluent exurbs, greenery is to keep the common folk out of town and preserve the view from the hoity toities houses. There is rarely a real environmental reason.
(Also the wind generators are ugly, unreliable, uneconomic etc.