Granite Mountain Wind Energy Project

[Materdaddy]

Well said Max!

[Max7]

Apple Valley opposes wind turbines!

As Mitch "Great 88" Pointed out,
"Well,

There is some good news on the "Wind Generator" project. Front page of todays Daily Press (Victorville/High Desert) states "Apple Valley opposes wind turbines". The article further states that "The Apple Valley Town Council is adamantly opposing the 27 wind turbines proposed for Granite Mountain. Goods news for local residents!

The rest of the story is at: www.vvdailypress.com

Mitch"

Awesome Mitch, A step in the right direction! I noticed that there is a place for comments at the end of the article...

Best, Max7

[sarah]

Wow, this is great news!! I gave the town council a call and thanked them for opposing this on record. Their number is (760) 240-7000 ext. 7800.

[Max7]

Scope of it...

I'm trying to find info on what it means for the actual sites they put this on. I know it gives right of way to these projects, but does it close the area off completely? Will it have any effect on energy costs to local homeowners? I've seen these windmill sites off the 5 in central California and they do take up a big chunk of land.

I keep thinking about the radio towers and relays on Santiago Peak(Saddleback Mountain) in OC. Individually, they are private property but they each take up a really small footprint. You can still drive to, through and around them and it's pretty interesting. The impact is small. Are we talking about something similar or is this just going to be a fence blocking off hundreds of acres at a time?

Here you go:

How big are the towers? (BTW Ours would be 415' tall.)

Industrial wind turbines are not the benign little structures you might see in a schoolyard or behind someone's house.

The widespread GE 1.5-megawatt model, for example, consists of 116-ft blades atop a 212-ft tower for a total height of 328 feet. The blades sweep an area just under an acre. The 1.8-megawatt Vestas V90 from Denmark is also common. Its 148-ft blades (sweeping more than 1.5 acres) are on a 262-ft tower, totaling 410 feet. Also gaining use in the U.S. is the 2-megawatt Gamesa G87 from Spain, which sports 143-ft blades (just under 1.5 acres) on a 256-ft tower, totaling 399 feet.

Many existing models and new ones now coming out reach well over 400 feet high, with higher towers and extra-long blades designed to turn the generator in less-than-ideal sites.

The base of the steel tower is anchored in a platform of more than a thousand tons of cement and steel rebar, 30 to 50 feet across and anywhere from 6 to 30 feet deep. Pylons may be driven down farther to help anchor the platform.

The gearbox -- which transforms the slow turning of the blades to a faster rotor speed -- and the generator are massive pieces of machinery housed in a bus-sized container, called the nacelle, at the top of the tower. The blades are attached to the rotor hub at one end of the nacelle. Some nacelles include a helicopter landing pad.

On the GE 1.5-megawatt model, the nacelle alone weighs more than 56 tons, the blade assembly weighs more than 36 tons, and the tower itself weighs about 71 tons, for a total weight of 164 tons. The corresponding weights for the Vestas V90 are 75, 40, and 152, total 267 tons, and for the Gamesa G87 72, 42, and 220, total 334 tons.

Besides the noise and vibrations such huge moving machines unavoidably generate, they must be topped with flashing lights day and night to increase their visibility.

So the footprint is less than 50 feet?

Hardly. First of all, new roads have to be built, or existing ones need to be extensively "upgraded." It requires more than an old dirt logging track to get a 150-ft blade, a 70-ton nacelle, or the huge crane needed to put it all together up a mountain. The road needs to be wide, straight, and very strong.

Several acres around each turbine have to be cleared as well. For best performance, the GE 1.5-megawatt turbine needs 82 unobstructed acres around it and the Vestas V90 needs 111. On a ridgeline, the sloping away of the land and the hope that the wind is always perpendicular to the line of the ridge mean that about 5 acres are actually cleared around each turbine.

Access to the area around the turbines must be strictly limited because of physical danger.

A facility may also require a new substation or two, as well as new transmission lines.

The combination of all this -- road building, extensive clearing, and the installed facility itself -- not only significantly degrades and fragments wildlife habitat but also has a serious effect on erosion and water flow, not to mention the aesthetics of a mountainside or open land.

And of course the visual intrusion affects the landscape for miles around.
source: http://www.aweo.org/faq.html

Best,Max7

[Kodiak Spirit]

yeah Max, but it$ green $$ power... $$ right? $$

[Max7]

yeah Max, but it$ green $$ power... $$ right? $$

I think the hippies are wearing suits...man. I don't buy it.

[sarah]

At the town hall meeting last week, the town voted to officially oppose the windmills. This is great news because Granite Mountain LLC is now shaking in their boots. However, 2 members, Bob Sagona and Peter Allan kept the vote from being unanimous. Make sure you jot those names down - this is an election year!! Bob Sagona and Peter Allan!! The problem now is that Granite Mountain LLC thinks the residents of Apple Valley do not oppose it because the public scoping meetings have been ghost towns. If you live in Apple Valley or ANY of the high desert, you need to be participating, or you just might have windmills in your backyard next. Public scoping meeting tomorrow night!

Roll Call

[Desert Jewel]

Hey Sarah I copied your post and emailed it to all of the VV4W's. I have to work o/t this week, but will try to make it to the meeting tomorrow.

[karstic]

How did the meeting go last night?

[sarah]

It was good, alot of people came - I'm not good at estimating, but maybe 200? A few were "for" the windmills but of those at least a couple didn't even live here, which was strange. Alot of questions went unanswered by the "panel" of Granite Wind and the BLM.

Word is getting around quickly and more people are becoming active in submitting comments and opposing the project. Everyone needs to keep their head up - this is not over, and We The People do indeed have the power to stop this, if enough of us do exercise that right.

[CRASH!]

I found the whole thing to be typical political bullsh!+

Most questions were answered with *what you wanted to hear* even if they contradicted themselves.

The more pointed questions were danced around with alot of pointless drivel that lacked any sort of real content and then a complete subject change.

The fallback was always the guilt ridden, *green* diatribe "But it's good for the environment"


What they are planning on doing is turning Johnson rd. from the Lucerne side into a 20 foot wide gravel road. At the North side of the mountain range they are going to "cut in" a road that runs up to the peak and along the ridgeline. They will trench the ridge to lay their high voltage cable and build the 50' diameter, 8' deep foundations for the 28 windmills. Each windmill will have a 6' square transformer on a seperate foundation and there will be various other transformers, power stations, batch plants and other out-buildings throughout the hills.

"But we'll try and keep blasting to a minimum"

Currently Johnson rd. is a rough 4WD trail which keeps alot of the riff-raff out of the area.

The only way to get to the area's they are planning on using is a several mile uphill hike. So the area is pristine, untouched wilderness. It is also home to, or on the migration path of: Mountain Lion, Bobcat, Kitfox, Big Horn Sheep, Coyote, Tortoise and many avain species including a mating pair of California Condor.

Yet they say the construction of all this will have little to no impact on the wildlife. It's hard for me to believe a year of construction, cutting in miles of roads, blasting through mountains and huge cranes hoisting 20 story tall windmill masts won't disturb the wildlife that currently live in peace and solitude.

Not to mention the nice new road that will allow the riff-raff to access the area, dump their trash, *tag* the windmills and destroy some of the historical artifacts in the area.

The reason they chose this specific location is because it is close to the high-voltage powerlines that tie into the main grid that spreads through all of So Cal.

When asked why they don't build them out in the middle of nowhere they said "Because running power lines is expensive"

If you think the project is about anything other than money, I believe you are mistaken.


Ride'on,

~CRASH!~

[Kodiak Spirit]

You know what allready runs through miles of nowhere desert? The very same High Voltage lines they want to tap into! Those lines go from here to Hoover and beyond, for them to say they need the project to be close to those lines is crap! where do they think that WE think those lines go when they dissappear over the horizon?

it kills me to hear them closing areas of offroading to protect condors or such, when they go and do stuff like this....

[USMC 0369]

All this shows to me is that there just aren't any rights for OHV users. And that the almighty dollar is stronger than any rights we would be given. If they can do this to an area where there are mating threatened species living...then very few things are going to stop the dollar bill.

However, if enough get involved. I don't recall if I've seen an e-tition for this cause yet?

[sarah]

I don't recall if I've seen an e-tition for this cause yet?

First post

[USMC 0369]

First post

duh...