Supervisor Fennell Should ‘Vote Against the Ill-Conceived Terra Gen Project,’ Says Letter to the Editor

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Letter to the EditorDear Supervisor Fennell:

I, my family, friends and hundreds, possibly thousands of your constituents urge you to vote against the ill-conceived Terra Gen Project. I know of no-one who does not support clean, renewable energy sources. However, the proposed location is probably one of the worst locations imaginable, not only in Humboldt County, but the entire west coast, environmentally, ecologically, culturally and aesthetically. Like with any project, it’s all about location.

I truly find it hard to believe that anyone can support the project if in fact they did read the DEIR, FEIR, public comments, comments by organizations, including the Northcoast Environmental Center, Environmental Protection Information Center, Humboldt 350, California Native Plant Society, Redwood Region Audubon, and Redwood Chapter of the Sierra Club, American Bird Conservancy and the Citizens for Responsible Wind Development. In addition, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife determined that proposed location is a Category 4 site, “Project Sites Inappropriate for Wind Development.” Furthermore, I understand that the Regional Water Quality Control Board is recommending denial.

The cultural resource impacts, bird fatalities, including eagles, hawks and other raptors, marbled murrelets, migratory species, bat fatalities, planned rodent extermination, the conversion of timberland, agricultural land, increased fire danger, the unfathomable amount of wet weather grading in an area of high instability and highly erodible soils and the associated sediment transport into the Eel River as a result of this poorly located project is unacceptable.

My wife and I recently drove-up to Bear River Ridge. What a majestic spot! One could see for what appeared to be 50 miles, Trinidad, Fickle Hill, Kneeland, Barry Summit, Iaqua Buttes, Black Lassic and South Fork Mountain. These “Iron Giants” will impact the views from all these places, not to mention the nearby Humboldt Redwoods State Park, the communities of Rio Dell, Scotia, Stafford, Holmes, Shively, Hydesville, Carlotta, Fortuna and the entire Eel River Valley. While we were there, a large number of flocks of geese, an eagle, hawk and a kite flew overhead and around us. It was truly surreal to think that this environmental setting could be dramatically altered for decades if not longer.

As you know, if approved, the project will be litigated. Many commenters, including attorneys, biologists and other scientific and environmental experts believe the DEIR and FEIR are technically and legally flawed. Can the County afford another court case?

Millions of visitors a year come to Humboldt County to see our majestic redwoods, our rivers, beaches, lagoons and our dramatic coast lines. Those visitors won’t be talking about our incredible natural landscape, they’ll be asking “How did you let that happen?”

The Board’s upcoming vote will be a defining, watershed moment for all Board members and the County as a whole. How do you want to be remembered?

Kevin Caldwell, Miranda

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36 Comments
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Bozo
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Bozo
4 years ago

Interesting. NIMBY.

You used electricity to write this. Other people are using electricity to read it.
According to scientists, the number one threat to the environment is global warming due to
CO2 production. CO2 was generated to produce the electricity to write/host/post this message.

Other technologies are available, but it will take years to apply them. This is available now.

If nothing happens to counteract global warming, your Bear River Ridge will become a sparse grassland desert… as will the Avenue of the Giants.

Captain Crunch
Guest
Captain Crunch
4 years ago
Reply to  Bozo

STRONG AGREE.

Willow Creeker
Guest
Willow Creeker
4 years ago
Reply to  Captain Crunch

Second that. Everything has a some impact. People would line up and complain over any development. Do it right, do it well, but do it, because we need alternative power now.

Climate change the way they say it is, is a complete fabrication.
Guest
Climate change the way they say it is, is a complete fabrication.
4 years ago
Reply to  Willow Creeker

You all are buying into the lies of climate change. Show me on this website what proof you have in life threatening climate change. It is false the climate does change here and there then bounces back every fifty years. This is nothing new and normal. The ski is falling the ski is falling , y2k is going take us all out unless you buy all this stuff and you’ll be safe. What a phucking joke!
Chew on that!

Ummmmmm
Guest
Ummmmmm
4 years ago

Tell that to the polar bears

another guest in the wall
Guest
another guest in the wall
4 years ago
Reply to  Ummmmmm

polar bears can take care of themselves…or sign up for zoo life like the rest of us….lol

Willow Creeker
Guest
Willow Creeker
4 years ago

Facts are facts, except in this Trump world you live in. I remember when I was a kid we did a science experiment about ‘the law of conservation of matter’, which basically says that matter can’t be destroyed, but only change form. So if you weigh a sugar cube in a closed box, then burn the sugar cube in a closed box, the box weighs the same. The burned sugar cube weighs the same as the smoke from the sugar cube. So imagine all the internal combustion engines burning all the stuff from deep in the ground, and putting it into the air.
You take 93 million barrels of oil every day (average daily use in 2015) and put it into the atmosphere, you don’t think that’s going to change things a little bit? It’s common sense.
I’ve seen the snow level rising around here just in my short lifetime, and the pond I use to run around on in winter never freeze in the last 20 years. It used to freeze every winter. Don’t tell me nothing is going on!

Change
Guest
Change
4 years ago
Reply to  Willow Creeker

Engines, dumb. Did you know that the volcano in New Zealand as put off more gas and co2 than all off our cars in about ten minutes, and you gonna believe the propaganda. Earth has a way of cleaning its self, or we would have been gone during the industrial revolution. Trump is listening to the other scientists that believe the sky is not falling. When Democrats want to keep you reeling one disaster because that makes them money.
And someone on hear said something about polar bears, did you see it for yourself or a you regurgitating what you heard.

Dan F
Guest
Dan F
4 years ago
Reply to  Bozo

These proposed “Iron Midgets” won’t do Spit to help with Climate Change!!! According to Terra Gen’s own info these will NEVER be Carbon Neutral for the life of them!!! So why go to all the headache & destroying the LOCAL Environment to put them up ???!!!

Bushytails
Guest
Bushytails
4 years ago
Reply to  Dan F

Where is this info you claim exists? Please quote or accurately cite it.

Watt
Guest
Watt
4 years ago
Reply to  Bushytails

Dan F has continued to spew BS like this and never backs anything up with fact, its just spreading false information.

Yeah,sure
Guest
Yeah,sure
4 years ago
Reply to  Watt

We have a President that lies or makes misleading statements every👏single👏day. Over 15,000 since inauguration at current count.
Bold faced lies . It’s the new normal. Say whatever the fuck you want and pretend it’s the truth. If you watched the impeachment hearings and watched the GOP tell boldfaced lie after lie., hey, lying is the new normal.
So if you are a Republican, do not come here and lecture anyone on the merits of “telling the Truth”. No one has to tell the truth anymore, remember that.

Guest
Guest
Guest
4 years ago
Reply to  Yeah,sure

Every President in the last few decades told lies- consistently. All of them, all the time , when they bother to say anything. Frequently even their silence is a lie. However what liberals love to call lies in Trump are actually a pretty large disregard for worrying that other might think. He hates being proven wrong and will tap dance all over to explain why it was someone else’s fault but in the end, he doesn’t check himself for fear of criticism.

One big difference between Trump and other Presidents is that he has not ever learned what most politicians accept early on- that if you want to get elected, you have to do things under the table because the generally the public will object but also will not vote for you if you don’t do them and then you have to like about it in a way that allows just enough doubt that they can ignore it when they find out. And this very thing made his opponents think he surely must be easy to attack because they were all so sure he was really doing something under cover that was as evil as they would do in his place. Only they were sure he would not be quiet about and thus play into their hands.

Imagine their continuous frustration when time after time they announce they got him only to find, after frantically digging through their own dirt, that he was cleaner than they were. Oh the horror- Trump is not using the time honored tactics that politicians diligently apply as a matter faith, but they can’t stick him with much of anything other than being offensive.

Don’t worry. It’s a personal talent strictly Trump’s own. When he leaves office, there will not be another like him. Politicians will settle back with a sigh of relief that their unwritten rules of veniality, self aggrandizement and outright graft can go back to its time honored place – always done but never talked about. Liberals will rejoice to no longer having to worry that someone will be offensive without actually being the evil they think that means. Their favored politicians will be even more evil but their lies are more successful. And liberals can live with that quite well. Hating with immunity is so much more the liberal style. It’s not the hate they find objectionable but they dearly miss their immunity.

Yeah,sure
Guest
Yeah,sure
4 years ago
Reply to  Guest

So many words to say nothing. Thanks. What is it with some commenters, they write a novella when a few sentences would do. More words doesn’t mean you’re more persuasive or right.

WTF
Guest
WTF
4 years ago

JUST LET IT BURN INSTEAD DO NOTHING INSTEAD

Watt
Guest
Watt
4 years ago

Yeah, who needs a renewable energy source in our back yard and money put into the county.

Willie Caos-mayham
Guest
4 years ago

🕯🌳Wow one day it’s for it, the next it’s against it, but there still coming unless somebody comes up with some Star Trek from of Energy we will convert to what’s up next until the next best option.

another guest in the wall
Guest
another guest in the wall
4 years ago

Tesla already did. ..

that’s the billion dollar question.

why sacrifice the planet for a profit. ?

that’s the way it is

Ivy league indoctrination. .

Guest
Guest
Guest
4 years ago

No he did not. If you’re talking about wireless transmission, living in a constant electrical storm would be uncontrollably dangerous and extremely wasteful of power. At that time, there was zero ability to narrowly focus such energy so it was simply scattered like a shotgun. Even now it is pretty hard to do.

lizard
Guest
lizard
4 years ago

I truly hope Estelle and the other supervisors heed this well-reasoned position.

Doggo the commie
Guest
Doggo the commie
4 years ago

It’s too late.
This has become ever more amusing as we spiral into global climate disaster and rearrange the deck chairs on Titanic earth.

laydownandtakeit
Guest
4 years ago

A large percentage of the money the county will receive will be from the Redwood Coast Energy Authority taxing the consumer(us) for power that goes to satisfy a different county’s renewable energy portfolio.
They’re going to bang it through no matter what, but the project can never be carbon neutral! Ever. The crap terra gen spews on the radio or in written word is pure propaganda. Makes me sick to hear it. Bunch of lies but the local proponents would have you think it’s a written contract. There is a place for wind energy and it’s not here.

another guest in the wall
Guest
another guest in the wall
4 years ago

the old dressed as the new.

brecht

Really?
Guest
Really?
4 years ago

If this project is not approved this minute, Terra-Gen will be back with a better project tomorrow. This location is too convenient to be relinquished by the capitalist. If it is approved now, the energy generated will be sucked into the maw of more consumer goods manufactured by China tomorrow with increased carbon spewed into the air. In China. Which does not stay in China. Somehow people do as they usually do with their money- it is spent as soon as it is generated. It’s the spending that’s the problem.

The people who advocate for this project at any cost refuse to notice that, once useful sources of wind power have been maxed out, the land is gone, the power needs still are exceeded. Only the land is gone. You can not spend your way out of this issue. You can not be saved from painful choices by technology. And you certainly can not wring every drop of energy from the environment without consequences. At least the NIMBY Insulters, who ought to be embarrassed over making light of other people’s concerns, need to consider what is they are demanding from others before the flicking them off with plagarized name calling.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/30/uk-electricity-use-falling-economy-weather

Barry
Guest
Barry
4 years ago

This is Humboldt’s last chance, due to the federal tax credit. Terra-Gen wont be back if this doesnt go through.

thetallone
Guest
thetallone
4 years ago
Reply to  Barry

Good.

Bushytails
Guest
Bushytails
4 years ago
Reply to  Barry

Hopefully our next president won’t be owned by the oil and coal industries, and will try to expand renewables tax credits.

Mike
Guest
Mike
4 years ago

Why is it the governments decision? Isn’t it a private company using private land supplying power through a private grid? Does the government own any part of it? The only thing they should be responsible for is any damages to the roads. The only thing the government will be doing is collecting tax revenue which they did nothing to earn it, like usual.

another guest in the wall
Guest
another guest in the wall
4 years ago
Reply to  Mike

the beauty and tragedy of government, however you want to look at it.

Jeffersonian
Guest
Jeffersonian
4 years ago

Fennell is on the board of RCEA and must recuse herself as they are promoting this project. She never returns phone calls or emails and talks in riddles. Vote her out. This is a bad project. And she is long overdue for replacement. Vote out Bohn and Bass too and any other supervisor who votes for this environmental disaster. I am going down today to sever my electric bill from RCEA and urge everyone else who opted for them to do so.

Cindy
Guest
Cindy
4 years ago

Thank you Kevin for a well written letter !

MikeyC
Guest
MikeyC
4 years ago

Even if you don’t believe in climate change, moving away from fossil fuels makes sense for a number of reasons… Oil is finite and middle eastern wars are perpetuated by oil money.

That said, get some solar panels so we don’t need to resort to mega projects like this. Solar panels create jobs locally and will be the same price or cheaper than your current electricity bill. Everyone’s gotta do their part.

Bushytails
Guest
Bushytails
4 years ago
Reply to  MikeyC

Solar can’t meet a large percentage of our area’s power needs. Even if every house put a grid-tied system on their roof that fully provided their average annual energy usage, it’d fail miserably. Grid-tie and net metering only works if both demand exceeds renewable supply and there’s sufficient non-solar generation capacity or storage. Unless we build the world’s largest grid-scale energy storage system (say, leveling the top of an entire local mountain chain and turning it into a reservoir for pumped hydro), and over-size the solar capacity by about 5-10 times, we need non-solar generation for the weeks of minimal sun we usually get in the winter. And wind is the only currently-existing renewable option we have for this.

Yeah,sure
Guest
Yeah,sure
4 years ago

Something I’m not understanding; this is the only site in Humboldt County that this is feasible? The only place that this can happen? What is Really going on here?
I thought windmills cause cancer, now we have all of the Conservatives in Humboldt pushing this project. Aren’t you afraid of getting cancer?

Luddite
Guest
Luddite
4 years ago

The Jevon’s Paradox:
Increased efficiency increases consumption.

Yeah,sure
Guest
Yeah,sure
4 years ago

Thank god the BOS said no and saved us all from Windmill cancer.