Beggar Thy Neighbour: Wind Industry Uses Subsidies to Steal Family Homes

Former Macarthur resident, Jan Hetherington had her home stolen by AGL.

 

In Australia, hundreds of law-abiding rural citizens have had their valuable property rights permanently destroyed by wind power outfits – with knowing assistance from all levels of government. Jan Hetherington (above) is just one of them: AGL’s Renewable Energy Future: Driving Wind Farm Neighbours From Their Homes Without Compensation

Property values for those unfortunate enough to be situated anywhere near these things, are a mere fraction of what they would otherwise be; and even the mere mention of a proposed wind farm has rendered plenty of properties unsaleable – at any price: Potential Wind Farm Neighbour Finds Idyllic Property is Now ‘Unsaleable’ at Any Price

Some might call it “State-Sponsored Theft” …. well … that’s what STT calls it.

With the Coalition’s plan for a further 2,500 (and Labor’s plan for another 11,000) of these things to be carpeted wall-to-wall, all over Australia’s rural heartland, it’s little wonder that rural communities are taking matters into their own hands, including setting up their very own noise monitoring systems to gather the evidence needed to sue wind power outfits and turbine hosts for noise nuisance: First Strike: Communities Threatened by Wind Farms Gathering Own Noise Data to Later Sue Turbine Hosts & Developers in Nuisance

Here’s an American take on what’s driving the fury, all over the World.

Property and wind turbines: A missing point in the discussion
Connersville NewsExaminer
John Pickerill
7 July 2017

There has been discussion recently over a possible wind farm in my county. Residents close to the proposed turbine towers are concerned about the health effects, about disrupted rural landscape and about what it will do to their property values.

Some are suggesting that newly proposed countywide zoning would have excluded the turbines or minimized any harm. They are wrong.

Both a former county councilman and the mayor brought up a relevant point in separate articles for the local newspaper: If you are going to defend the property rights and freedom of the individual, you must acknowledge that a property owner has the right to use his property however he sees fit.

But both overlooked the do-no-harm clause, i.e., as long as the property owner isn’t preventing someone else from doing the same or causing harm to someone else in the process.

It is a prerequisite for any freedom.

A landowner has the right to install a wind turbine or anything else on his property but he has the responsibility to make sure it doesn’t harm his neighbors. Scientific studies suggest that low-frequency noise from wind turbines, for example, may make people sick (sleep disorders, headaches, irritability, inability to concentrate).

If that turns out to be true, the landowner should be forced to take steps to prevent such harm, perhaps by increasing the setback of the towers from the closest property line or by installing noise-canceling technology.

But let’s not pretend the answer is more restrictive and broader land-use zoning.

There are five counties in Indiana with large wind farms (Benton, Randolph, White, Tipton, Madison) and all of them had countywide zoning.

Taking a step back from the current debate, there’s another point to consider. It regards the government subsidies to install wind turbines.

Because we all are forced to pay taxes, we are forced to pay for these wind power subsidies.

In a free society no energy source should receive any taxpayer subsidy.

Each power source – coal, oil, natural gas, ethanol, nuclear, solar, wind – should have to compete on its own merits, on being able to provide the best product (reliable electrical power) for the lowest price for the least harm to people or to the environment.

Coal, oil and nuclear are typically criticized in that regard. But fabricating solar cells produces some nasty by-products.

And again, wind energy produces possible health problems to those living close by, endangers wildlife such as bats and consumes a large amount of energy just to fabricate, transport and install those giant wind turbines and towers.

No energy source has clean hands and none is truly 100-percent “green.” The government’s role here is limited to upholding property rights and interceding if a property owner is doing harm to his neighbors.

With those guarantees in place, it is the free market and ingenuity that will determine which energy source (or combination thereof) best serves our community.

John Pickerill, past chairman of the Montgomery County Republican Party, wrote this for the Indiana Policy Review Foundation. A graduate of Purdue University and the Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program, Pickerill retired from the U.S. Navy with the rank of Commander.
Connersville NewsExaminer

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