Citizens in Opposition to the Fountain Wind Project
The purpose of the CIO FWP is to promote the safety, health, and cultural welfare of the affected Intermountain communities, and surrounding areas, by exposing how the negative impacts of the Fountain Wind Project far outweigh the claimed benefits. Wind energy is not as clean and green as advertised.
Communities around the World are dealing with the negative impacts and pushing back on big wind projects to get them stopped in their areas. The CIO FWP community meetings will provide documented information where communities are putting restrictions in place, such as in some areas of LA and San Bernardino counties, to ban large turbine wind development where the electrical demand is greater. The turbines proposed for the Fountain Wind Project would be some of the tallest in the United States.
Studies show that wind power is not as green as previously thought and its energy generation is unpredictable. It is an intrusive industrialization of rural and wild areas which require extensive expansion of transmission lines. The wind turbines add noise, light, visual pollution, destroy and fragment wildlife habitat and wetlands, destroy sacred cultural resources and history, cause health issues, increase wildfire risks, add instability and inefficiencies to the electrical grid, and increased energy rates. These wind projects are subsidized by taxpayers for the benefit of Big Wind and continue to divide communities.
The on-going CIO FWP meetings will provide updates regarding the Shasta County Fountain Wind Project, invite local community representatives and news outlets to hear and post community objections, provide updates to the Stop Wind Web page, and distribute informational Newsletters in an effort to expose the truth and stop the Fountain Wind Project.
Get informed regarding the negative impacts of wind energy. We can’t let the infusion of a few dollars by Big Wind into the local community destroy its character and put us all at risk.
FOUNTAIN WIND NEGATIVE IMPACTS
Wildfires: Increases risk, new transmission lines, turbines attract lightning, located in highest rated fire hazard zones by both Cal Fire and CPUC. Shallow soil and soil type makes lightning grounding systems more difficult and problematic.
Economic & Social Impacts: Drastically reduces property values for all properties that enjoyed views of Shasta County’s eastern range. Local properties near turbines may be worthless, local community likely to wither as people move or abandon properties and fewer people move in. Any positive tax revenue from Turbines may be offset by reduced property taxes due to loss in assessed value.
Tourism: No longer a place to enjoy Nature. Tourists will be driving through an Industrial Wind Farm to visit Intermountain Communities, beautiful Burney Falls, and Fall River areas.
Tribal Cultural Resources: Destroys sacred cultural resources and history, Pit River Nation is opposed, other neighboring tribes opposed.
Hydrology and water quality: Miles of new roads, blasting, Soil compaction, Hundreds of tons of concrete and other materials, transformer oils, herbicides usage. Likely to affect local springs and waterways.
Biological Resources (wildlife): Threatens local Bald eagles, spotted owls, raptors, migratory birds (located in “Globally Significant Avian Area”). Likely to affect various mammals due to ability to hear and use infrasound and other noise affects shadow flicker, etc.
Public Health: Shadow Flicker, Noise, Infrasound, Increased stress. Shadow flicker already observed across Hwy 299 from Hatchet Ridge Wind Turbines.
Aesthetics: Visual pollution, obtrusive lighting (day and night) and industrialization of Forest Lands, able to be seen from neighboring counties. Only the beginning “Coming to a neighborhood near you”
Not as Green as Advertised: Only produces 20-25% of advertised capacity, clears 2250 acres of carbon sequestering forest, requires fossil fuel backup when winds not blowing, curtails existing green hydropower when winds blowing implies 0% green benefit.
Energy: Round Mountain substation already has voltage stability issues, already producing more power than we need (CA ISO paid Arizona to take power in 2018), PG&E requested permission to Curtail Hatchet Ridge power during negative pricing events (i.e. too much power on grid). PG&E has enough Renewable Energy to meet requirements to 2030 according to PG&E 2018 letter to CPUC.
The construction of industrial wind farms cannot be justified in the rural and wild places that developers usually target!