Walker's windmill proposal...

[Archae]

1800 feet from any property line.

This will kill wind farm development.

Walker promised to bring jobs to Wisconsin.

He killed the high-spped rail. Jobs gone.

King Walker wants now to kill wind-farms. Jobs will be gone.

[HereSince1628]

1. The pisser is that it's really about preserving pastoral views

By not allowing a turbine to be placed in the best site relative to the wind, suitable opportunities are greatly limitied. Taking away the sites is taking away a landowner's right to harvest a value that came with the land just like water or minerals. And that's not a hypothetical thing, there IS a history of harvesting wind for power, and electricity on Wisconsin farms.

Walker is a typical elitist suburbanite, his connection to rural areas is driving through them as fast as possible with the kids in back watching television. As the ag-lands are mostly held by republicans it's rather surprising application of government interference. Wisconsin has rules on billboards also, and these rules are also to preserve the scenery--for whom? Again, for city people using a highway passing through ag-lands. This taking away a harvestable asset from a landowner should be accompanied by a payment, in the same way that buying mineral rights is compensated.

There was a brief but similar fight over cellphone towers, but the city people REALLY want to be able to call back their buds while on the road to tell them how pretty it is as they pollute their way from town to town on the interstate. here are now cellphone towers all over the Wisconsin landscape, many of them occupying high windy sites. They don't mind the 24/7 highway noise, but they're arguing about the noise of wind whistling in the blades of a power turbine.

McMansionists elitists wanting to control everything they can see from the postage stamp of land that they actually own. And they especially love hilltops where they can look out down on their neighbors. God forbid that someone use one of those perfect McMansion sites for a wind turbine!

[Viking12]

2. Wind farm payouts approach $3 million

..and now Walker wants to fuck this up too....

Local municipalities are profiting from the wind. While many residents in Fond du Lac and Dodge counties live nowhere near the turbines dotting the landscape, the revenue stream from the towering towers is helping to offset increases in property taxes.

Last year, owners of Wisconsin’s four largest wind energy projects paid out nearly $2.8 million in rent to landowners hosting turbines and payments in lieu of property taxes to local governments, according to figures compiled by RENEW Wisconsin, a statewide renewable energy advocacy organization.

Fond du Lac County, which is home to 166 wind turbines, received a revenue payment of $625,000. Dodge County received $296,000 in payments for hosting 85 wind turbines.

“While we didn’t designate the income for anything in particular, we did use it to pay the bills of the county. Ultimately, it saves on property tax,” said Fond du Lac County Executive Allen Buechel.

http://www.fdlreporter.com/article/20110112/FON0101/110111152/Wind-farm-payouts-approach-3-million