Mammoth wind farm by SD firm slated for South Dakota (6000 MW)

[jpak]

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_7306919?nclick_check=1

IERRE, S.D.—Plans for the world's largest wind farm, proposed to be built in South Dakota, have become more grandiose.

South Dakota is officially rated No. 4 in the nation for the potential capacity to make electricity from wind, although the ranking is more than a decade old. Many industry officials believe the Great Plains state is the windiest of all.

Clipper Windpower of Carpinteria, Calif., intends to erect enough wind turbines in several South Dakota counties to produce up to 6,000 megawatts of electricity, said Bob Gates, the firm's senior vice president of commercial operations.

That would be eight times larger than the biggest wind farm in the world, a 735-megawatt FPL Energy facility with 421 turbines stretching across three Texas counties.

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[sakabatou]

1. 6 Gigawatts?

Wow

[AlecBGreen]

2. 6000MW!

Holy cow!!! Thats almost a Brazilian!!!

Seriously though, I have a hard time seeing how this is anything but good news. Jobs, clean energy, less dependence on fossil fuel, income for rural Americans, the list goes on and on.

[TheWraith]

5. I suspect that's rated capacity, of course.

Actual output I would guess at one third of that. Still not bad. Hopefully the NIMBYs won't get to it.

[AlecBGreen]

6. i tell ya ... journalists these days

how hard is it to insert a few words. "6000MW at peak production" "6000MW at max capacity" etc. Is that so hard?

[diane in sf]

7. The good thing about the Dakotas is there are hardly any people there, so

there is not likely to be much of a NIMBY problem--especially when hard-pressed farmers can make income off any machines placed on their property.

[Victoras]

3. Ottertail in the mix?

appreciate the heads up,

I will need to investigate Ottertail (ticker: OTTR)
they have wind generator technologies as subsidaries,
I expect there may be record profits coming along...

[Submariner]

4. What does, or will, the Environmental Impact Statement say?

I have done field studies in Minn., ND, and SD, and it is a MAJOR flightpath for migratory birds. If it is not located away from these migratory pathways there will be alot of dinner items for the foxes hanging out underneath the propellers.

[NickB79]

8. Don't worry, they're working on it

See, the farmers in the area are busy filling in all the pothole wetlands vital to waterfowl populations so they can grow more corn for the ethanol market, so that way there won't be many ducks to be shredded by the turbines after a few more years.

Pretty smart, eh?

[Submariner]

9. Pretty smart, eh?

How stupid of me not to consider in that little factoid. I saw some of that, how right you are. A (drunk) Cheney hunting party could clean out the stragglers.

The transition of avian types over six weeks of day/night observations in the autumn was fascinating. I believe it began with the sandhill cranes, then herons, then the waterfowl types (ducks and geese), then snow buntings, then harrier hawks, and the last birds that came through were the majestic snowy owls.

As it got really cold, and the 1st snowflakes appeared, I thought I saw a white tree stump in the middle of a mowed down sunflower field. As I got closer I could see it was the giant snowy owl. What a beautiful bird.

Thanks for splaining the avian mitigation process for me.

[malakai2]

10. Well, if there is a Federal nexus...

The project planners will likely have to mitigate any effects on whooping cranes, interior least terns, and the Great Plains nesting population of piping plovers. If it's anywhere near one of the black-footed ferret reintroduction sites, they'll have to mitigate for potential impacts to ferrets, though the protections for ferret habitat would be lesser as all the wild populations are under the experimental-nonessential designation. Should this take place in such a way so as to warrant a jeopardy determination (or rather, GET such a call, as I highly doubt the Region 6 and Washington offices would allow jeopardy determinations anymore), then the project doesn't happen without the intervention of the Endangered Species Committee, which consists of several Department Secretaries, the governor of the state(s) impacted, and maybe a couple other people I'm forgetting offhand.

[NNadir]

11. How many whooping cranes are there?

I recall reading about some getting trashed on power lines back in the 1970's, and I believe there were less than a hundred then. I haven't kept up on the status of this bird though. I didn't have the heart to follow the case.

[malakai2]

12. The count for this year isn't finished yet

The latest breakdown is 236 adults and an unknown number of chicks in the Wood Buffalo/Aransas population (chicks can't be counted accurately until the population finishes the migration to Texas); 40 adults and 1 chick in the reintroduced non-migratory Florida population, with the possibility that some remain uncounted; 55 adults and 28 chicks (captive bred) in the Necedah/Chassahowitzka population; 0 adults and 0 chicks in the Rocky Mountain population; and 143 adults and 6 chicks in all captive populations. Total number in existence, 509, plus whatever the production was at Wood Buffalo National Park this year. I think the expectation is 50 or chicks from the 70 or so adult pairs will show up, for a final annual tally of ~559.

Things are up and down for the species. The Aransas population keeps growing slowly, and is always under threat from potential spills in the Texas Intracoastal Waterway, development around Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, development around Cheyenne Bottoms in KS (migration stopover), development and water withdrawals from the Platte River (migration stopover), loss of prairie potholes in ND, SD, and southern Canada, and hydrology changes due to climate change at the nesting site in the Northwest Territories. Somewhat amazing to me that so many threats to this population are allowed to go forward, given the way the Endangered Species Act is written. The Necedah population is very new and individuals are pairing off, but the one pair that produced an egg this year is a full sibling pair, and when staff tried to replace their egg with a fertile egg, they abandoned the nest. The habitat in both central WI and western FL seems to be adequate for them, so I suppose this population will take off eventually, but it will still take time. The Florida resident population has decent habitat but seems to get whacked pretty good by bobcats. That population does have a bunch of pairs and did produce a chick this year, maybe it will start to take off.

I really don't think true recovery is possible. There has been just too much loss of historic breeding and wintering habitat-the historic core of the breeding range used to be wetlands and prairie in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, the wintering range seems to have been all along the coast of Texas and Louisiana into Mississippi. Pretty much none of that is left. There were two other known historic populations, one that summered in Wyoming and Montana and wintered in north central Mexico, and one that summered somewhere between the Great Lakes and Hudson Bay, and wintered between the New Jersey and Georgia coasts. Sandhill cranes still follow that Rocky Mountain migration corridor, and a whooping crane reintroduction was tried there, but wasn't successful-were it not for the ridiculous energy development and settlement in the area, I'd think that they would try to reintroduce that population again. The Hudson Bay/mid-Atlantic migration route is so densely populated now that recovery there would be pretty much impossible. Toss in diseases, hurricanes, tornadoes, development, genetic drift, inbreeding, petrochemical spills, transmission lines, wind turbines, and I just don't see where there is room for recovery to the point it can be delisted. Just building a population large enough that mutations can begin to rebuild genetic diversity seems out of reach.

But that's just my opinion, I work with ferrets...I'm predisposed to pessimism.