After protesting to the PSC, what’s the next step?

Friends of Beautiful Pendleton County, Inc. has hired a lawyer to find and exploit flaws and omissions in the Liberty Gap application. This is the most direct way to stop the project but lawyers aren’t cheap.

FOBPC would appreciate donations at
PO Box 812
Franklin, WV 26807.

However, if Liberty Gap is stopped this time, there is no guarantee that it won’t return. Steps should be taken to prevent that from happening. One possibility is to present to the public and to state officials the evidence that industrial wind power has a lot of negatives that have been glossed over and that a moratorium is in order.

This is a good time to send protest letters to the governor and the legislators calling for a moratorium on the granting of siting certificates to any more wind developers until such time as comprehensive studies of the long-term consequences of rampant mountaintop turbining have been completed. Those studies could then become the basis for drafting legislation that gives the PSC what it needs to more thoroughly determine the true costs and benefits of these projects.

Getting resolutions passed is easier than getting bills passed.

A resolution asking the PSC to impose a moratorium on any further issuance of wind facility site certificates needs to be based on an issue that is statewide and justifiably within the purview of the PSC’s regulatory responsibilities.

Scenic viewshed impact is probably not going to get much traction.

The economic losses inflicted on the real estate and tourism businesses would get traction among legislators in the affected areas but that might be the extent of it.

The indirect effect on ratepayers throughout the state as a result of cost shifting, shadow standby power, state tax breaks and the possibility of mandated market share I believe is sufficient reason to justify a moratorium. There is a growing body of information now available to counter the bogus claims of the wind industry.