The state Senate has suspended debate on a bill to control the permitting of industrial wind farms, apparently over a dispute between competing environmental concerns in Western North Carolina. Some environmentalists, and others, want to be able to put commercial wind turbines on mountain ridges, where they'll get the best winds, to help generate alternative, sustainable energy; other environmentalists, and others, want to keep them off the ridges because wind farms with turbines soaring into the sky would mar the view and destroy what's unique about the mountains.
This dispute caused Democrats to interrupt Senate debate Wednesday afternoon, and finally to return the bill to a Senate committee.
The bill at the moment allows commercial wind farms in coastal areas -- offshore, or in the sounds, but not in parks, national seashores or other inappropriate places. The current bill also restricts commercial wind turbines in Western North Carolina -- barring them from ridge tops, to comply with the 1983 ridge law preventing tall structures.
Sen. Steve Goss, D-Watauga, wanted to allow them in certain ridge top areas; Sen. Martin Nesbitt, D-Buncombe, was against that, but would allow them in other areas as well as smaller windmills for single family residences.
Nesbitt argued that the plan for allowing wind farms on the coast prohibited them in national seashores and on the state's barrier islands; the law also ought to ban them on the state's magnificent ridge tops.
As he put it, lawmakers would not allow wind farms at Kitty Hawk near the Wright Brothers Memorial, nor would it allow them on Ocracoke Island, nor would it allow them on top of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. "They're national treasures," he said. "If they damaged our crown jewels along the coast, I dare say we'd be here voting no."
