Save Camp Allegheny Battlefield
Camp Allegheny, located in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, and one of the nation's most pristine Civil War battlefields, is under threat from an industrial wind power utility, Highland New Wind Development (HNWD), which has received approval from the Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) to erect nineteen 40-story turbines between 1.2 and 2.4 miles of the site.
These turbines are not windmills. They are almost unimaginably huge: one hundred feet taller than the Statue of Liberty and nearly as wide as the length of a football field. HNWD is not a wind farm. It is an industrial facility that, according to the best available industry data, will store a minimum of 12,256 gallons of petroleum products on-site at any time. Yet, by HNWD's own admission, it will only employ one or two people.
If from the remote, unpopulated location of Highland County, Virginia, (population 2,500), HNWD manages, somehow, to connect to eastern markets, then when the wind blows strong, but not too strong (at least 30 mph but no more than 60 mph) HNWD will theoretically provide a maximum addition to the "grid" of 38 megawatts--but only erratically at best (given the unpredictability of the wind), and generally in the winter months, when electricity demand is lowest.
Locating this wind utility on two 4,200+ foot ridgetops has threatened the rare historic landscape that is Camp Allegheny as well as the natural heritage, and thus the identity, of a region of the country known as Little Switzerland for good reason.
If there were a foreseeable net-gain to the region for undergoing such a drastic transformation, these pages would describe it---and happily. Unfortunately, such good news has not been found so far.
In fact, that's precisely the point of these pages, which were created unexpectedly and out of sudden, pressing need to provide information, and document events, and search for answers to this basic question:
Does erecting 40-story wind turbines on Appalachian ridgetops make any economic, environmental or just plan common sense?