A significant portion of the time spent researching wind energy and the High Prairie Wind "Farm" project involves simply just collecting documents and reading them. We have amassed many documents over the course of the past year, and hope to share many of them with you here. When you take the time to read the documents, no matter what those may be, a person can learn a plethora of knowledge, not just about one project, but about many projects. We make a point to have multiple people read these documents as well, multiple sets of eyes make a difference.
What we want to share today involves the Department of Defense.
The High Prairie project is located in an area considered, "Hazard - cases that exceed obstruction standards and/or have an adverse effect upon navigable airspace or air navigation facilities," per the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). For some time, we were not entirely sure what this meant. Luckily, we were able to locate the agreement between the Department of Defense, The Department of the Air Force and TG High Prairie, LLC. "This agreement is to mitigate potential impacts on the national defense from the development of a wind turbine energy project in Schuyler and Adair Counties, Missouri, hereinafter referred to as the 'project'." Also, "The objective of this agreement is to support energy development in a way that does not adversely impact military operations and readiness."
Not only is the High Prairie project a serious threat to bats and bald eagles (which we will cover soon in another blog post), it could potentially interfere with national defense. Wonderful, we are so reassured.
"Based on DoD analysis, a potential conflict may exist between the MILDEP’s operation of the Kirksville, Missouri, Common Air Route Surveillance Radar (CARSR) and spinning wind turbines associated with the project." We believe the CARSR they are referring to is located near Sublette, MO.
What we found most interesting regarding this document, aside from what we already knew, it is poorly located, is the agreement for 194 meteorological towers and wind turbines. At this time, Terra-Gen/Ameren have to limit the total number of large, obstructive objects to 194, per this agreement. Have we not been told this project was supposed to be 175 wind turbines? We are aware of SIX permanent meteorological towers. That leaves the possibility of THIRTEEN additional structures.
Luckily, they provided a map:
Now, were located the FAA coordinates from the turbines a long time ago and have continually updated the map as changes were made according to the FAA website. The same coordinates were provided to the DOD. You can access our map here. However, what concerns us about this map is the "Project Area." The "Project Area" is not only significantly larger than the dots indicating wind turbines, but there are also dots on the map that do not correlate with FAA coordinates (of which we do have 194).
Otherwise, the agreement generally discusses that Terra-Gen will shut down turbines if necessary for national defense purposes. What we learned from this document, is that whether its national defense or murdering bats and birds (discussed in another blog), if you want to build a massive wind project, just buy the rights to do it:
"Subject to the terms and conditions of this agreement, Project Owner shall pay to DoD, within 10 days of the test energy phase for the project, currently expected to begin in May 2020, the amount of $30,000 for the purpose of offsetting the cost of measures undertaken by DoD to mitigate adverse impacts of the project on military operations and readiness or to conduct studies of potential measures to mitigate such impacts, and DoD shall accept such payment as a voluntary contribution of funds pursuant to 10 U.S.C. § 183a(f)."
"If Project Owner fails to curtail the operation of its wind turbines as required by this agreement, Project Owner shall, in place of actual damages, make a voluntary contribution under this agreement to DoD as liquidated damages of $30,000 for each time the Project Owner fails to curtail wind turbine operations as required by this agreement. The DoD POC will identify to Project Owner the DoD official authorized to make the determination as to whether non-curtailed wind turbines warrant seeking payment of the voluntary contribution. The parties agree that the dollar amount provided for in this clause, which is based on the calculated technician team travel costs to the Kirksville CARSR, is a fair and reasonable estimate of damages that the MILDEP will incur as a result of Project Owner’s failure to curtail its wind turbine operations as required by this agreement. Project Owner must make payment of the voluntary contribution under this provision within 30 days of receiving the MILDEP’s payment request. The parties agree that the maximum cumulative amount of payment for failure to comply with wind turbine curtailment over the term of this agreement pursuant to this clause is one million, five hundred thousand dollars ($1,500,000). Wind turbine mitigation efforts in support of military operations sustainment will have the highest priority for use of any funds received pursuant to this subsection."
Essentially, you can destroy people's homes, the environment and even be a risk to national defense, if you have money, in the name of "green" energy.
