Sierra Club sues Pentagon over wind farm delays

Sierra Club Calls on Rumsfeld, DOD to Stop Blocking Wind Farms
Suit filed against Defense Department for delaying study of windmill threats to security

he Sierra Club today filed suit against Donald Rumsfeld and the U.S. Department of Defense for creating a virtual moratorium on the construction of new wind power plants.

The nation's most respected environmental organization charged that Rumsfeld and DOD have failed to complete a congressionally mandated study of windmills' impact on radar.

In the meantime, DOD, Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Aviation Administration have halted wind farm construction "within radar line of sight" of any military radar--which has effectively stopped construction across the U.S.

"While the Defense Department drags its feet studying if wind farms are a threat to national security, Americans are missing out on cleaner, cheaper energy," said Kristin Henry, staff attorney for Sierra Club. "If the military can have windmills and effective radar at Guantanamo, why can't we have both in the Midwest?"

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, claims that the Department of Defense has violated the Administrative Procedure Act and will seek to "compel agency action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed." 5 U.S.C. § 706(1).

The move by the Bush administration to link wind power to national security threats is especially ironic given that it took a recent decision of the Ninth Circuit Court to get the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to consider the potential impacts from a terrorist attack on nuclear facilities when conducting environmental reviews.

"The same administration that didn't want to consider terrorism when building nuclear plants is saying that windmills may be a threat to national security," said Henry.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006 contained a last-minute amendment, inserted by Senator John Warner of Virginia, requiring Donald Rumsfeld and DOD to complete a study on the effect of windmills on military readiness and the operation of military radar installations by May 8, 2006.

Beltway bureaucratic stalling charged

In order to operate and construct a windmill in the U.S., an energy developer must obtain a notice from the FAA stating that the installation is not a hazard to air navigation. The Federal Aviation Administration is interpreting DOD's "Interim Windmill Policy" to mean that it cannot approve any wind projects "within radar line of sight." Instead, the agency has been issuing "Notices of Presumptive Hazard," which decline to provide the required notice until more information is obtained regarding possible interference with military radar installations. Since much of the nation and almost all of the Midwest is "within radar line of sight," this policy has a sweeping effect and has essentially created a de facto moratorium on new wind power projects.

15 wind farms stalled

Federal officials have declined to reveal how many wind projects have been blocked from construction, but, according to media reports, at least 15 wind farm proposals in the Midwest have been shut down so far. The list of stalled projects includes one outside Bloomington, Illinois, which would have been the nation's largest source of wind energy, generating enough electricity to power 120,000 homes in the Chicago area. Coal and natural gas will likely replace the lost wind generation, resulting in higher energy costs and increased soot, smog and global warming pollution.

"Paralyzing wind energy development could not have come at a worse time," said David Bookbinder, senior attorney for Sierra Club. "The Department of Defense has provided no indication of when it intends to complete the required study, even though the deadline has already passed. Meanwhile the window for claiming tax credits on wind projects is closing next year.

On June 2, 2006, Senators Russ Feingold, Dick Durbin, Herb Kohl, Kent Conrad, Byron Dorgan, and Barack Obama wrote a letter to the Department of Defense and the Federal Aviation Administration requesting that they stop unnecessarily obstructing the construction of clean, renewable energy sources.

Threat to tax credits seem as ploy to stop the wind

If the moratorium persists through the summer, it may not be possible to complete wind projects in time for their developers to claim applicable federal tax credits, which were extended last August through the end of 2007. The direct and indirect economic damage that will result from suspension of wind farm construction could easily reach tens of millions of dollars.

The Sierra Club attornies claim that wind energy is the fastest-growing source of power on the planet. With our national wind resources, they say, the United States can become a world leader in wind energy. Already, wind turbines in this country produce enough electricity to meet the needs of more than 1 million households. A single modern wind turbine can produce enough power to meet the annual electricity needs of 500 average homes.

The suit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco claimed that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the Pentagon missed a deadline for completing a study that is holding up more than a dozen wind farm projects in the Midwest.

"The end result is the wind industry is being crippled," said attorney Kristin Henry of the Sierra Club. The study was ordered earlier this year by Congress. The Federal Aviation Administration has halted projects in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, North Dakota, and South Dakota until the agency can determine their impact on military radar. Delayed construction on wind farms could make developers ineligible for federal tax credits available until the end of 2007, dealing a severe blow to efforts to develop clean, renewable energy sources in the United States, Henry said.

Senator Warner protecting Osterville trophy homes

The amendment ordering the study, authored by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., came as a last-minute addition to a national defense bill passed in January. The bill gave the Defense Department until May to complete the study. Mr. Warner's daughter own a summer home in Osterville.

Wind industry backers have accused Warner of trying to scuttle an offshore wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound in Massachusetts.

Source: The Sierra Club