The General Assembly just got back in Raleigh last Wednesday, but some of its leaders wasted no time in launching a new misleading attack on renewable wind energy.
Ten state legislators, including Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore, wrote to the new nominee for Secretary of Homeland Security, asking that he intervene to block a nearly completed major wind energy project in North Carolina. They claim that it would interfere with a military radar installation near the NC/Virginia state line, despite a Department of Defense agreement to permit the wind project.
However, one of the signers’ own colleagues takes issue with their claims. NC House Rep. Bob Steinburg (R-Chowan), in whose district the wind farm has been built, says the opposition to this project is connected to some leaders’ continuing fight against renewable energy development (especially wind). Steinburg said, “I think there are some who are trying to set up the military as a straw man. I have not talked with anyone from the military that has said they cannot coexist with this particular project.”
The wind farm project has gone through years of review at the local, state, and federal levels. About $400 million has been invested in construction of 104 turbine towers. Full commercial power production is projected to be just weeks away.
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