Mike Tidwell ["Safer for All Living Things," Close to Home, Feb. 6] correctly pointed out that while wind farms may be harmful to bats, the technology could be improved and the alternatives may be worse. He speculated on the environmental damage done to hundreds of thousands of acres of "prime Appalachian land" by coal mining. But bats are not the only problem with wind energy. Another is the size of wind farms.
The United States generates about 4 billion megawatt-hours of electricity each year. Replacing even a third of that with wind farms such as the Mountaineer Wind Energy Center -- 66 megawatts from 4,400 acres -- would require millions of acres. Such a wind farm would be longer than the distance between Burlington, Vt., and Birmingham, Ala., and wider than the distance between Washington and Hagerstown. That's a lot of prime Appalachian land.
Wind energy may have its place, but that's not every place.
DAVID W. KREUTZER
Dayton, Va.
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Mike Tidwell's equation that more wind turbines mean less fossil fuel combustion is phony. Smokestacks and strip mines vs. wind machines? Given rising energy demand, we'll need all three.
Industrial wind power exemplifies business at its worst. Spawned, then supported, by government welfare at considerable public expense, it is unlikely to produce a meaningful product in the East other than risk-free profits for a few wealthy investors.
Wishful thinking about wind provides aid and comfort to the coal industry by giving the public the impression something is being done to mitigate the serious health and environmental problems from mining and burning coal. Rather than providing cover for business as usual, we need to insist on equipment to burn coal more cleanly and efficiently, and to proscribe extraction techniques such as mountaintop removal.
JON BOONE
Oakland
The writer is a retired university administrator who has filed to take part as a private citizen in two wind-power plant cases before the Maryland Public Service Commission.
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