Sunday, May 21, 2023

WI Farmers Get Wise to Wind Turbine Scams

 In a story NOT reported by Little Local Pravda (nor any of its Propaganda-Central sisters), we learn about a revolution in Central Wisconsin.

Central Wisconsin communities are coordinating efforts to shine a light into the flickering shadow cast by a looming wind turbine industry.

“There is a revolt happening here,” attorney Marti Machtan told The Epoch Times. “I’ve never seen our communities engage like this in my life.”

Machtan is a member of Farmland First, an organization that aims to facilitate discussion among community members concerned about reported coercive, predatory tactics used by industrial wind companies to manipulate landowners into signing their property rights away in the name of green energy....

Basically, the wind-turbine firms require the farmer to adhere to contract conditions for 30 years--while the turbine companies can bail out at any time, for any reason, thus NOT having to pay the farmer for any remaining years on the agreement.

Nice.

[Machtan's] assessment of the contracts between farmers and wind turbine companies like RWE Clean Energy, which has advanced into central Wisconsin, is as bad as he’s ever read.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that was more imbalanced, unfair, or one-sided to the benefit of the company and to the detriment of the farmer,” Machtan said.

Many provisions in these contracts give more power to the wind company over the land than the property owner.

The wind company can get out of the contract at any time for any reason, while the farmer must commit to decades worth of encumbrances, Machtan said.

“There are liability shifting provisions for the big multi-billion-dollar multinational companies that shift risks onto these farmers,” he said.

There are also inadequate decommissioning standards, he added.

You won't be surprised to learn that the Vos/Fitzgerald legislature pre-empted townships from regulating windmills.

Disappointed, but not surprised.

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