Burke County Wind Farm Denied

Fly Carpin

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Wildlife was here thousands of years before ag, and in greater abundance. Society would not tolerate bison and grizzly today. Waterfowl populations, and native upland would be much more abundant with prairie habitat.
OK, now you’ve hit a nerve. If you’re going to proffer nonsense, please stop referencing your career in wildlife biology. Makes the rest of us look bad. I’ll give you the griz and grouse. But if you’re going to state that waterfowl numbers, specifically Gulf Coast wintering birds like lesser snow geese, aren’t higher than they’ve ever been due to the abundance of food available on the wintering grounds (ag), well you’re just plain wrong. And to paint with such a broad brush as to say “wildlife was here before ag, and in greater abundance” is dangerous. Give a hoos, don’t be obtuse. That’s my new slogan
 


PrairieGhost

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Carpin you can't pick and choose. Sure there are many snow geese, but we don't have those here in North Dakota.
I hope your joking. If we could look at a section of land in 1800 here in North Dakota

My phone is changing things on me Carp In. Thought I would let you know so you wouldn't need spend time on one of you grammar and spelling lessons.

Not being able to read and comprehend makes us look bad too. Picking something that doesn't breed here to make yourself look good is a cheap shot. So let's talk mallards, pintail, and prairie chickens. In the event you know nothing about prairie chickens they require native prairie. They covered North Dakota east of the Misssouri. I'm not familiar with their populations west of that. Today there are I think a couple dozen left on a Waterfowl Production Area North West of Grand Forks. As far as mallards and pintail I'll ask what happens when 80 percent of their nesting habitat is gone? Read, then think.

Edit: Any idea what anhydrous ammonia does to earth worms?

You have a rectal cranial inversion if over all you think wildlife wasnt here before ag and in greater abundance. Get real.
 
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1bigfokker

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A discussion about wind towers sure turned into the No. 1 SHIT SHOW. Let GST come back for a day. This needs to go on for 15-20 pages at least.
 

PrairieGhost

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Your right one big ------. Someone made a good point about developing alternative energy. I'm all for developing it, but not subsidizing it when it's inefficient. One day we will run out of oil, but not likely in the next few hundred years. However we should prepare for the sake of our generations to come and not be to self centered. Sorry I seen the relationship between that and advocating for conservation through subsidies for the future rather than subsidizing a surplus for the individual.
I drove through Courtney yesterday and the town is surrounded by wind towers. Sure looked like a lot of wasted tax dollars to me.
 

Fritz the Cat

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Went to a wedding last night and met one of our Public Service Commissioners. He said the Burke County location was bad. We discussed many things and agreed when it comes to cutting deals or mitigating things...….simply cutting a check or giving a half million to Ducks Unlimited isn't good for wildlife.

A better option/site is a quarter of land with half prairie and the other half broke out between hills. Little water, highly erodible and poor or no fence. Not good for crop or pasture. Site that quarter of land, plant native grasses on it and try to get it back to natural.
 


adventurer365

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Hi,i also live in burke county.Do you know when the new proposed windfarm map will be available, it sounds like they are moving more toward divide more but in my opinion, that solves nothing as far as the abundant wildlife in the area,thanks
 

Meelosh

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The easiest answer for wind farms in that part of the world is just build them on well pads. Zero additional ground disturbance.
 

roosterfish

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My biggest issue is if it is produced HERE, keep it here. Don't send it to the cities!!! Lower our electric rates by keeping it here and I will be on board and be a Huge supporter!!! The old saying "Just do the RIGHT thing'" is often forgotten in today's world!!!
 

eyexer

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The easiest answer for wind farms in that part of the world is just build them on well pads. Zero additional ground disturbance.
there isn't that many well pads up in that area in the hill country.
 

sl1000794

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My biggest issue is if it is produced HERE, keep it here. Don't send it to the cities!!! Lower our electric rates by keeping it here and I will be on board and be a Huge supporter!!! The old saying "Just do the RIGHT thing'" is often forgotten in today's world!!!

There is not enough demand for all the energy that can be produced in ND, MT and WY with coal and wind to be used in this area. Not selling it elsewhere would just raise our rates because the power companies could not sell all of their potential power. It would be like telling our ND farmers and ranchers to only sell their products in ND so our flour, pasta and meat would be cheaper. Not happening, not enough buyers. The same thing applies to our oil. We should not build more refineries than we can use the refined product locally. We should not be shipping refined oil products to more metropolitan areas for sale. Ship the less volatile crude oil and let them refine it where it can be sold/used.

In 1973 my brother worked for Bechtel Power and Light on the Point of Rocks power plant east of Rock Springs, WY. Their customers were Idaho Power and Light and Portland Power. Their customers put up the $$$ for building the plant and received all of the power from it. Wyoming got the jobs for building the plant and the jobs for 40+ years operating the plant and Idaho and Portland got electricity that they needed. A win/win for all around.

Same for ND with it's power plants (coal and wind) selling electricity and for our farmers/ranchers selling grain and cattle.

ps: I live in San Jose, CA in the winter and our electrical rate is 4x what I pay NCEC for power at Metigoshe. Believe me, NOBODY heats their garage in CA.
 
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Sum1

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Yeah but guywhofishes got the measles from wind farms and that’s not cool.
 

Fritz the Cat

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In 1973 my brother worked for Bechtel Power and Light on the Point of Rocks power plant east of Rock Springs, WY. Their customers were Idaho Power and Light and Portland Power. Their customers put up the $$$ for building the plant and received all of the power from it. Wyoming got the jobs for building the plant and the jobs for 40+ years operating the plant and Idaho and Portland got electricity that they needed. A win/win for all around.

There has to be a long term plan drawn up in Board rooms. First, coal leases were quietly purchased in the 50's and 60's from sellers who didn't know a big project was coming their way. I mean..."the investors" were not going to alert the sellers. As the plan goes into motion ads and stories have to be taken out to convince the populace how this is going to be a great idea. It would be fun to go back and read those feel good propaganda ads on how burning coal was the answer. I can remember POTUS Jimmy Carter telling the Nation because of OPEC etc., that the Nation needs to get behind Synfuels or the gas plant at Beulah ND. The "investors" told Carter what to say and when to say it.

Today, the "investors" have a plan to switch to wind energy with natural gas turbine peaking plants. It's not about Carter, Obama, Trump or even AOC. The "investors" have a plan and know 20 years from now how much money they are going to make.

Gentlemen, if we had a bug inside the "investors" board rooms and knew the future....we could invest wisely and never have to work again. My best advice, don't buy a duplex or the laundromat in Coal Strip Montana. Puget Sound energy of Seattle built the units at Coal Strip (2 of 4 already shut down) and have now moved on building a huge natural gas pipeline from British Columbia and are building wind turbines in western Montana.

but.. but ..but .. the wind turbines are inefficient and need to be subsidized. The plan will be revealed in good time.

I was one of the lucky ones. Graduated high school and the coal mines around me were ramping up. Worked there for 30 years. Great job, pay and benefits. Purchased my grandfathers land. On the abstracts and deeds it is recorded where my grandfather leased out the coal in the 1960's. The "investors" had a plan. Since that time no one has approached me to renew those leases. The "investors" have moved on.
 

Bacon

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On a side note, just heard the other day the wind farm in Logan/Emmons south of Napoleon is at a stand still. Seems that the transmision lines they were to use to hook into the grid are not large enough to carry the generating capacity of the towers. It will take 100 million to upgrade those lines. You would think they would have thought of that before they got 20 plus towers up already.
 

LBrandt

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There was a shit-load of blades that went west down highway 13 on Friday and Saturday so someone is still putting them up out west.
 

Reprobait

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I saw a think-tank guy quoted in an article, he said that coal is going to be dead by 2030. There is lots of Natural gas. In OK companies are paying to put their gas into the pipelines and we all know the flaring situation in this state.
 


eyexer

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Coal certainly won't be dead by 2030. That guys on crack. I don't think you'll ever see oil companies in ND paying to put gas in a pipeline.
 

Motor Mouse

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Well my wife says I can never let anything go. So here goes!

Fly2cast you are out to lunch! I am 100% correct! You are so out lunch with your math and engineering units you are hilarious! Wind towers are rated in Mega Watts per Hour! not day or year. The average land based wind tower being installed today is > 2.5 MW per hour at max output. Yes they do not produce max output much of the time.

14000 barrels of oil for a MW in a year. I just spit my coffee all over my computer screen! ~ 1.73 barrels of crude to make a MW of energy in a year. Your .0016 barrels of heating oil (.00173 for crude) is what it takes to make a 1000 watts per hour. A MW is a million watts. If I make 1000 watts per hour burning .07 or so, gallons of oil per hour or .0016 or so, barrels of oil to make that 1000 watts per hour I have to do that for 1000 hours to make a MW. 1000 hours X .0016 = 1.6 barrels. (a barrel is 42 gallons) = 1 MW energy.

If I am making 1 MW/Hr continuous it would take 1.6 barrels per hour. X 8760 hours in a year or 14,000 barrels a year and my electrical power produced for the year would be 8760 MW of energy.

What I said in my post months ago is that you are mixed up with your engineering units. And now I say you are wrong I am right!
 

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