Updates
February 14, 2016: The Miami Herald is reporting --
A giant wind farm in California’s southern San Joaquin Valley is blowing gusts through a faraway federal court, with tens of millions of dollars potentially up in the air.
Some of the wind farm’s early investors want more than $200 million in additional subsidies that they say the federal government owes them. Obama administration officials, in turn, argue that the government paid $59 million too much.
This week, a judge sharpened the administration’s side of the sword, agreeing that the U.S. can try to retrieve some of the taxpayer dollars paid.
U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Thomas C. Wheeler said in a decision Monday that the Treasury Department could counter the claims from investors in the Alta Wind project, the largest wind farm in the United States.
The wind farm investors, Wheeler wrote, “have no guarantee of keeping the amounts that Treasury paid them.” He noted that “a refund always was a possibility given a proper understanding of the issues.” As a result, an upcoming trial will determine who owes money to whom.
Wheeler’s ruling seems an unexpected turn for the Alta Wind Facility, located in the Tehachapi Mountains of Kern County. When some of the Alta Wind investors first started suing in 2013 to get a bigger share of federal money, the possibility that they could be the ones owing $59 million did not appear to be on the table.
Now, unless lawyers settle beforehand, the escalating two-way dispute will be resolved in a trial that is slated to start May 9 and is expected to last three weeks. It will likely be scrutinized by the nation’s big renewable-energy investors, which have included the corporate likes of Google.
Original Post
Donna and Bob Moran moved to the wind-whipped foothills here four years ago looking for solitude and serenity amid the pinyon pines and towering Joshua trees.Read the rest at the link above.
But lately their view of the valley is being marred by a growing swarm of whirring wind turbines — many taller than the Statue of Liberty — sweeping ever closer to their home.
"Once, you could see stars like you wouldn't believe," Donna Moran said. "Now, with the lights from the turbines, you can't even see the night sky."
Looking Out My Back Door, CCR
It's about to get worse.
Turbines are multiplying at blistering speeds as wind developers, drawn by the area's powerful gusts, attempt to meet an insatiable demand for clean energy.
Helo Energy plans to scatter 450-foot machines across hundreds of acres in nearby Sand Canyon. A few miles away, near the Old West Ranch enclave, Terra-Gen Power is building the nation's largest wind farm with hundreds of turbines, if not more. The project, Alta Wind Energy Center, is backed by hundreds of millions of dollars from Google Inc. and Citibank.
In residential neighborhoods in Los Angeles suburbs, oil pumpers are hidden from view with high hedges and trees but there's no way one can high a wind turbine. I did not know about the light pollution.
And so it goes.
