We
go through our busy lives paying bills, doing laundry, catching a number of
family situations – all generally without notice. Then one day we see something
that draws us to take a turn in the road and so experience a very notable
moment. So it happened with us a few days ago. Driving north on Michigan’s
Highway 127, the one that leads to our historic masterpiece the MackinacBridge, when just an hour out of Lansing we saw tall towering gleaming white
Wind Towers. Not just one or two, but many wind towers. We turned east following the site like curious
Don Quixotes, bearing instead our intention to embrace the concept rather than
fight it.
In our Crunchy Granola days experimenting
with various non-polluting renewable resources we only dreamed of power
significant enough to serve a grand population. Our little abode used passive
solar techniques, but mostly we depended on wood from our little forest out
back, and coal delivered to our local utility company. We watched more
adventurous colleagues actually produce wind/solar power enough to sell energy
back to “the grid”.
Over the years we have explored the
advancing technology in both wind turbine designs and solar collection. We
lamented that we might not live long enough to actually see acceptance of the
advancing renewable technology against the resistance of high profit dinosaur
bones, that the sucking of oil from sands and the flattening of mountains will
use all of our human brain and muscle power until there is nothing left, before
we try to catch up to the gifts that shine on us (sometimes blisteringly) every
day.
Here,
in the summer of 2012 the giants stood before us – over 130 of them – quietly overseeing
lush corn and soybean fields amid pristine farmsteads of Gratiot County,
Michigan. They stand over 400 feet capturing gentle winds across this ancient
lake bed flatland of mid-Michigan on some 30,000 acres. The wind towers generate
enough electricity for more than 50,000 homes in the area.
These lovely machines are providing
hundreds of jobs from production (General Electric) to raising at the sites (Livonia-based
Aristeo Construction), to maintenance. They provide tens of thousands of
dollars, millions of dollars over a few years, to the communities for roads,
schools, and all the things that make for great places to live right here in my
beautiful Michigan. This is just one of several planned energy farms in the
state. Consumers Energy and DTE are swiftly moving toward the establishment of
the wind farms in the “thumb” and the Lake Land Wind Farm in Ludington
capturing Lake Michigan winds on the high ground.
According to Kevin Parzyck,
vice-president of development in the Midwest for Invenergy which oversees the construction projects,
“Once things get rolling, you can put a couple up of (the towers) a day.”
[Barrie Barber, The Saginaw News]
This all came about with more
urgency by Michigan’s Clean, Renewable and Efficient Energy Act of 2008 that
requires 10% of energy output to be clean renewable by 2015. The projects are
embraced by the energy companies for more than meeting that goal, accounting for
over a billion dollars invested in the wind/solar projects.
Standing among the beautiful farmland
wind towers listening to the soft cranking of the rotating motors amid crickets
and birds, it occurred to me that we are standing in the Future, no plutonium
waste, no burning holes in the ozone, no gaseous spills in the water table. A
sense of elation came over me – I am so grateful I lived to experience this
moment.
By the way, if you research wind energy
in Michigan you will also find a good deal of home energy products produced
right here. Whew (that’s a little puff of wind celebrating a good world comin’).
Helene
author of
A
Homestead Decade, How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life, Amazon Kindle Book, a
memoir, funny, serious and cheap $2.99.
